Afenifere to FG: We want to know employers of 50,000 ghost workers

PAN- Yoruba socio- political group, Afenifere, on Thursday charged the Federal Government- led by President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately unveil the identities of the 11 officers who it (government) said had been fingered in the 50,000 ghost workers scam amounting to loss of about N143billion which was used as payments for the affected “workers” while they were in service.

The group made the demand in a statement issued by its national publicity secretary, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, saying doing so would remove the fear that there was a grand conspiracy to cover up this crime.

Afenifere, while saying that its attention had been drawn by the government that “over 50,000 ghost workers have been ‘retrenched’ from the public service of the Federation,” noted that the recent scam has again raised the need to restructure the country, as the concentration of too much resources at the centre was one of the major incentives for corruption.

“We, however, demand immediate unveiling of the identities of the 11 officers who have been fingered in the 50,000 ghost workers scam. This would remove the fear that there is a grand conspiracy to cover up this crime,” the group said.

The group, while denouncing the action taken so far by the government on the 11 civil servants who masterminded the act, said it was alarmed that the affected officers’ names had been kept secret and were merely sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes commission (EFCC) for prosecution.

The group observed that this was not salutary enough, saying “it was in this same country that politicians had been detained and charged to court over amount that pales into insignificant compared to the N143billion involved here.”

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

It recalled, “About 4 years ago, former Finance Minister, 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 recruitment.

“In the same vein, we take notice of recent report that all the staffs of the Federal Ministry of Finance were fingered in the 2016 Budget padding scandal have been posted to the cash office of the Ministry. We don’t want to conclude that this is a promotion yet.”