Business
Over 1,332 ghost workers gobble billions of naira in Lagos MDAs
…as hospitals, schools, offices battle manpower shortage
The recent staff audit and verification exercise conducted by the Lagos State Government has uncovered thousands of ghost workers in government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) who had fleeced the state government of billions of naira in unearned wages, Business Hallmark can report.
The exercise is taking place at the Adeyemi Bero Hall, Lagos State Government Secretariat, Alausa, Ikeja.
Mostly affected by the rot is the Education and Health Ministries. Sources in the state’s ministry of health, who spoke with our correspondent on the condition of anonymity, claimed the exodus had negatively affected the already fragile health system, which suffers from a shortage of personnel and medical equipment.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one doctor should attend to 500 people. However, Nigeria is far from meeting the recommendation.
According to the Federal Ministry of Health, the doctor-patient ratio in the country is one to 6,000 (1:6000), which falls short of the WHO’s recommended ratio.
Checks revealed that while private health institutions are not immune to loss of staff, the public service is, particularly affected owing to the endemic poor working conditions and facilities in government institutions.
Meanwhile, the staff audit, sources in government informed our correspondent, detected a large number of personnel, especially doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory technologists and teachers who had relocated abroad for greener pastures but no longer report for duties still on the ministries payroll.
Salaries without work
According to the sources, who demanded anonymity, though the affected workers were legally employed and have genuine employment letters, majority of them had left the shores of Nigeria for greener pastures without properly resigning their appointments and have remained on the state government’s payroll for several months, and in some cases, years, earning wages they did not work for.
In one instance, over 1,332 doctors, pharmacists, nurses and laboratory technologists posted to general hospitals by the Lagos State Ministry of Health were detected to have abandoned their duty posts.
The fraud, our correspondent learnt, are perpetrated with the full knowledge and assistance of top civil servants, who shielded the guilty workers from having their salaries stopped.
“Months after months, they (accounting officers) help absentee workers to sign the nominal rolls that identify dutiful workers qualified to receive salaries and allowances at the end of each month, despite being fully aware that they did not deserve the wages.
BH had in June 2022 reported a mass exodus of workers from the Lagos State Civil Service Commission (LSCSC) with more than 700 workers reported to have resigned their appointments in the first five months of the year to take up jobs in the U.S, Canada, UK, Ireland and Australia.
According to the report, the figure does not reflect those who left the service between 2018 and 2021.
Bloated Wage bill
Meanwhile, many workers in their thousands silently left their desks without officially putting in their resignation letters.
However, after observing that its wage bill had not drastically reduced despite several complaints by the chairmen, executive secretaries, director generals and chief medical directors of government MDAs and hospitals that their workforce is depleted, the state government decided to act by conducting a rigorous staff audit and verification exercise for all its workers.
Unlike before where audit exercises were conducted by each MDA’s accounting officers, assisted by auditors from the state’s Auditor General’s Office, the ongoing exercise is overseen by the Head of Service, Olapade Agoro, all serving commissioners and permanent secretaries.
“That made it very difficult for the exercise to be manipulated. Even if an absentee worker had corrupted his or her permanent secretary, the perm sec must be able to convince the Head of Service (HOS), commissioners and permanent secretaries present that the worker in question is still active.
“You can cover the eyes of one or two people, but how do you convince more than 30 curious senior government officials sitting at the table bombarding you with difficult questions.
“As a result, many accounting officers abandoned their absentee protege to their fate. In several cases, workers said to be on sick leave without proper documentation to back it up were asked to be brought in ambulances for sighting before they been cleared.
“This approach has really helped the state government to fish out runaway workers, who are still on its payroll”, a source in the office of the head of service informed BH.
So far, workers from the Ministries of Education, Health and Local Government Affairs have been screened with other awaiting their turn.
While BH could not ascertain the exact amount saved by the exercise, it was learnt that the figure runs into several billions of naira monthly, as salaries of over 2,000 health workers and teachers in the employment of the state government had been stopped until they present themselves for physical screening.
Using the average entry point salary of a graduate worker put at N1.928 million yearly, BH arrived at a conservative savings of about N3.856billion.
However, sources in government said the figure will be much more higher as senior officers from grade level 10 to 17 earning between N300,000 and N1 million monthly are also caught out in the exercise.
“I know of a full director on level 17 earning about N1 million monthly salary and allowances, who had abandoned her duty post since June 2023.
“Also, several senior health workers, including consultants, pharmacists and lab technicians earning millions monthly have relocated abroad but are still collecting salaries.
Dearth of Staff
“If you go to some general hospitals and the state teaching hospital at Ikeja, you will be shocked that several operating theatres and laboratories have been closed down because of lack of personnel.
“A director, nursing a kidney related ailment, who visited LASUTH in February was given a May appointment to see a Nephrologist due to a long list of waiting patients. Many off them would have died before their appointed dates.
“I believe it (staff audit) is a good development. The state government can now fill up positions, which have remained vacant for years while absentee workers were busy collecting salaries”, another source, who craved anonymity informed our correspondent.
The exodus, findings suggest, will not come to an end soon as some workers on the payroll of the state government, who spoke with our correspondent said they will migrate abroad if afforded the opportunity.
According to a medical doctor in the employment of the state government serving at the Ile-Epo General Hospital, the remuneration of health workers serving in the state is very low.
“I graduated from medical school about three years ago and immediately got a job offer from the Lagos State government, which I gladly accepted.
“Yet, my salary after working for over two years is about N420,000. I stay in the Abule-Egba area of Lagos and you know how much an apartment cost there. My saving grace is that I am still single and living with my parents.
“But I planned relocating abroad by the middle of the year to seek greener pastures. I have secured two job offers in the United Kingdom and my papers are almost ready”, declared the medical doctor, who pleaded to be identified only by his first name, Gbenga.
The poor pay and other unfriendly working environments have contributed in no small way in driving many health workers away from the public service.
Nine out of ten health workers, who participated in a BH survey, said they have considered traveling out of the country to seek a better life.
A director in the state’s health service commission confided in our correspondent that at least, 400 health workers had either resigned their appointments or absconded from duty in the last five months.
According to him, the personnel involved are mostly newly recruited staffers or those that have spend less than 10 years serving the state government.
“We don’t have much problem with senior and experienced health workers. In fact, the story is the other way round. Many experienced Nigerian medical practitioners are returning home to work and retire after making money abroad.
“We are not short of consultants, registrars, senior doctors at all. It is the younger ones (medical/house officers) that are merely using our institutions as stepping stones to advance their careers before moving to the private sector or overseas that are giving us headaches.
The health service commission is not the only sector reeling from the impact of workers exodus. Also affected is the Lagos State Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM) and the State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB).
While TESCOM supervises secondary schools, LASUBEB is in charge of primary schools in the state.
Our correspondent gathered that the two commissions have been forced to embark on several staff recruitment exercises in the last four years in an effort to fill up the positions created by teachers relocating abroad.
The shortage of teachers had been so acute that the state government had been conducting recruitment exercises almost every year to fill up the gap. Between 2019 till date, about 8,000 teachers had been employed.
A LASUBEB official informed BH that the commission has been experiencing high turnover of teachers, particularly the younger ones employed during the administrations of Governor (Babatunde) Fashola and (Akinwunmi) Ambode.
According to the source, hardly will a week go bye without the commission receiving multiple letters of resignation from serving teachers
“We started observing the trend during the Covid19 induced lockdown in 2020. We observed that many teachers didn’t show up to sign the monthly nominal register, which is a prerequisite for salary payments.
“Our auditors also observed that many didn’t present themselves for the periodic staff audits. It was in the process of asking questions from their principals and head teachers that we found out that most of these teachers, apart from those that were ill, had actually absconded from duties.
“The situation is so bad in some schools where up 10 teachers have absconded from duties without dropping their letters and were still receiving salaries.
“The head teachers and principals were subsequently reprimanded for not bringing the situation to the notice of the authorities”, the LASUBEB top shot stated.
Our correspondent reliably gathered that most of the teachers that resigned work during the Covid19 lockdown are married to health workers, who were massively recruited by foreign governments to help fight the Covid19 scourge.
BH findings, however, showed that the trend is common among young and still vibrant teachers in their 30s and 40s, who still have a long way to go in the civil service.
For instance, in a junior secondary school in Agege (name withheld), seven out of the 29 teaching staff had moved abroad, while two will soon jet out of the country to take up job offers in Canada.
Likewise, a government primary school in Ijaiye-Ojokoro lost four teachers in the last five months, a source in the school informed BH.
Speaking on the matter, a human resources expert, Dr. Bunmi Ogunnubi, said there is nothing wrong for professionals seeking to go abroad for greener pastures to do so.
She, however, maintained that emigrating workers should do the needful by properly resigning their appointments.
“By so doing, they will be helping their employers to know that their positions are vacant. Government can then promptly fill them up.
“But the situation we have found ourselves in Nigeria is heart-rending. Positions are left opened for years in the public sector without them being filled up because government is not aware of it.
“How will government know the positions are vacant and needed to be filled when accounting authorities saddled with the task of reporting it to the appropriate quarters are compromised?” Ogunnubi demanded.
