NIGERIANS AND ACCUSATIONS. If you are in public office in Nigeria, if you are not careful, people will not let you work. There will be one baseless accusation after another and you could spend all your time defending yourself from every new accusation someone dreams up. Thread...
Between 2005 and 2006, government disengaged some public servants. There were various reasons. Some had had their posts abolished, like cooks and “nightwatchmen” attached to senior govt officials. The Monetisation Policy consolidated salaries and therefore made them redundant.
Others had disciplinary issues and should have since been sacked. Yet others had failed promotion exams more than three times. Finally, people who wanted to leave the service were given a monetary incentive to go. My Mum took advantage of this offer. Everybody was paid off.
Before they were paid off, they were given entrepreneurship training to prepare them for life outside the public service. Some used the money to start new businesses, others married new wives. Some others were scammed by scammers that specialized in targeting retirees’ gratuities
Government allowed a period for appeals, in case anyone was victimized or wrongly dealt with. Some appeals were successful and some people were recalled. Others were paid compensation. After the appeal period, govt issued a circular that it won’t entertain any more appeals.
Anyone who had a grievance should go to court. FIVE YEARS LATER, I was appointed DG BPSR. I then started getting letters from people asking to be reinstated, EIGHT YEARS after collecting their money and signing a declaration that they had no further claims against the government.
Of course I looked through the files and wrote back that they had collected their money and signed absolving the government of any claims, and that the appeal period was over anyway. I then started getting monthly invitations to ICPC. The first one can be quite disconcerting.
The invitation is usually vague. It just asks you to appear at the ICPC office at 10am in respect of an allegation of fraud that they are investigation. Even if you have done nothing wrong, you don’t know what your staff may have done. As Accounting Officer, you are responsible.
It turns out that some people had petitioned ICPC that I had refused to reinstate them because I had been bribed by their former Ministries. One even said I was from Yobe and I was protecting the Head of Service because we were from the same state. I showed ICPC all the files.
At a point, I pointed out to them the futility of inviting me every month. I kukuma gave them space in my office where all the files that relate to that disengagement process were kept. Anytime they get a new petition, they just come and read the relevant files.
That’s how I was able to work. Some people still demanded that I should “step aside pending investigations”, for something that happened YEARS before I was appointed. They were thankfully ignored. That is who we are as a people. That is just a tiny part of what it takes to serve.
We are a petition-writing society. We have no qualms about making allegations WE KNOW to be baseless against people just trying their best to serve their country. In the eyes of the mob, you are guilty of every accusation. Still, it is a privilege to serve your country. End!
