ON August 15th, the people of Osun State will head for the poll to elect a new Governor. The incumbent, Ademola Adeleke, formerly of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), will be on the ballot but this time, as the flag bearer of the Accord Party, believing that he deserves a second term for his impact on the lives of many during his first term. The main opposition party in the state, the All Progressive Congress (APC) being the party at the centre is also very determined to win back the state.
Both parties are throwing everything into their campaigns in an attempt to court the people. Since politics is a game of numbers, both are neck-deep in de-marketing and cancelling out each other to win the support of the people.
The battle front since Adeleke came to power in 2022, was in the control of the Local Government administration in the state. Both the APC and the PDP fought a bitter war that have left the third tier of government prostrate in the last three years.
However, in the last couple of weeks, the battle ground has shifted to an exercise that should never have been tainted with partisan politics. Few weeks after his assumption of office, Governor Adeleke felt that the wage bill of the state was on the high side. The amount of money that goes into the payment of salaries for public servants in the state as well as what is paid to pensioners monthly was mind boggling. He believed that the Gboyega Oyetola administration from which he took over deliberately created problems for him when he approved the employment of almost 10,000 fresh public servants, including 1,500 teachers few months to the expiration of his tenure.
Earlier in 2022, the Oyetola government had recruited 1,000 teachers, with his Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Mrs. Funke Egbemode, saying that the new teachers would bridge the teacher/pupil ratio in the state. However, the then incoming Adeleke government described the last-minute recruitment as a deliberate plot to expand the payroll and financially cripple his government. Olawale Rasheed, the former Chairman, Media Sub-Committee of the Ademola Adeleke Transition Committee, condemned the recruitment, saying that it was an action disguised to complicate the state’s economy.
It was not only teachers that benefited from the last-minute recruitment by Oyetola’s administration. Employment into Ministries and Agencies such as O-YES, Ministry of Health, and several others were carried out between July, 2022, and November, when Oyetola formerly handed over the reins of government to Adeleke. As expected, one of the first decisions Adeleke took on assumption of office was to issue several Executive Orders, one of which was specifically to nullify all employment made by Oyetola after July 17, 2022. The Executive Order 3 affected all 1,500 teachers recruited in November, 2022, and several others.
The Adeleke government stated that more than 10,000 workers were illegally employed into the state public service and to rectify the situation, another Executive Order (2) was proclaimed by the Governor for an audit of the state’s workforce. Adeleke, in June, 2023, began the audit of the state’s workforce, where his Deputy and the Speaker of the House of Assembly had their biometric captured at the Governor’s office.
After the exercise, he met with labour leaders in state, assuring them that the exercise was not a witch-hunt, but to strengthen the capacity of the state government to satisfy the needs of the workers, members of the public, and the state leadership. ‘’The audit is to achieve several goals namely: cleaning up the payroll system, validating the actual number of the state’s workforce, and establishing areas of vacancies across various sectors of the public service’’, he told the labour leaders.
An internal audit had revealed that over 1000 ghost workers were on the payroll. Not satisfied with the report, the Adeleke administration hired a consultant to carry out a forensic audit. Sally Tibbot Consulting was engaged by the State in May, 2023, to conduct a comprehensive verification and forensic audit of all workers and pensioners drawing salaries from the state.
The exercise lasted 12 months, including six months of physical verification across ministries, departments, agencies, local governments, and state-owned institutions. Verification schedules were widely publicised and workers were given sufficient time to appear. At the end of the exercise, the firm said it identified 8,448 workers, while 6,713 pensioners failed to appear for verification and were classified as ghost beneficiaries. It said these names were linked to monthly payments of about N1.14 billion, and an annual loss of N13.7 billion.
The firm submitted its report to Adeleke on July 10, 2024, with Governor vowing to pursue the public service reform to a logical conclusion. At a ceremony held at the Government House, the lead consultant, Mrs. Saadat Bakrin Ottun, said the staff audit was concluded after due diligence and critical analysis of the data gathered during the auditing exercise. She submitted both the soft and hard copies of the report to the State government, adding that best practices were applied to prepare the report, which contained actionable recommendations for further action by the state government.
Adeleke immediately set up an Action Committee chaired by his Chief of Staff, Kazeem Akinleye, to review and act on the recommendations. The terms of reference of the Committee were to: study the report and assess the recommendations; consider the implications of the recommendations on the public service; take action to implement the recommendations; interface with stakeholders to ensure effective implementation, and consider all other issues related to the subject.
It was at this stage that the smooth working relationship between the state government and the consultant ended, and the waiting game started. Nothing further was heard from the state government on the payment of its 15 per cent commission as well as the installation of the new automated payroll administration system which the consulting firm had developed for the state. Although the state government paid N79 million for the development of the system, it refused to install it after its completion.
“After the building of the platform, which was duly and fully paid for, the Osun State Government was notified of readiness for installation and deployment, but the all-powerful Chief-of-Staff to the Governor rejected the APAS and the installation of same without giving any reason. The ostensible reason is the desire by the payroll-fraud cabal to continue with the perpetration of the fraud,” the consulting firm told the media.
Soon enough, both parties went public with the sordid details of the payroll fraud which provided an opportunity for the opposition party, APC, to explore the divide-and-rule politics with the staff audit fiasco. The State Government rejected the “high number of ghost workers’’ discovered by the consulting firm, describing it as a ploy to earn more revenue from the whole exercise, and further alleged that the firm declared the State Governor, the Deputy governor, the Secretary to the State Government, more than two-thirds of political appointees, and a large number of staff of the Osun State University, including most of its principal officers, as ghost workers.
The Osun State Government also accused the audit firm of deliberately inflating the number of ghost workers because its payment was tied to the amount of savings generated from the exercise. Official workers alleged that the consultancy firm’s fee arrangement created an incentive to exaggerate figures in order to earn higher remuneration.
According to the government, the unusually high number of ghost workers claimed by the firm raised red flags and made it necessary to review the audit report before any implementation. It said it could not accept or act on findings that, in its view, had the potential to further defraud and adding that was the reasons why the state government refused to implement the recommendations of the consulting firm. It later embarked on another re-validation exercise and came up with a new figure that only 1,316 personnel could not be confirmed.
But the consulting firm rejected the government’s revised figures, saying that the state lacked the technical capacity to independently conduct a proper forensic audit, which was why it engaged the consultancy in the first place. The consultant also said the audit uncovered cases where multiple salaries were paid into single bank accounts, and instances where several workers were linked to one bank verification number. It said these findings were clearly documented in the report submitted to the government.
And so it was, that an exercise that was meant to help the state clean up its payroll system became a smear campaign due to partisan politics. The consulting film has also released to the media, a video recording of its report presentation being made to Dr. Deji Adeleke instead of the Governor and senior government officials. In essence, the firm is alluding to the view in some quarters that it is Dr. Adeleke that is effectively governing the state due, perhaps, to the low capacity of the State Governor to grasp complex matters.
The APC, having smelled blood, is going for the jugular of the state government. With the governorship election already six months away, the party is calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as well as the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to take a cursory look as the Osun Staff payroll for alleged fraud. The party has also called on Adeleke to resign. Adeleke, on his part, has formally written both organizations to investigate and authenticate if there is any padded payroll fraud in the state. Government officials in Osun State are now of the view that the Consulting firm is being sponsored by the APC.
As the August 15 gubernatorial election approaches, it is certain that both parties will throw more darts at one another in a bid to get voters to their side. What is certain is that the state government needs to come clean on the number of staff on its payroll. The issue of ghost workers is not new in Nigeria, as most government establishments across the country are saddled with the fraudulent practice.
Even at the federal level, where the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) is the automated paying system of all federal government establishments, payroll fraud is still very much rampant within it. What both the federal and the Osun State government should do is to ensure that the number of ghost workers in its system is eradicated so that its negative impacts on the economy would be brought to a minimal extent.
See you next week.
- Akintunde is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Glittersonline newspaper. His syndicated column, Monday Discourse, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.