How Salary Stealing Syndicate Makes Job Tough For Gov. Otu’s Administration In CRS

While the Cross River State Government has been making efforts to pay staff salaries as at when due, sources inside government have informed www.calitown.com that it will take more than the current efforts of the Bassey Otu administration for this to be achieved, on a month to month basis.

Just yesterday, February 15, 2024, government, through the deputy governor’s office, issued a press statement offering explanations over the seeming delay in the payment of salaries for some category of civil servants in the state and local government service. The press statement talked about the delay in payment being “…informed by painstaking efforts to weed out duplicate entries following the reconciliation of cleared names from the relevant pay-rolling offices with the nominal roll”, but “government will not inform you that the problem is beyond and above that; see, a syndicate of civil servants, working with the active and conscious involvement of some key bank staff, is stealing her funds and making it difficult, like we are seeing now, for government to fulfill her salary obligation to civil servants”, we were again told.

Pressed for more information, the source informed us that, “in the said nominal roll, the new people in government are not too aware that, in the relevant payroll offices, strategically placed, are a coded core of persons, making guided input into the payroll. They remove and sustain names on the payroll, tap in cash figures, while some bank personnel, in on the deal, make sure certain accounts are credited and debited, under the radar.”

“The debited stash of cash is sent to a flutter of accounts monitored and managed by the syndicate in some of the banks. Withdrawals in cash are methodically done and distribution follows. The salary accounts of health workers in the system, especially those who are at the point of retirement or deceased, are mainly targeted and breached”, we were informed.

In a bid to find out why state salary figures religiously rise, even when scores of civil servants retire, become deceased or exit for personal or administrative reasons, the state government domiciled a fact finding responsibility with a team headed by the Secretary to the State Government, Anthony Owan Enoh.

That team, we were informed, has gone about working at delivering a thorough job to the state government. But something bizzare trailed the work done after persons working on the instructions of this syndicate, broke into the SSG’s temporary office at the well guarded Presidential Lodge, Calabar, hoping to cart away a deck of files containing work done and the accompanying findings meant for the the state governor’s perusal. The syndicate’s ‘operation’ we were again told, found nothing as the files were long taken away for safe custody, after a security report pointed to something like this happening, leaving those who activated this break-in and the actual persons who did it, unknown and unseen.

Attempts to speak with the SSG on the verified break-in was unsuccessful but our source maintains, “the man is under pressure because the syndicate has tirelessly pursued moves to influence the outcome of this report, something that hasn’t worked.”

We hear subtle but effective moves may have been discreetly activated to rush government into glossing over the report with some civil servants (who we can’t confirm are directly working for the syndicate) poised to stage moderated protests to demand that their salaries be paid, without the recommendations contained in the report. “We are talking about a multi million naira fraud, long institutionalised by this syndicate in CRS, if you people ask around properly, you will soon see in the state, actions designed to make government hurriedly pay salaries without implementing the recommendations that should help the state walk away from feeding this syndicate fat”, the source submitted.