Yemi-Esan: How physical verification exposed ghost workers abroad

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoCSF), Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan, says the recent physical verification exercise by her office exposed workers living abroad but still earning salaries from the service.

Yemi-Esan revealed this during a chat with media executives, being part of activities to mark 2024 Civil Service Week, in Abuja on Wednesday, June 19, 2024.

The HoCSF said many of the civil servants, who were caught up in their games, had to resign their appointments, following their failure to carry out the physical verification exercise.

She stated that the verification exercise was one of the measures by her office, to check corrupt practices, run a smooth civil service, and reposition the sector.

Yemi-Esan said: “Recently, there was a circular that went out to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies that they should do a physical headcount in their MDAs.

“That means, everybody on the nominal roll, that is receiving salaries, should appear physically and the names of those who did not show up for the exercise should be forwarded.

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“In the circular, I cautioned that Permanent Secretaries and CEOs that give wrong information will be held liable if anything is discovered outside of the information that was given.”

The HoCSF added that the decision by the government was that, after the exercise, they would stop the salaries of those who, in one way or the other, had left the service without proper documentation, but still earning remuneration.

She said: “From what I saw, the number of people that have gone out of the country and are still earning salaries is more in the parastatals than in the core ministries.

“I actually called one of the heads of the agencies and queried why there is such a number of people earning salaries and are not on their desks.

“I asked how the agency came about such a huge number of the purported workers.”

Yemi-Esan said the reply she got was that some of the civil servants returned from the UK for the verification exercise.

Yemi-Esan said: “The Head of that agency told me that he discovered that a week after the verification exercise, some of them rushed from the UK to the country with the intention to do their own verification

“He said they came to him saying, aah! Oga, we are around; we heard they did verification.

“The agency head asked them to come back in two weeks time for their verification; knowing fully well that nobody working in the UK, will be able to have such luxury of time.”

The HoCSF stated that from the incident narrated to her, most of the affected workers had to resign their appointments because they knew that the game was over.

She decried the situation, where civil servants who did not have official permission to be out of their office, would travel out of the country for years and still earning salaries.

Yemi-Esan added that such development was unacceptable, when there were millions of Nigerians waiting to be employed.

The Star