The menace of fake agencies, By Reuben Abati

It was not until after military rule, that a more conscientious effort started being made to drive “ghosts” out of the payroll. In 2007, the Yar’Adua administration introduced the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) to centralise the payroll system and shut out the ghosts. By 2014, about 60,000 ghosts were weeded out of the Federal payroll. The figures were higher at state levels. The fraud was not limited to the payroll alone, the pensions payroll was also affected. Some civil servants in fact collected more than two salaries in a month, using false identities. By 2010, there was a more concerted effort to computerise the payments system, an approach that was strongly resisted from within and outside the system. Subsequent administrations introduced biometric identification. This background is essential simply as a reminder that the culture of falsehood, ghosts, fakery and falsehood is long-established in the Nigerian public system but no one could ever have imagined that a day would arrive when not just human beings, that is personnel, would be non-existent, yet maintained, at a high cost to the state, but whole Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), will start operating in the open, and yet be as fake as the emergent AI imageries of today. The “ghosts” have assumed human form, and they are so bold that they are insisting on their rights even at the highest level.