In a move aimed at streamlining the federal civil service and curbing financial leakages, the Head of Service of the Federation (HoS), Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, has issued a stern warning to civil servants who are absent from their duties without official permission while still drawing salaries.
According to her, such individuals will face termination of their appointments once the ongoing verification exercise is completed.
The HoSF made this revelation on Wednesday during a media briefing held as part of the civil service week.
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She said.”It is a Nigerian thing. We are running hard against the culture that tolerates it.
Outsiders don’t know the bashing we get every day trying to do the right thing. I expect that once the verification report comes, anybody that is not in the country automatically loses his job.”
Yemi-Esan expressed her determination to address the issue, stating, “What we discovered in the last month of that verification is that most of them are now resigning their appointments, which is a good development.”
The HoS’s crackdown on absent workers is part of a broader effort to clean up the federal civil service payroll and weed out irregularities.
During the briefing, she disclosed that the number of workers on the payroll has been reduced from over 100,000 to 69,308 following a comprehensive verification exercise.
“As a result of the exercise, many people who were not supposed to be on the payroll, including retirees, had been cleaned up,” Yemi-Esan said.
Furthermore, the verification exercises on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) exposed 1,618 civil servants with ‘fake/illegal’ employment letters, while the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) is currently probing 3,600 public servants for corruption-related offenses.
Yemi-Esan also accused some top officials of complicity in the payroll irregularities, stating that they were part of the deal to ensure that vacant positions were not declared as such.
“What we discovered in the last month of that verification is that most of them are now resigning their appointments, which is a good development,” she said.
The HoS revealed that she had broached the matter with the Permanent Secretary, Common Service Office (SMO), Raymond Omeka, regarding the report on the number of affected workers, as the next step would be to stop their salaries.
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As Yemi-Esan’s tenure as the Head of Service of the Federation draws to a close, with her retirement scheduled for August 14, 2024, her efforts to clean up the civil service and address longstanding issues have been widely acknowledged.
Mohammed Ahmed, the Director of Communications at the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, confirmed that the media briefing was her last scheduled engagement before her retirement.
Yemi-Esan, a medical doctor by profession, was appointed as the Acting HoSF on September 18, 2019, by President Muhammadu Buhari, following the removal of the former HoS, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita.
Her five-year tenure has been marked by a concerted effort to address irregularities, streamline operations, and restore integrity to the federal civil service.
