Nigeria’s public service remains one of the largest employers in the country, supporting millions of workers across different sectors.
Over the years, however, concerns about ghost workers and redundancy have persisted, posing serious challenges to efficiency and accountability.
Ghost workers are individuals whose names appear on the payroll but who do not actually work in any government office or institution.
Their presence on the salary list drains public funds and reduces the amount available for genuine staff and development projects.
The issue has existed for decades, often resurfacing during payroll audits and staff verification exercises.
Technological reforms have helped expose thousands of irregular entries in government payment systems at both federal and state levels.
Biometric registration, digital payroll systems, and integrated personnel databases are among the measures introduced to clean up the system.
These initiatives aim to link salaries to verified identities, ensuring that only legitimate employees receive payments.
Periodic staff audits have also become common as governments seek to identify and remove redundant or fictitious workers.
Redundancy, another long-standing problem, refers to situations where several people perform the same function or where roles are duplicated across departments.
This duplication slows down decision-making, increases costs, and reduces productivity within the civil service.
In some ministries and parastatals, overlapping duties have led to confusion over job descriptions and accountability lines.
To address this, reforms have focused on streamlining operations, redefining roles, and introducing clearer reporting structures.
Modern human resource management systems now help track performance, attendance, and departmental efficiency.
The public service has also adopted digital record-keeping to replace manual documentation, which often made fraud easier to conceal.
Capacity-building programmes are being used to retrain staff whose roles have become obsolete due to automation or restructuring.
The adoption of electronic payment platforms has further reduced the influence of middlemen who previously manipulated payroll systems.
At the same time, inter-agency collaboration has improved information sharing between government offices, preventing the repetition of names on different payrolls.
Some state governments have established verification committees to audit their workforce and identify gaps in personnel management.
In several instances, such audits have revealed cases of multiple salary earners, unqualified staff, and non-existent employees.
While progress has been made, the persistence of ghost workers shows that reforms need to be continuous and carefully monitored.
Experts in the civil service sector argue that technology alone cannot solve the problem without a strong culture of accountability.
Administrative discipline, transparent reporting systems, and strict sanctions for offenders are viewed as key to maintaining order.
Human resource restructuring also seeks to reduce redundancy by merging overlapping departments and redefining workflow processes.
In addition, some agencies have embraced performance-based evaluation systems to reward productivity and discourage idleness.
The integration of the public service into a single data platform has been designed to simplify personnel management and budget planning.
This unified structure allows government to monitor salary payments, track staff records, and prevent duplication across ministries.
Automation has equally reduced paperwork and improved the speed of communication within and between agencies.
The civil service now faces the task of balancing digital innovation with the need to retain essential human roles.
As more tasks become computerised, training remains essential to ensure that workers can operate new systems effectively.
The fight against ghost workers also involves strong internal control mechanisms, such as internal audits and periodic verification exercises.
By identifying inactive employees or those who have exited the service, government can keep records accurate and payrolls transparent.
Redundancy, on the other hand, continues to challenge productivity in some sectors, especially where staffing is not aligned with actual needs.
In such cases, workforce planning and proper job evaluation help determine how best to allocate human resources.
Civil service reform has become an ongoing process aimed at achieving efficiency, reducing waste, and promoting accountability.
With increasing reliance on technology, the hope is that ghost workers will gradually be eliminated from the system.
If sustained, these reforms could lead to a more professional and transparent public service that better serves citizens and national development goals.
As Nigeria continues to modernise its administrative structures, effective personnel management remains central to building a stronger public sector.