FG suspends fresh 3,000 workers over fake certificates

The Federal Government has ordered the immediate suspension of 3,000 workers over alleged presentation of fake certificates for recruitment into the Federal Civil Service.

Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan, made this known on Wednesday in Abuja, during a media parley as part of the activities marking the 2022 Civil Service Week celebration.

She revealed that the 3,000 workers with fake certificates were discovered by the Federal Civil Service in the ongoing certificate verification by the Commission and ordered their immediate suspension from the service.

Yemi-Esan said this fresh discovery was coming after about 1,500 workers who joined the Federal civil service with fake appointment letters were detected in April 2022.

She recalled that over 1,000 of the personnel earlier discovered with employment letters were from the Ministry of Information while 500 others were found in other ministries, departments and agencies during a service-wide verification exercise and were delisted from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS)

While explaining why there is no recent recruitment into the Service, she noted that the Federal Civil Service is currently over-bloated with more than 76,000 workers in the core service.

She maintained that there was no way the Federal Civil Service could absorb all Nigerian graduates, stressing that the plan of the government now was to have a nimble workforce.

She added that the experience from the COVID-19 where junior officers stayed at home, was an indication that the Service is over-bloated.

The Head of Service disclosed that before she came in, over 100, 000 workers were on the Federal Government’s payroll and this has come down to 76,000 as a result of constant verification and cleaning up of the payroll system.