Concerned stakeholders have called on the federal government to overhaul the nation’s civil service, that, they allege is bedeviled by non productive and ‘corrupt’ workers. They also allege that the service is not only weighed down by the popular ‘red tape and bureaucratic’ tendencies, but basically by human inadequacies and shortcomings, occasioned by some vested interests that are bent on protecting their interests and their cronies. “If the Federal government wants to really fight corruption, it should beam its searchlight into the civil service, where ‘fiefdoms’ have been created and some people are untouchable and non accountable to anybody, even within the hierarchy,” says a stakeholder, who is familiar with the goings on in the federal civil service. Another Stakeholder says,” Can the head of of the service tell Nigerians the actual number of workforce… Does Nigeria know the amount of crude she exports and refined products she imports,… Does the federal government know the daily consumption of fuel, so why are some people crying foul over secret employment… Do the various ministries not have heads of accounts or directors in charge of salaries and wages and if there are changes in the amount paid as salaries monthly, are there not supposed to raise queries, even when government makes us to understand that there has been embargoe on employment for quite some years now… “? Speaking further, he said,” The same malady is at the states, where the workers live and work at the mercy of their ‘privileged’ colleagues, either working in accounts or personnel departments. It is so tragic that, in some states, for retired or sacked workers to receive their entitlements, they must have to ‘discuss’ with their colleagues still working in accounts, if not, they will not receive anything. “Meanwhile, the Federal Government has detected over 1,500 workers who presented fake letters of employment to its verification committee. The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Folashade Yemi-Esan, revealed this at the ‘National Policy Dialogue on Entrenching Transparency in Public Office Recruitment in Nigeria’ organised by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission in Abuja. Yemi-Esan said the Federal Government has suspended the salary of 3,000 civil servants who failed to present themselves for verification. She said the verification exercise is to eradicate fake and illegal recruitment in government agencies. “Sometimes in March of 2021, this office informed the ICPC that there were quite a number of fake letters of appointments circulating in the ministries,” the civil service chief said. “At that particular time, we discovered that in just one ministry alone, there were over a thousand individuals bearing fake letters of appointments.
And they were already enrolled on the payroll. “The Office of the Head of Service received another report, this time from the Federal Civil Service Commission itself, forwarding names of over 500 persons in various MDAs that possess fake letters of appointments.”
