‘Dead workers, retirees still on payrolls’
By Abdulaziz Abdulaziz
Abuja
Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has disclosed that the federal government, as one of its major planks for economic diversification, was working on re-positioning the solid minerals sector by bringing in capable investors to invest in different aspects of mining.
“We have a crisis of abundance in Nigeria when it comes to mining. We are a mineral-rich nation, but not a mining nation. It is this that we want to change. It is not enough to know that we have the minerals but have to be seen to be a mining nation,” he said.
According to him, Nigeria spends $3.3 billion in importing steel and other related items which can be reversed with the resuscitation of the Ajaokuta Steel Mill.
The minster spoke yesterday at a town hall meeting and dialogue, organised by the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, in collaboration with the Alumni Association of the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies.
He said the federal government had successfully ended the long legal tussle over the company “and will soon engage investors with the financial and technical capacity to turn around the steel milling company.”
According to him, the government is treating the mining re-positioning through a “carrot and stick approach.”
“We are enforcing the ‘use or lose’ clause in the mining laws but at the same time we want to find out and address what is it that make people who have the licences are not engaging the mining activity.”
Also speaking at the event, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, shocked her audience when she revealed that the federal government was yet to rid its payrolls of ghost workers, as it loses hundreds of millions to fraudulent payment of salaries to dead or retired workers. She said government was working hard to block leakages and make the best use of its scanty resources.
The federal government had, in May, this year, announced the weeding out of over 48,000 ghost workers from the payroll of government agencies, which, according to the ministry of finance, had saved the country N52 billion.
“I sign memos everybody to remove people from payrolls; people who are already dead or retired,” she said.
Adeosun said the federal government was adopting the strategy of priority spending in funding the 2016 budget, which, she said, was affected by scarce resource at the government’s disposal.
She added that government would have to borrow to fund the infrastructural and other projects it is embarking on because it “cannot wait for oil to improve.”