A newborn baby in Nigeria got added to a government payroll, earning about US$150 for the past two or three years, a discovery indicative of the widespread corruption starving the oil-rich west African nation of much needed funds, authorities said on Friday.
The baby was one of many so-called “ghost workers” found to be getting salaries without performing a job, said Garba Gajam, the attorney general of Zamfara located in Nigeria’s arid and impoverished northwest.
CHILD PRODIGY
The employee was listed as being one-month-old in government records, but Gajam said the child’s father actually started collecting the salary before the baby was born. Records also show that the baby has a diploma.
The state of Zamfara has asked government workers to present their letters of employment and qualifications in a verification exercise meant to reverse a trend that has government workers giving fictitious jobs to family members to boost their pay checks.
“It’s at the local government level that this is most rampant,” Gajam said. “Leaving the local government with nothing to execute projects.”
The local government is responsible for maintaining roads, disposing of garbage and providing public transportation.
However, diversions of funds, such as to ghost workers, means the majority of Nigerians are left with virtually no services from their government.
Offenders in Zamfara will have to refund all the money collected over the years and will also most likely be prosecuted, Gajam said.
However, analysts say the trend cuts throughout the country.
“There is no state in Nigeria that doesn’t have ghost workers,” said Thompson Ayodele, director of Initiative for Public Policy Analysis in Lagos. “In this case, at least the baby is alive, what about the thousands of ghost workers who don’t even exist?”
Ghost workers collect salaries and eventually qualify for pensions as well. The money is actually paid into the accounts of the people who created the identities.
“[Government workers] even continue collecting the pensions of dead people,” said Ayodele, who authored a book on the issue.
WORKING THE SYSTEM
Eight people are standing trial at the moment for diverting pension funds using “nonexistent” persons, said Femi Babafemi, spokesperson for the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“Meanwhile, the real pensioners who earned these funds were left unattended to,” he said.
Nigeria, a top crude oil supplier to the US, has a long history of corruption, with one official once estimating the country has lost more than US$380 billion to graft since gaining its independence from Britain in 1960.
Corruption trickles down from politicians in the capital city of Abuja, to the lowest police officer who shake down bribes at traffic checkpoints.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not