Voice Air Media, VAM News Update

THE Federal government, through the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHSoF), has uncovered 1,618 civil servants with fake employment letters and flushed them out of the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS).

The disclosure came from the head of civil service of the federation, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan.

At a media parley organised by the office in Abuja on Wednesday to mark the 2024 Civil Service Week, with the theme, “Education an African fit for the 21st Century: Building Resilient Education System for Increased Access to Inclusive Longlife, Quality and Relevant Learning in Africa”, Yemi-Esan said through physical verification conducted by the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), the once over-bloated federal civil service was trimmed from over 100,000 to 69,308.

She revealed that apart from the ghost workers parading fake employment letters, there was also the issue of some civil servants who Japa‘ for greener pastures overseas that were caught napping during the physical verification exercise.

The head of civil service said that some of them who came into the country for the verification exercise one or two weeks after it had been conducted under the pretext that they were not aware of the scheduled physical verification exercise were graciously given two weeks to appear for the verification exercise.

She said instead of waiting for the two weeks in addition to the days they had already spent in Nigeria, a lot of them tendered their resignation letters because no United Kingdom (UK) organisation could afford to give two additional weeks in the country to perfect the verification process.

On the issue of endemic corruption in the public service, Yemi-Esan said her office had been working with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to check underhand dealings from the system.

She said the efforts to reposition the civil service for optimum performance had been stepped up and expressed the confidence that by the end of 2025, the entire service would be fully digitised.

Yemi-Esan said her office is working with Galaxy Backbone to ensure the provision of broadband services to all MDAs. She added that all operations have gone digital, as mail and proposals from individuals and corporate bodies are now sent to her office via a designated email address.

From the service-wide perspective, all MDAs, all other ministries are also running with the digitalisation programme and there are different stages of implementation, but they have a mandate for all to achieve full migration by the end of 2025,“ she said.