There are visible indications that the recent approval granted by Cross River State governor, Bassey Edet Otu, for the recruitment of around 2,500 personnel into the Cross River State civil service, has been hijacked by a syndicate of persons, working within and outside the state civil service, for personal gains.
Investigations by www.calitown.com show that, while the governor’s approval was to help shore up depleted employee figures, those directly and indirectly linked to this recruitment process, reserved vacancies for family, friends and cronies, with glaring evidence that most of those recruited did not meet stated requirements for the jobs.
In several instances, vacancies, especially in the local government service, were sold for as high as ?500,000 (five hundred thousand naira) for graduate entry positions while lesser entry positions were sold for between N200, 000 (two hundred thousand naira) or higher, depending on the negotiating ability of the vacancy buyer.
One source inside government who spoke on conditions of anonymity, insisted that, “the people saddled with this responsibility have had a devil’s field day, selling vacancies and seemingly smiling home to the bank. You won’t even imagine that in normal circumstances, those newly employed should work for a minimum of three months before their names are reflected in the state’s payroll; but as we speak, several of these new intakes were surreptitiously added to the payroll, some even started receiving salaries after outrageously working for less than a month. It is ridiculous but if you people dig deeper, you will see the rot that has been cooked behind the governor’s back.”
We also gathered that the recruitment process also accommodated a retinue of ghost workers, deliberately included in the payroll by unscrupulous civil servants, working as a network.”This network handed high grade levels to most of these ghost workers and have a complex financial withdrawal system deployed, for withdrawing the ghost salaries. Even if you try, because so much is shrouded in secrecy, you won’t understand how the monies are withdrawn at the end of every month”, the source disclosed.
“While the governor rightly lifted a 25-year embargo on recruitment into the civil service, you can now see, incase you do not know, that the current delays in salary payment is remotely tied to the unscrupulous activities of this syndicate, who appear to have upped the state’s civil service wage bill with a mastery of financial distortions that can undo the governor’s performance if something surgical is not done”, our source further revealed.
“Evidence is also available, if you people look further, to the extent that some of those who paid monies for most of these vacancies, have been scammed. Some cases for recovery of funds paid, have reached the police while some others are settling for refunds that appear to be taking too long to materialise. Laughably, some of those persons fingered as having collected these monies for vacancies, have suddenly disappeared into thin air and those who paid are hesitant to come forward because the one who pays for a vacancy as well as the one who receives the money are both in soup”, it was revealed.
At press time, competent government sources spoken to disclosed that government is not unaware of the situation, but volunteered no information on what the state government plans to do shortly, to tackle this glaring anomaly.
