Rivers payroll cleanup: Where are the people behind the ghost workers?

By ABRAHAM EBINI

The Governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara, has recently and quite resolutely defended his administration’s approval and ongoing implementation of a comprehensive staff payroll verification exercise across the twenty-three (23) local government areas of the state. Speaking at the commissioning of the Omademe Internal Roads Project in Ikwerre Local Government Area, the Governor, drawing from his professional pedigree as a former Treasury Officer, insisted that the cleanup of the grassroots salary payrolls is an absolute administrative prescription to address systemic leakages, eliminate irregularities, and entrench fiscal discipline within the state’s public service. While some political commentators have hastily and perhaps uncharitably sought to paint this exercise in the colours of partisan warfare or a “political witch-hunt”, Fubara has rightly cautioned against reducing objective administrative reforms to political rivalry, asserting that the sanitisation process is completely divorced from factional calculations and is targeted solely at vindicating the financial health of the state for the collective benefit of all Rivers people.

To evaluate this development with the intellectual rigour expected of legal scholarship, it is essential to contextualise the local government payroll cleanup within a broader timeline of state-wide reforms. A critical question has emerged in public discourse: was a similar sanitisation carried out in the core state ministries? The factual record in our possession answers this query in the absolute affirmative. During the recent state of emergency declared by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which suspended the state administration for six months, the appointed Sole Administrator, Vice-Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (retd.), initiated a mandatory biometric staff verification and enrollment exercise targeting both civil servants in the state ministries and pensioners. When the grand finale of the 2025 Civil Service Week was celebrated at the Obi Wali International Conference Centre, the Sole Administrator announced that the rigorous audit of the state civil service payroll had yielded immediate savings of ₦5 billion from the August salary fund alone, dramatically demonstrating the scale of leakages that had historically haunted our public coffers.

The official figures released by the Acting Head of the Rivers State Civil Service, Dr (Mrs) Inyingi Brown, reveal the staggering statistical realities of this state-level sanitisation. Prior to the audit, the state civil service nominal roll carried approximately 43,000 employees; however, the biometric verification confirmed only 37,703 civil servants as genuine, exposing a massive shortfall of 5,397 unverified or fraudulent entries. Similarly, out of 25,000 names on the state pensioners’ roster, only 19,186 were verified as legitimate, representing the removal of 5,814 fake accounts. At the local government level, while 2,600 pensioners were on the payroll, only 2,004 were biometrically verified, exposing 596 unverified entries. Following the exit of the Sole Administrator on the expiration of the emergency rule and the constitutional restoration of Governor Fubara’s administration, a newly constituted State Local Government Service Commission, under the chairmanship of Israel Amadi, commenced a complementary biometric audit across the 23 local government areas to complete the sanitisation process that Ibas had commenced at the grassroots.

While these dramatic payroll reductions and the corresponding multi-billion-naira savings have been lauded by fiscal conservatives as a triumph of administrative reform, as legal scholars, we must sound a warning. A headcount cleanup that merely deletes suspicious names from a ledger is an incomplete and ultimately reactive administrative remedy. It treats the symptoms of a deeply entrenched bureaucratic malaise while leaving the underlying criminal machinery and the systemic networks that engineered the fraud completely untouched. True administrative reform and the rule of law require that the Rivers State Government go beyond the ad hoc deletion of names to investigate how these fictitious employments originated, trace the payroll transactions to identify the ultimate beneficiaries, unmask the complicit officials across the bureaucratic hierarchy, recover public funds, and ensure the swift prosecution of all culpable persons. The real success of a payroll audit must be measured not only by how much money is saved, but by how many fraudulent syndicates are dismantled and how many perpetrators are brought to book.

The Dual Taxonomy of “Ghost Workers” and the Protection of the Conscripted

An intellectually rigorous legal analysis of payroll fraud requires us to move beyond the monolithic and often misleading term “ghost worker”. In the bureaucratic reality of Nigeria, there exists a fundamental dual taxonomy of unverified payroll entries that must be legally and administratively distinguished to prevent grave injustice. The first category comprises what we may term the culpable absentees and impostors. These are individuals who are legally or illegally on the payroll but deliberately refuse to report for duty while continuing to collect public salaries, or those who have retired, resigned, or died, yet whose records are deliberately maintained on the payroll through the active collusion of corrupt administrators. These individuals are active participants in the theft of state resources, and their actions represent a flagrant violation of the Public Service Rules, warranting immediate disciplinary dismissal and criminal prosecution.

The second, and far more disturbing, category consists of innocent, conscripted citizens whose personal identities have been fraudulently hijacked without their knowledge or consent. Imagine the plight of a young, brilliant Rivers State indigene who, having spent years navigating the harsh winds of unemployment, has repeatedly and trustingly submitted his or her curriculum vitae to relatives, political associates, influential community figures, or prospective employers in the desperate hope of securing legitimate employment. Unknown to this job seeker, a corrupt syndicate of senior officials or payroll managers, leveraging their administrative access, uses his or her genuine qualifications and personal information to create a fictitious employee slot on the government payroll. The salary attached to this slot is then routinely siphoned into bank accounts controlled by the syndicate, while the actual graduate continues to languish in poverty, completely oblivious to the fact that, on paper, he or she is already a “civil servant” earning a monthly livelihood.

To treat this second category of victims with the same punitive administrative stroke as the active fraudster, by simply deleting their names and branding them as “corrupt ghosts”, is a profound miscarriage of justice that violates the core tenets of our legal system. It ignores the constitutional guarantees of fair hearing and the presumption of innocence. Furthermore, it allows the actual perpetrators to retreat into the shadows of the bureaucracy, leaving the criminal machinery intact to conscript a fresh batch of unsuspecting victims.

Therefore, the Rivers State Government must establish robust procedural safeguards to distinguish between genuine absentee workers and innocent citizens whose identities have been hijacked. The audit must become a diagnostic tool to identify and rescue these conscripted victims, transforming them from administrative casualties into key witnesses for the prosecution of the syndicates.

Applicable Constitutional, Statutory, and Administrative Principles

The payroll sanitisation exercise is not an extra-legal crusade; it must be conducted strictly within the framework of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) and the relevant statutory and administrative laws of the land. Foremost among these is the constitutional guarantee of fair hearing enshrined in Section 36(1) and (4), which mandates that, in the determination of any person’s civil rights and obligations, including their public employment, they must be afforded a fair hearing within a reasonable time before an impartial tribunal. The state leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), led by Chairman Alex Agwanwor, has rightly appealed to the Rivers State Government and the Local Government Service Commission to review the blanket removal of unverified workers. Agwanwor’s warning is legally sound: it is highly possible that genuine employees were omitted due to poor coordination, intense rains, or administrative glitches. The NLC’s demand that such workers be allowed to present their letters of employment, nominal rolls, staff identity cards, and bank statements is a direct invocation of the audi alteram partem principle. Permanently terminating public servants without affording them an administrative forum to explain their absence invites a torrent of litigious disputes that could stall the government’s fiscal goals.

Administratively, the civil service operates under the strictures of the Public Service Rules (PSR). Under the PSR, the employment contract is a sacred covenant. Chapter 2, Section I, Rule II provides that appointments to grade levels 12 to 17 must be made through transparent advertisements, while appointments to grade levels 07 to 10 must be on the basis of competitive entry examinations. Rule III establishes a probationary period of not more than two years, which can only be confirmed upon satisfying performance standards and passing prescribed examinations. Rule 07103 stipulates that probationary appointments may be terminated or confirmation deferred if an officer fails these compulsory examinations. The Katsina State local government audit of 2025, which disqualified 3,488 workers, demonstrated that payroll fraud is intimately linked to the presentation of fake credentials, falsification of age, and illegal parallel employments. These infractions constitute serious misconduct under the PSR, and their resolution must follow the disciplinary procedures laid down in the rules, ensuring that administrative justice is meted out with procedural precision.

Critically, where unverified payroll entries represent fraudulent schemes, the conduct transcends administrative misconduct and enters the realm of criminal law. Under Section 464 of the Criminal Code Act (or the Criminal Code Law of the state), a document or register is false if any material particular stated therein is untrue. The deliberate insertion of fictitious names or the falsification of qualifications in the nominal roll constitutes the felony of forgery, punishable under Section 467 by three years’ imprisonment, which escalates to seven years in special cases involving public ledgers. Furthermore, Section 488 of the Criminal Code criminalises the uttering of false testimonials for the purpose of obtaining employment, while Section 104 criminalises the abuse of office by public servants who direct arbitrary acts prejudicial to the rights of others for personal gain, carrying a penalty of up to three years’ imprisonment. These substantive criminal provisions provide the state with a formidable arsenal to prosecute the architects of payroll syndicates.

In terms of evidence, the prosecution of payroll fraud is guided by the Evidence Act 2011. While Section 36(5) of the Constitution preserves the presumption of innocence, the law allows for rebuttable presumptions of fact. Under Section 53 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000 (the ICPC Act), where it is proved that any gratification or undue benefit has been accepted by a public officer, the law presumes that it was received corruptly until the contrary is proved. Similarly, Section 44(2) of the ICPC Act provides that if a public officer possesses pecuniary resources or assets disproportionate to his known sources of income, the Chairman of the Commission may require him to explain the excess. A failure to provide a satisfactory explanation raises a statutory presumption that the officer used his office to corruptly enrich himself. These evidentiary shifts are crucial in sifting through complex financial records, allowing the state to establish a prima facie case against corrupt officials by demonstrating the sheer disproportionality of their assets.

The Statutory Mandates of Specialised Anti-Graft Agencies

The Rivers State Government must recognise that it lacks the unilateral capacity and the legal mandate to fully investigate, freeze, and recover the proceeds of syndicated financial crimes. That mandate is statutorily vested in specialised federal anti-graft institutions, principally the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC). Under Sections 6 and 7 of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act 2004, the EFCC is the primary agency charged with enforcing financial crime laws, investigating embezzlement, bribery, and contract scams, and tracing and seizing proceeds of crime. Section 34 empowers the EFCC to obtain ex parte freezing orders on bank accounts linked to fraudulent transactions, while Sections 26 and 27 require arrested persons to make a full disclosure of their assets. This provides the commission with the immediate tool to halt the movement of siphoned public funds before corrupt officials can dissipate them.

Similarly, the ICPC, established under the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000, has a robust mandate to investigate corrupt practices in public bodies. Section 6(b) of the ICPC Act empowers the commission to examine the systems and procedures of public departments and direct reviews where such systems facilitate fraud. Sections 37 and 45 empower the ICPC to seize property and freeze bank accounts during investigations. The dramatic effectiveness of the ICPC’s statutory powers was illustrated when the commission’s Chairman, Dr Musa Adamu Aliyu, SAN, announced the recovery of over ₦20 billion siphoned through fraudulent ghost workers’ pension schemes, alongside forfeiture orders involving over 900 suspected ghost profiles. This underscores the necessity of a collaborative partnership: the Rivers State Government must serve as the primary petitioner, presenting its audit findings to the EFCC and ICPC to trigger their powerful investigative and asset-freezing machineries.

The ultimate goal of anti-corruption enforcement is the recovery and restitution of public funds. Under Sections 20 and 29 of the EFCC Act, and Section 47 of the ICPC Act, any assets or properties derived from corrupt practices are subject to final forfeiture to the government upon conviction. Crucially, Section 30 of the EFCC Act provides that, upon a final forfeiture order, the Secretary to the Commission shall dispose of the assets, and the proceeds must be paid directly into the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation. At the sub-national level, where the stolen funds belong to the state treasury, the Attorney-General of Rivers State, in coordination with federal authorities, must seek restitution orders to ensure that recovered monies are returned to the state’s coffers to fund critical education, healthcare, and infrastructural development, rather than being lost in federal accounts. This legal path is non-negotiable if the state is to truly reclaim its resources.

A Comparative Analysis of Payroll Reforms and Technological Interventions

The challenges of payroll fraud and ghost worker syndicates are not unique to Rivers State, and valuable lessons can be drawn from other jurisdictions that have confronted this fiscal menace. A comparison of headcount and financial impacts across various public-sector jurisdictions, summarised in the analytical table below, reveals the systemic scale of the problem and the effectiveness of technological and administrative interventions.

Jurisdiction & Temporal Context

Headcount Impact (Ghosts Removed)

Documented Financial Recovery

Primary Administrative & Tech Interventions

Kogi State Civil Service (2016 Audit)

Headcount dropped from 88,973 to 63,870 verified employees (25,103 removed).

₦213 billion lost over 16 years; immediate monthly savings of ₦1.2 billion.

Yahaya Bello Screening Committee; manual roster audits & transition to integrated networks.

Federal Civil Service of Nigeria (Post-2006)

Tens of thousands of phantom and duplicate identities eliminated.

Saved ₦185 billion over three years; ₦2.29 billion saved in a single month.

Deployment of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) and BVN audits.

Republic of Cameroon (2015/2018 Audits)

10,000 ghost workers identified in 2015; 918 ghosts removed from just 40% of force in 2018.

Documented loss of $12 million monthly prior to the audits.

Civil service-wide physical personnel verification and comprehensive census auditing.

Republic of Yemen (Systemic Audit)

5,875 ghost workers identified out of a 485,818 personnel cadre.

Severe and systemic budgetary drain on state resources.

Implementation of a centralised biometric identification and tracking system.

A critical evaluation of these comparative cases demonstrates that, while ad hoc audits and screening committees, such as those used in Kogi State or the initial exercises in Enugu State under Governor Peter Mbah, achieve significant short-term savings, they often fail to prevent the reconstitution of ghost syndicates once administrative vigilance wanes. The Enugu State case illustrates that long-term success depends on transitioning from ad hoc detection to a technologically integrated, identity-linked payroll system that embeds continuous verification within routine processes. This is empirically supported by a landmark study on the association between IPPIS implementation and payroll fraud in Nigeria’s federal public sector over the period 2013–2024, authored by John Danebari Zukbee, PhD, and Benjamin Uzuke Uturu of Rivers State University.

Using balanced panel data, Zukbee and Uturu conceptualised the use of System Enrollment Rate (SER) and Biometric Verification Cycles (BVC) to measure IPPIS implementation. Their empirical results revealed a highly significant negative association between SER, BVC, and Personnel Cost Variance (PCV), confirming that wider coverage and more frequent biometric verification directly reduce personnel expenditure leakage. Interestingly, for De-listed Ghost Names (DGN), BVC showed a strong positive short-term association, demonstrating that increased verification frequency initially drives a dramatic surge in detected and de-listed frauds, before eventually stabilising as the system reaches equilibrium. The lesson for Rivers State is clear: technology is a powerful tool, but its efficacy is entirely dependent on the integrity of its human access points. A digital system is only as clean as the people who control it, and any technological upgrade must be matched by a relentless enforcement of administrative accountability and ethical orientation.

Recommendations

Based on the foregoing constitutional, statutory, and fundamental analysis, I respectfully proffer the following concrete legal and institutional recommendations to the Rivers State Government to guide the ongoing payroll sanitisation and ensure its long-term integrity:

Establishment of a Procedural Revalidation and Complaints Board: The Rivers State Local Government Service Commission and the Civil Service Commission should immediately establish a joint Administrative Revalidation and Complaints Board. In compliance with Section 36 of the Constitution, any worker whose name was omitted or uncaptured during the biometric audits must be given a 30-day window to appear before the board. The NLC’s procedural recommendations should be fully adopted, allowing affected staff to present their statutory letters of employment, nominal rolls, staff identity cards, and certified bank statements showing historic salary payments. This administrative safety valve will vouchsafe due process and inoculate the government against costly employment litigations.

Implementation of a Transparent Online Public Disclosure and Whistleblowing Portal: The Ministry of Information and Communications, leveraging the state’s Public Service Management Information System, must publish the list of all unverified or suspect “ghost” names online on an easily accessible official state portal. This will allow ordinary citizens to verify whether their personal information has been fraudulently used without their consent. Concurrently, a secure, anonymous whistleblowing portal must be integrated, backed by the informer protection provisions of Section 64 of the ICPC Act 2000, allowing innocent victims to report identity theft and provide information on the intermediaries or officials who requested their CVs.

Inauguration of a Joint Forensic Audit and Financial Investigation Panel: Governor Fubara should formally petition the Chairmen of the EFCC and the ICPC to inaugurate a Joint Forensic Investigation Panel. This panel must look beyond the payroll rosters to trace the financial trails. Under Section 6 of the EFCC Act and Section 44 of the ICPC Act, the panel should examine the bank accounts into which the fictitious salaries were paid, unmask the proxies and bank accomplices who facilitated these accounts, and identify the senior officials who approved the nominal roll submissions. This will ensure that the criminal machinery is dismantled and the stolen resources are tracked to their actual resting place.

Enforcement of Restitution and Criminal Prosecution: The Attorney-General of Rivers State, exercising powers under Section 211 of the Constitution, must collaborate with the federal anti-graft agencies to initiate criminal prosecutions. Culpable officials, absentees, and accomplices must be charged under Section 467 of the Criminal Code for forgery, Section 488 for uttering false testimonials, and Section 19 of the ICPC Act for abuse of office. Crucially, the state must seek interim asset-freezing orders (Section 34, EFCC Act) and final forfeiture and restitution orders to recover siphoned public funds, ensuring that recovered monies are returned directly to the Rivers State treasury to fund legitimate development.

Transition to an Integrated, Identity-Linked Biometric Payroll Architecture: To prevent a recurrence, Rivers State must transition from ad hoc manual audits to a continuous, technologically integrated personnel and payroll management system, such as the Rivers State Public Service Management Information System (RivPuSMiS). This system should be biometrically linked to the national Bank Verification Number (BVN) to prevent multiple salary collections across jurisdictions. In line with the best practices of financial controls, the state must enforce strict segregation of duties: the personnel department responsible for staff enrollment must be completely separated from the payroll department responsible for approving payments, with periodic random audits and rotated personnel functions to eliminate the opportunity for collusion.

*Ebini, a legal and public affairs analyst, wrote from Port Harcourt.

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