FG Secretly Sacks Over 30,000 Workers—Nigerian Pilot

Labels sacked staff ‘ghost workers’

Between September 2015 and last month, the Federal Government is alleged to have secretly sacked more than 30,000 staff of ministries and agencies.

According to sources, those sacked were purportedly labelled ‘ghost workers’, even as the government declared that it has saved as much as $15 billion after removing these ‘ghost workers’.

Investigation carried out by Nigerian Pilot Saturday revealed that majority of those sacked were staff recruited between mid 2013 and April 2015.

Nigerian Pilot Saturday investigation revealed that majority of those sacked as ghost workers were actually authentic staff of the ministries and agencies where they were purportedly found to be collecting salaries illegally.

Our findings established that the sacked staff were those employed in some of the replacement exercises for lower and medium level staff that may not have required going through the Federal Character Commission.
It was equally suspected that some of those laid off were those recruited by political appointees and directors by way of favour and political patronage.

In another case, last October the salaries of some staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were stopped because they were alleged to be ghost workers. However, investigation revealed that these workers had issues with their BVN, which was also not entirely their fault.

In one of such cases, a staff took up the panel and it was realised that the staff in question had filled a comprehensive data including his correct BVN details, but somehow these details were wrongly entered and submitted to the Office of the Accountant General, which labelled him a ‘ghost worker’.