At the beginning, ‘Sally’ was once a ‘nice’ weapon of revenge. In their pursuit of data and results for public validation of some actions, her clients failed to value ‘process’. They merely wanted results and granted ‘Sally’ full access to everything. As a service provider, she became greedy while carrying out her obligations. Her clients only wanted numbers, but Sally wanted more. Can I fully blame Sally? No, Sally is a for-profit business, not a church or charitable organization. It is a corporate organization. Exploiting favorable conditions for any arrangement in business or trade is not a sin.
Sally’s narrative reminds me of a witch-hunter who was consulted by a king to pursue witches. The monarch rewarded the hunter with a house and some farmland, as well as a pledge that he would always receive a commission on every witch she caught. The monarch trusted the witch hunter and believed that the commission would fuel the hunter’s enthusiasm and ambition to accomplish more.
The witch-hunter sprung into action and started identifying, apprehending and executing witches. She was a brave, fearless and formidable hunter. “Ki ni kan ba Ajao je, apa re gun ju itan lo”. As good as the hunter was, she has an issue with character. She is greedy. She raced out of witchcraft and into the homes of his enemies and allies. She identified innocent ladies and depicted them as witches on commission.
The king did not falter. The king continued to carry out the terms of his agreement until the witch hunter brought her agitation into royal households. She also conducted her campaign in the homes of chiefs. She accused the royal women of witchcraft. She insisted on killing them and paying commissions.
The town’s ‘Oyomesi’ became enraged, summoned the witch-hunter, and ordered her to cease her crusade while they reviewed her tactics. But I never altered the method. The witch-hunter assured the ‘Oyomesi’ that he continues to employ the same method he used to identify previous witches. She became enraged and told the Oyomesi that the king had hired her services through ‘Baba Oba’ and that they needed to be properly informed.
Finally, Baba Oba asked the king to pay her outstanding balance. He asked the witch-hunter to work with other priests on a review. The witch-hunter got upset and decided to fight back. Baba Oba got enraged and begged the king to tell the head warrior to send the witch-hunter away from the town. The chief warrior led his warriors to the witch-hunter’s home and drove her away.
The story of Osun’s current predicament is similar to the one I told earlier. The current misunderstanding between the Osun government and her service provider may have been avoided totally. Those who formed the Yoruba proverbs “when you are digging a grave, dig two” or “when two brothers fight, a stranger inherits their property” must have journeyed to the future to observe this precise episode in the state.
Adeleke and his predecessor, Oyetola, pursued a harsh political agenda. This caused Adeleke to employ a consultancy firm on January 11, 2023, just one month after being sworn in as Governor of Osun State. Adeleke’s government and the firm confirmed the award with a letter of appointment dated April 11, 2023. The business conducted a staff and payroll audit from June to December 2023. This simply means that the business audited the workforce and payroll that Governor Adeleke inherited from the Oyetola-led administration.
Recall that former Governor Oyetola hired teachers and health workers after losing the 2022 gubernatorial race. Governor Adeleke established an internal staff-audit committee, which purportedly discovered severe discrepancies in the state’s wage records inherited from the Oyetola-led administration.
According to the committee’s assessment, the inherited state’s salary records were marked by anomalies between nominal rolls and real payroll, which were attributed to previous Governor Oyetola’s purported recruitment efforts before leaving office.
According to a reliable source, the Adeleke government engaged a contractor to check employees, clean up ghost-worker registrations, and re-engineer the payroll system to target workers who were recruited unlawfully by Oyetola as alleged.
I believe that the sole purpose of hiring a consulting firm is to legalize the removal of targeted workers who were hired into civil service through recruitment processes that enraged the Adeleke-led administration. When the firm joined, they most likely went above and beyond what the Adeleke-led administration had envisioned. They cleared the ‘targets’ as expected and investigated further. The firm flagged over 8,000 “ghost workers” as potentially fraudulent or non-existent, urging their removal from the payroll.
Methods adopted by the consulting firm involving the procedure provoked the labour unions and activists in the state. Labor organizations accused the firm of unfairly targeting genuine employees. They contended that the firm’s procedures were unclear and potentially self-serving, given its percentage-based compensation structure.
Opposition parties were also critical of the ‘process’. I recall labor groups, activists, and opposition parties frowning on the lining up of state workers under the sweltering heat. Labour leaders demanded an independent re-verification and warned that legitimate employees could be incorrectly removed from the payroll.
The audit aroused widespread indignation. Activists and labor groups accused the corporation of falsifying figures to increase their percentage-based charge. They further accused the firm of omitting employees from the verification procedure. Public demonstrations were held.
The Osun State House of Assembly summoned the consulting firm and suspended the audit. The assembly organized an ad hoc committee to study the “ghost worker” allegations and evaluate the firm’s approach. According to the committee’s report, 8015 of the 8448 employees classified by the firm as ghost workers were confirmed as active, with only 433 remaining unreachable.
The committee’s report also showed that 5830 pensioners were verified out of 6713 listed as “ghosts” and only 883 could not be contacted. In total, the number of unverifiable persons stood at about 1,316—far below the 15,161 Sally Tibbot had reported. This reduced the firm’s estimated savings and percentage-based fee. The state administration ate humble pie and upheld the postponement of full implementation of the firm’s audit findings.
Two years later, the firm revived the topic that many had forgotten. This time, the firm took the issue to national television. It did not accuse Adeleke’s administration of failure to pay service fees, but rather of failing to implement the findings. Is it not the responsibility of a contractor to complete and deliver a job to his client? Why is a service provider concerned that reports it supplied are not being implemented?
I was lost in my thoughts when I realized the agreement was a percentage-based charge. What? The number of ghost workers determines the service charge. I knew very little about public finance, but I was perplexed by such an agreement. The firm accused the Osun State Government of failing to implement its report. What details are included in the report? There are approximately 15000 phantom workers and pensioners in Osun State, and even if genuine, the firm wanted Governor Adeleke, a first-time candidate for re-election, to implement it. Why? For every kobo saved from a ghost worker, the corporation will receive a matching kobo.
When airplanes of hypocrisy got off from heaven, they landed in Osun. The state is sadly populated by inconsistent people. In Osun, personal interests trump collective interests in politics. Don’t blame us; it’s political season, and public officials have no right to be correct. They must always be wrong. They (political parties, labor unions, and activists) protested and petitioned against the firm’s approach, method, and procedure for achieving outcomes, and it became their new friend.
The hailers of yesterday are now the critics of today. Those who defended the firm’s integrity in 2023 are now its attackers, and vice versa. An adviser to Governor Adeleke told a story about how the firm participated in a payroll verification exercise that resulted in the dismissal of 346 employees, and how a court ordered their reinstatement and back pay. Another aide recounted how the same firm audited Oyo’s civil service payroll during the Ajimobi government, resulting in the termination of 602 staff.
As persuasive as these justifications were, I did not ask these aides why the Osun State Government approached the firm knowing all of this about them. Looking back on staff auditing, I have no doubt that the firm audited the staff and payroll that Adeleke’s administration inherited, but why didn’t he execute the report? Did Governor Adeleke and his colleagues aim to project a worker-friendly image? Why did Governor Adeleke reject the findings of the firm he trusted with civil service data? Even if it was a matter of trust, why did they wait for the firm to make the first move? Why didn’t Governor Adeleke and his team inform the people of the state, particularly civil servants, about the developments?
There is no flawless civil service anywhere. I am convinced that there are ghost workers in Osun. 15000? Obviously, too much. Nigeria as a country has a data problem, and Osun, as a subnational, is no exception. The civil service is a shadowy world of exploitation. We are a data-less nation. Ghosting is one of the behaviors that senior government workers or some key stakeholders engage in, similar to politicians. Who knows if the investigation impacted beneficiaries, who are also important stakeholders in the state? I have no answer to that.
However, we are likely to receive answers. It is encouraging to see that Governor Adeleke has invited the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and her counterpart, the ICPC, to investigate the situation. This is the “my hands are clean” approach. We will receive answers from these anti-graft authorities, and once completed, we will know whether the Adeleke-led administration or the firm is playing politics with the state’s economy.
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