The IGP and police pay fraud
According to Mr Ringim, investigations by a private consulting firm engaged by the Ministry of Police Affairs to set up an e-payment platform for the force since September, revealed that the police had been paying over 20,000 ghost officers monthly. The police boss did not say how long this racket had been running, nor did […]
According to Mr Ringim, investigations by a private consulting firm engaged by the Ministry of Police Affairs to set up an e-payment platform for the force since September, revealed that the police had been paying over 20,000 ghost officers monthly. The police boss did not say how long this racket had been running, nor did he give any estimates of how much the police may have been cumulatively defrauded. But he indicated that for just the three months since this haemorrhage was uncovered, the police saved over N6 billion.
In addition to the work of the private firm, the police boss further disclosed that the police itself had set up a special task force to investigate payment of monthly emoluments. That task force had reported that in some instances, several salaries were continuously paid into a single account. Elsewhere, multiple payments were being made, in a single name, into the same account. The IGP indicated that a sweep involving several Police paymasters, officers in charge of MSS, accountants, as well as Divisional Police Officers, may already be underway. And he pledged that the police leadership, under his watch, will stamp out such practices from the force.
The IGP’s revelations and anti-corruption declarations have already been greeted with two basic reactions. The first is that of cynics who snigger at what someone has described as “Ringim’s empty salvos”. Citizens’ scepticism in Nigeria is certainly understandable. For we live in a country where governance, at almost every level, has been largely degraded to an enterprise in mass deceit.
Some of Mr Ringim’s predecessors came with blazing eyes, publicly threatening thunder and brimstone against corruption in the force. Yet they went on dining with the devil blissfully in private. The recent confirmation that our legislators, supposedly making laws for the police to enforce, are themselves mindlessly milking the country to death, has further diminished whatever confidence many Nigerians ever had in senior public officials.
Yet it would be most unkind to dismiss Mr Ringim’s efforts merely because some of his predecessors had failed. The least we can do is to give every police chief the benefit of doubt and judge him by the merit of his own actions at the end of the day, not by the controversial legacies of his predecessors. For we must never forget that amidst all the citizens’ rage about corruption in the police, there are still many men and women of integrity in the force – some of whom this writer knows personally – who can surely make a difference, once given a chance. The fact that the IGP himself, has sent out a special task force to unravel the salary syndicates, must be accepted, at least for now, as an indication that he intends to match his words with actions.
The second reaction to Mr Ringim’s action has come from those who believe that corruption in the police is so pervasive, so deeply rooted and so systemic, that any attempt to fight it is an exercise in futility. They too may have a point. For, certain aspects of corruption have been so visibly persistent, especially among junior police officers, year after year, that some observers may conclude that change is no longer possible. But we must never allow ourselves to descend to that depth of pessimism and despair.
No matter how daunting the outlook in a society or organisation may seem, change and progress are always possible. With the proper combination of institutional reforms, operational resources and individual incentives, corruption and impunity can be brought to the minimum and the Nigeria Police can perform as effectively, efficiently and humanely, as any other police organisation in the world. Our challenge must be to lend greater support to the police, ensuring implementation of the proposed reforms, appropriating and allocating adequate resources for its work, ensuring that those resources are applied judiciously and also that its personnel are properly incentivised to work with diligence and integrity.
The recent revelation, however, must be seen as significant in three respects. First, it lends further credence to the suspicion that the phenomenon of “ghost workers” may indeed be a lot more serious nationwide, than we may have assumed.
In February this year, the Due Process and e-Governance Bureau in Bayelsa State reported that following its introduction of the biometric system to authenticate the actual number of workers in the state’s civil service, it found 11,696 ghost workers out of the 52,696 staff on the state’s pay roll. In other words, over 22 per cent of the names (or one out of every five persons) on the state’s pay roll were “ghost workers”. That fraud was draining the state of N293.7million monthly, or N3.524 billion ($24 million) annually. If that was the situation in Bayelsa – the smallest state in the federation – then it is easily imaginable that a staff audit in public services nationwide will reveal ghost workers by the millions – and revenue loss in hundreds of billions! That audit may already be overdue.
Secondly, while this incident has again underscored the accusation of corruption in the police, several reports of the IGPs revelations have also suddenly awakened to it the fact that a constable still earns, at the very best, only N25,000 a month! This is an indication that our police officers are still grossly under-paid for a job that is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. We must never justify corruption in whatever guise or form; but we cannot be shamelessly carting home almost N20 million monthly, in the name of law making, and then pretend to be surprised that the under-paid constable is collecting N20 from commercial vehicle drivers. We can no longer argue against the fact that enhancing the salaries of our police personnel is an important prerequisite to reduce corruption in the force.
Finally, the IGP’s revelation has again highlighted a major problem of our law enforcement, crime-fighting and even judicial services: the pervasive deficiency of accurate records and statistics. It is unfortunate to say the least, that we do not know exactly how many policemen the nation actually has. If the police had its personnel records scrupulously documented, regularly audited and appropriately updated, the incidence of fraud may be severely minimized.
The data need, however, goes well beyond personnel records. Crime statistics are sometimes not available at all, or not comprehensive, not even roughly accurate, not published in time, not available to the press and the public and, ultimately, not useful for police-public collaboration in fighting crime. Beyond installing the e-payment arrangements, straightening out the payrolls and punishing the culprits in the pay racket recently uncovered, the IGP will need to focus on this wider data challenge, as he tries to move the force to the next level.
Obasi was a Nigerian journalist, now based in Canada