Afenifere wants recruiters of 50,000 ghost workers named

Lauds Buhari on insurgency fight, urges restructuring
The Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, has charged the Federal Government to publish the 11 civil servants behind the engagement of the 50,000 ghost workers discovered recently on its payroll.

The group said the naming and shaming will dismiss fears in certain quarters that there was a grand conspiracy to cover up the crime. It added that the scam has again raised the need to restructure the country as the concentration of too much resources at the centre was breeding corruption.

Afenifere’s reaction is coming on the backdrop of the recent revelation by the government that over 50,000 ghost workers had been “retrenched” from the public service.

In a statement yesterday, the group’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, added that as to the action the government has taken on the matter, “we were told that the names of the 11 civil servants who masterminded the act have been sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for prosecution.”

The group expressed shock at the anonymity being conferred on the recruiters, “yet this is the same country where politicians have been detained and charged to court over amount that pales into insignificance compared to the N143 billion involved here.

“It is this kind of impunity that has made iniquity to fester in Nigeria as there is no example to show that crime does not pay.”

Odumakin went on: “About four years ago, former Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, told us that over 40,000 ghost workers were eliminated from the federal service with no one prosecuted for the act. This must have encouraged the gang to increase their re-recruitment.”

The group added that in same vein, “we take notice of recent report that all the staff of the Federal Ministry of Finance who were fingered in the 2016 budget padding scandal have been posted to the cash office of the ministry. We do not want to conclude that this is a promotion yet.”

It, however, lauded President Muhammadu Buhari over the anti-insurgency crusade in the North- East by the Nigerian Army.

Afenifere, declaring that there was no achievement that could be greater, however, urged the government to implement the 2014 national conference report, especially as it relates to the restructuring of the federation.

The Secretary-General, Chief Sehinde Arogbofa, stressed yesterday in Akure that the country would remain shaky in the absence of real re-engineering of the nation’s foundation.