Kogi 2019: GYB And The Burden Of The Bleeding Past (1)

DR TOM OHIKERE

The Necessity Of Staff Audit And Entitlement Matters

 

As the hour counts fast towards the November 16 Kogi State gubernatorial election, and as the opposition are upping the ante of their all-out guerilla style propaganda and misinformation tactics, it is pertinent for those who understand the complex socio-political and development terrain of our beloved state to set certain records straight in order to awaken the public to the antics of the PDP and other traducers of the GYB government, who were rejected by the people in 2015 and are hell bent on returning to power, to roll back the gains of the past four years. Those who feel that government of the state should always revolve around their cycle and political faction, and will jump at the slightest excuse to call for change of government, believing that the people of Kogi state have forgotten in a hurry the role they played in bankrupting and impoverishing the state through their nepotism, ethnic chauvinism, misappropriation and mis-governance.

This set of people are resolved not to ever see anything good in any government of the state except those they have enthroned or those who share in their agenda of tribal domination. Thus, they would stop at nothing to undermine any government not at par with their one-sided view or standard on how the state should be administered. Luckily, they are just a small fraction of the people, and Kogi State, like Nigeria is not a feudal or aristocratic society. So it is for the majority to adjudge which individual or what governance style they perceive to be able to deliver their highest good. That is their desire for inclusion and development.

The PDP and their allies have taken any opportunity given to them, to cry out their love for the people of Kogi and how they have been suffering under the weight of non-payment of salaries, wages and pensions as if this is the first time the people of the state are groaning under the non or partial payment of salaries and other entitlements, or as if this phenomenon is peculiar only to Kogi State. But we know that in Nigeria, when oil prices are down, the amount of transfers accruing to the states from the federation account is bound to be affected leaving the states to grapple with the situation by looking for other sources of financing. Kogi State under the PDP government of Idris Wada left a backlog of salary arrears and other entitlement payments for the succeeding APC government. It is on record that Wada started the percentage payment of workers. The delay in payment of salaries and other entitlements by the APC government was intended to identify and uproot leakages and wastages in the state bureaucratic system (that is an acceptable status report) in other to free resources for more ambitious projects as I will conclude later.

But to understand the mountain of challenges plaguing our state today, and to adequately assess the achievements of the APC/GYB new direction agenda, which I will classify into both remote and immediate causes. Remote causes are causes dating back to the creation of the state and the return to civilian rule in 1999, while the immediate causes are factors that have aggravated the state of affairs before the coming on-board of Governor Yahaya Bello and his administration. That is the tumultuous administration of the state under Captain Idris Wada between 2011 and 2105.

Kogi State is largely perceived as a civil service state and many of the contradictions she is currently experiencing are as a result of her inability to change that narrative and move to become a more vibrant, private sector dominated economy, and every effort in that direction has not yielded the desired results leading to new challenges and contradictions.

One of the most fundamental challenges of Kogi State is the humungous amount expended in recurrent expenditure; that is the public service wage bill. This has made staff audit an imperative of any serious and right thinking administration. Until the APC decided to tackle this problem headlong, since the creation of Kogi State civil service from an amalgamation of returning civil servants of Kogi State origin from defunct Benue and Kwara states at the inception of the state, no administration had had the political will to carry out a total and effective staff audit to harmonize the inconsistencies necessitate by the exigencies of the time and carried over by subsequent administrations, both military and civil. This in the process has bred lopsidedness in appointments, nepotism, inefficiency, and indiscipline.

Before now, former Governor, Ibrahim Idris, was the only one to have dared it but was not able to carry it to the latter. And one of the key failures of the Idris Wada administration was his inability to key into it and develop an actionable white paper, that would set the stage for the rationalization of the state public service as Governor Yahaya Bello and his new direction team are trying so hard to do against mounting odds and internal sabotage.

Even Sally Tibbot, the company contracted by former Governor Ibrahim Idris to assist the then government, of which I was a part of, as Commissioner of Information, in conducting staff audit, in its analysis and report of 2009 of the state of the entire civil service in Kogi State revealed substantial evidences of procedural irregularities as a result of interferences of non-administrative variables. For instance, it found that between 2004 and 2009, the staff strength of Kogi State public service had surged from 23,344 to 34,000 without proper approval for such expansion. It was also discovered that of 2,357 personnel employed between 2004 and2009 by the eleven MDAs understudied in the course of putting this paper together, it was only Kogi State Sanitation and Waste Management Board that got approval for only 50. Even this agency that got the approval for 50 slots, overshot the approved limit by 245 as it employed a total of 295 candidates. Teaching service commission (TSC), Hospital Management Board (HMB), and Science Technology and Technical Education Board (STTEB) employed 707, 506 and 305 candidates respectively without any approval.

Analysis of staff distribution in Hospitals Management Board between December 2003 and April 2004 showed a significant difference between the objective needs of the board and the volumes of recruitments carried out by the board within the period under review. For instance, as at December 2003, out of the 2,294 staff on the payroll of the Board, 1,588 (70%) were support staff while only 706 (30%) were in the core staff category running the three shifts in its 65 hospitals spread across the state. Out of the 706 of the core staff, doctors were 90 and pharmacists were 27. On the average, each hospital had 1.3 Doctors and 0.5 Pharmacists. In the event were any hospital had more than one doctors or pharmacists (which did happen), many hospitals were left without a medical doctor or Pharmacist. Between January 2004 and April 2009, this Board recruited a total of 506 employees, consisting of only10 medical doctors, 5 pharmacists and 24 laboratory technicians. Further careful study of the employment showed that while the general (support) staff consisted of 308 (69%), those of core need were just 198 (31%). In Ministry of Works and Housing, the situation was not different. The three core sections of the ministry are Civil, Electrical and Mechanical. As at December 2003, the analysis showed that the 474 staff of this ministry consisted of just 134 (28%) core staff, made up of 44 in civil, 46 in electrical and 44 in mechanical. Among these, there were just 17 civil engineers, 8 electrical engineers and 12 mechanical engineers. The rest 340 staff considered of support staff, made up of clerical and executive cadres in administration or accounts. Between January 2004 and April 2009, the ministry recruited 76 new employees. Out of these, only 16 (21%) constituted the core staff while the remaining 60 (79%) consisted of support staff. Going by the above analyses, it was clear that the recruitment done within the period under review lacked reasons to be characterized as being need – based. This study had also encountered one irregular method of filling vacancies called “replacement”. Using this method, as soon as an officer left the service, he/she was quietly “replaced” by corresponding numbers of applicant whose salaries could be accommodated by the leaving officer/s. In Teaching Service Commission, for instance, 510 officials were recruited through this means between 2004 and 2009.

The practice as described above, significantly contradicted the procedures of systematic capacity auditing/identification of capacity gap; declaration of vacancies/advertisement; collection and short-listing of applications and interview, selection and placement, according to the state public service rule. Which is a huge violation of the citizens rights of equal opportunities and freedom from discriminations expressly defined in sections 14, 15,16, 17 and 42 of 1999 constitution of the federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

Thus, Public office was used by the political class and their bureaucratic allies to satisfy private/ ethnic and family interests.

The consequences of the above in the state’s public service were that: employees’ inflow was more than the absorptive capacities of the MDAs; those employed lacked the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes for the job they were employed for.

There were cases of protected indiscipline as a result godfatherism; the wide spread disloyalty to constituted authorities had resulted in lack of prompt responses to lawful orders; there was increase in training needs and consequent high training costs; there were poor servicing of employees’ entitlements and benefits and consequent industrial crises; and there were wide spread accommodation crises and consequent obstructions to completion of tasks.

During the presentation of the report of the screening and verification of the state workforce, undertaken by the government of Governor Yahaya Bello in 2016, by the state Auditor-General, Mr. Okala Yusuf, he declared that Kogi State Government lost N213 billion to 18, 211 ghost workers in the past 13 years; that the ghost workers were discovered in Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs) and in the 21 local government councils in the state. He added that 7, 606 of the ghost workers were discovered in the work force of local councils, 5,872 were discovered in the state work force while pensioners account for 1,040 of the ghost workers.

The AG also revealed that the exercise had reduced the joint workforce of the state and local governments from 88, 973 to 63, 870. He added that the monthly wage bill had also been reduced from N5.8 billion to N4.6 billion.

I only fault the duration it took them to complete the exercise but if I look at it again, given the history and entrenched nature of the problem, I believe a conscientious exercise was necessary in order to effectively root out the malaise. The problem is intricate, particularly if one understands the Sally Tibbot report of 2009 and the 2016 post audit report of AGM, Mr Okala. Mr Okala even noted that while the screening was ongoing some “vested interest” omitted the names of 14, 147 genuine workers and replaced them with the names of uncleared staff. And my other reservation is there non-inclusion of labour at the beginning of the process which would have made it more acceptable to them.

So from the above what is clear is that not just the huge wage bill coming from an over bloated civil service consisting of ghost and unqualified workers but all the ineffectiveness it breeds. Since resources are natural limited and even government must operate on the principle of opportunity cost, a huge recurrent expenditure receipt means less availability of funds to prosecute capital projects as well as facilitate other programmes and intentions of government leading to a vicious cycle.

For example, if a government receives an average monthly allocation of NGN 3.3Bn and spend NGN 2.6Bn on monthly salary payments, NGN 400m on monthly pension payments, NGN 200m on monthly impress and subventions to ministries and tertiary institutions, bring it to a total of NGN 3.2Bn.

The government is left with roughly NGN100m to carter for projects and other pressing needs. Thus they are forced to access the bond market to raise loans for capital projects.

So it is that vicious cycle that I believe the APC government sought so dearly to break, and is being confronted by the powers that be.

We must also understand that the quality of the work force is fundamental to the realization of the goal of an effective and efficient public service delivery.

As of today, more than 80 percent of staff have been paid and the Nigerian labour congress recently to told the world that they are being owed roughly above two billion naira by the government.

In my discussion with the officials of the pension board earlier today, i was told that pension and gratuities payments are on-going.

I Stand To Be Challenged on the entire submission, with facts and figures.

NB: this discussion will be serialized and will follow and border on the core issues that will determine the election