…as PTAD suspends 24,000 ‘ghost’ retirees from FG’s pension payroll
As it possible that the entire corridors and precincts of the Nigerian civil service premises are streaming with ‘ghosts’? Has the Nigerian workforce been invaded by aliens from outer space who draw salaries and emoluments secretively even on to retirement? Why is the ‘ghost’-in-the payroll conundrum peculiar to Nigeria’s public service and hardly heard of in the private sector? How come no government, nay, no president has deemed it necessary to dig into this comical, albeit invidious and economically ruinous practice?
We ask these questions because of the alarming incidence of the so-called ‘ghosts’ in Nigeria’s public work environment. Between the administrations of President Goodluck Jonathan and the current one, the number of ‘ghosts’ we are told have been exorcised from the payrolls of the Federal Civil Service must be in the region of about 200,000.
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was the Finance Minister under President Jonathan, announced the discovery of more than 50,000 ‘ghosts’ upon the introduction of electronic data into the federal pay system. Her successor, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, also announced most triumphantly that tens of billions of naira had been saved with the uncovering of a horde of ‘ghosts’ on government’s payroll.
Last April, Mrs Adeosun once again regaled us with her latest exorcist feat when she discovered a staggering 80,000 ‘ghost’ policemen out of the 371,000 strong officers and men of the Nigerian Police Force. You would agree that managing a regular policeman in Nigeria must be challenging enough, now a ‘ghost’ policeman! Well, while we may want to make light of this matter, the import is grave for all Nigerians everywhere: N22 billion of your tax is spirited away every month by some unseen hands! Please do the arithmetic for a one year period and see if this will not evoke tears in you.
Now this: the Federal Government has once again announced most gleefully that it has just suspended 24,021 ghost retirees from its pension payroll. The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), which is in charge of Federal Government pensioners, revealed this in the report of its verification exercise for the period from 2015 to 2018.
This number, over 20, 000 did not show up for authentication during the exercise. Therefore, they were suspended from the scheme.
Going by the clips of the PTAD report as reviewed in the media, the directorate’s processes appear like a walk through a thick forest thereby lending itself to opportunities to massive fraud.
For instance, PTAD seems to handle the pensions of retirees of all federal civil servants, which include all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as retirees of numerous Federal Government’s privatized agencies.
This is way too large and the sheer size of the population is bound to be unwieldy for any one agency to handle. For instance the report shows that 98, 259 retirees are on the roll of Parastatal Pension Department alone. This explains why it would take three years to carry out verification; it explains why many retire and have to wait a couple of years to get enlisted on the payroll.
It also explains why ‘ghosts’ can creep into the system in large numbers and enjoy the benefits of the real retirees for many years undetected. It also explains how billions of naira could be lifted from pension funds (as we have seen in the case of Abdulrasheed Maina and several other, without the government being the wiser for it.)
We are aware that the pension scheme has come a long way from what it used to be. A bit of improvement has been wrought in the last decade of reform. But we urge the government to do more. There is need for a total review of the various pension schemes with a view to complete digitalization, making them less cumbersome, more transparent and retirees friendly.
Finally, government must rid the system of ‘ghosts’ in its entirety. The revenue lost to the loopholes in the system is too enormous to be ignored. The masterminds and breeders of these ‘ghosts’ must be fished out and punished.
