Except Buhari, every Nigerian worker can be a ghost

The fall in oil prices alone is enough for the blind to see that Nigeria is financially down. President Buhari must therefore tighten government’s belt and block all leakages. In so doing, he has to have in his sub-consciousness that the Nigeria ghost is special. Thus, the term “ghosts” as used in this article is more than a non-existent entity that functions as though it is alive when in reality it is not. The Nigerian ghost is in various forms and shapes just as it presents itself in several dimensions. Its history easily reveals a rather large figure that is disturbingly high enough to make anyone wonder if there are not more ghosts than the ordinary workers in our public sector. As far back as April 2001, the then Accountant General of the Federation Chief Joseph Naiyeju revealed that there were 40,000 ‘ghost workers’ in the Nigerian government service. Two years later, 24,000 ghosts were identified in the pension’s unit of the Ministry of Defence alone. The Information Ministry allegedly had 40% under-qualified staff and 20 percent ghost workers. The Federal Civil Service Commission authenticated the revelation with a report that over 30 percent of the workers on its payroll were phantom staff.