Ghost workers, salary racketeering guzzle millions of naira in Niger LGs

The issues of percentage salaries’ payments to local government workers coupled with the late payments of wages to workers at the third tier of government in Niger State have been generating concerns, Daily Trust Saturday reports. In recent years, local government councils in Niger State have been engulfed in series of crises due to their […]

The issues of percentage salaries’ payments to local government workers coupled with the late payments of wages to workers at the third tier of government in Niger State have been generating concerns, Daily Trust Saturday reports.

In recent years, local government councils in Niger State have been engulfed in series of crises due to their inability to pay salaries in full and promptly. This had several times degenerated to strike action by staff; one of which was the recent and longest strike by primary school teachers who spent a whole term at home.

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Of the 25 LGAs in the state, Lapai is more pronounced in the crises, as its Chairman who is also the State Secretary of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), Hamidu Mu’azu Jantabo, pushed for full autonomy to allow thorough staff audit to fish out ghost workers which he believes has been consuming much of the allocations due to the councils.

Daily Trust Saturday gathered that while the crises became overheated, most LGA chairmen pulled back out of fear that some influential people who benefit from the system would be affected.

In July this year, the aggrieved LGAs’ staff and their officials in Lapai LGA stoned the screening committee set up to carry out biometric data capturing at the LGA secretariat, chanting: “No screening will be allowed.” 

In early August, another protest was staged in Lapai, calling for payment of July salary, but the chairman insisted that biometric data capturing was aimed at fishing out ghost workers.

While the chairmen complained of lack of funds to pay salaries and undertake projects, backdoor recruitments and fictitious names were said to have continued to find their way into the LGAs’ payrolls without the knowledge of the chairmen.

Findings by Daily Trust Saturday also revealed that most of the staff, especially those in adult education, human and social development, only go to office when salary is about to be paid. There are also issues of certificate forgery among staff.

While the crises deepened, the Chairman of Lapai, Jantabo, called for a stakeholders’ town hall meeting for a way out.

Addressing the stakeholders at the meeting, in which representatives of the House of Assembly, traditional rulers, labour union leaders, among others, were in attendance, the chairman said there were several ghost workers and unqualified employees in all the 25 LGAs, including those who had not finished secondary school.

He said, “Currently, our wage bill in Lapai LG is N130m on salaries alone. And we have other commitments like contribution to the IBB University, known as statutory deductions, Local Government Service Commission (LGSC), among others. If we put all the responsibilities together, it amounts to over N200m. And as it were, since I assumed office, the highest allocation that we have gotten in my LG is N175m. So, if you look at it, on a monthly basis, we have a deficit of close to N50m.”

Jantabo added that, “Local governments in Niger State are divided into two forms: we have the ones that are known to be positive local governments and we have those that are known as negative local governments. We have about 13 local governments that persistently are in the negative category, and unfortunately, Lapai happens to be one of them.”

He added that local government pension lists were full of fictitious names. 

He further said, “We wrote a letter to the pension board requesting the list of pensioners in Lapai LG; they gave us a list of 445 pensioners. When we screened the pensioners, we only found 189 genuine names out of the 445 names given to us. We found out that over 40 names were of those who had died. So, who was collecting these pensions? After that, our pension fund was down by close to N10m.”

He explained that he had deployed technology which as soon as a staff was due for retirement their names would automatically be deleted from the payroll, noting that some local government financial officers were fond of underpaying some staff and taking more money for themselves.

He said, “We received complaints from employees of people tampering with their salaries with deductions. We also want to harmonise that. That is why we are coming up with a system where we can print payslips and each staff member will be monitoring the salary payments, noting that that taking loans to pay salary was not ideal for LGs.

He said most security-infested local governments in the state could not respond to distress calls for support from security agents and victims of banditry due to lack of paucity of funds. 

He argued that while state governments got interventions from the federal government in form of loans and grants to stabilise their operations, citing instances of the bailout funds, local governments had been left to survive without any form of support to meet their needs and obligations.   

He further said, “Even though some of them are informed of loans or grants, you realise that some of these loans were given to state governments, not local governments, but when it is time for repayment, deductions were made from allocations to local governments.

“In June, 2021, the governor met with the local government chairmen; he told us to revert to partial autonomy. At that meeting, I stood up and said I wasn’t against partial autonomy, but that it shouldn’t be restricted to finance; that we should also have political and administrative autonomy. But if we stop at financial autonomy and we don’t have autonomy over the administration of teachers who are currently under SUBEB, an agency set up by the state government, and also we don’t have authority to administer health, because we have an agency in Minna that takes care of that, how do I as a local government chairman, have the money that I cannot have control over when recruitments are made.

“I cannot have control over salaries; we are at the local government and someone whose salary is N40,000 is conniving with accountants in Minna and they pay him N150,000 monthly. So, unless we are able to address all these problems, that is when we are suitable to practice autonomy.”

He blamed labour leaders and local government officials who benefit from the malpractice of resisting the screening exercise and misleading members on the motives behind the biometric data capturing the local government was about to undertake. He also blamed the state government agencies for milking the local governments dry; leaving them with nothing to work with.

He said, “In November, 2021, before the partial autonomy, the governor gave us a directive because we didn’t trust the heads of agencies. He said LGs should go and do staff audit by themselves because some LGs chairmen know some of their staff personally. So, it was believed that if LGs are allowed to do it themselves, it would yield better results. And in that November, LGs were asked to go and pay salaries directly for three months to figure out what was actually happening.

“When we paid the November salary, on average, each of the 25 LGs was able to save N3m. When we put that money together across the 25 LGs, it was about N75m. That time, the Chairman of Bida LGA threatened to take SUBEB to court because he asked them to refund his money from the time he assumed office up till when the screening was carried out, insisting that the excess money must be refunded. It took the intervention of many stakeholders who said the past should be overlooked. So, because of that outcome, the governor said every subsequent staff audit should be done at the local government.” 

He noted that primary healthcare facilities and primary schools in local governments had no basic infrastructure, saying that until the local governments took bold steps to addressing the impasses that had nearly forced them out of existence, people at the grassroots would not feel their impact.

Reacting, the Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in Lapai LGA, Saidu Abdulkadir Evuti, noted that labour unions were not officially in the screening exercise, which he said was the cause of the crisis.

Evuti said, “By the constitution of the labour union, for the LG council chairman to carry out any screening, he has to write to us, and we need to meet first to discuss how we will go about it. But that was not done. He didn’t also set up any committee, while terms of reference were not also given. The man handling the screening was too harsh; we complained to the chairman, he said we should be patient. We demanded to know the number of the screening committee members; he didn’t reply to us. So, we were left in the dark.”

The Member Representing Lapai in the House of Assembly and Chairman House Committee on Information, Idris Musa Vatsa, said the issue of local governments in the state had generated heated debates in the house, that members had resorted to court when a motion was moved by some members for the establishment of the Niger State Character Commission over marginalisation of their tribes in the scheme of things.

The stakeholders, including traditional rulers, argued that unless lack of commitment to duty, issues of ghost workers and salary racketeering were addressed, local governments in the state would not be able to make impact on the people at the grassroots.