ADMINISTRATIVE CHAOS AND SYSTEM FAILURES PLAGUE ENUGU CIVIL SERVICE VERIFICATION AS SENIOR CITIZENS DENIED SALARIES AND GRATUITIES

The Enugu State public sector has been thrown into widespread administrative confusion following the prolonged and flawed execution of civil service verification exercises initiated under Governor Peter Mbah’s administration. What was initially presented as an efficiency drive to clean up state payrolls has degenerated into an unending, multi-year ordeal that has left thousands of active civil servants, retirees, and senior citizens without their legitimate earnings and entitlements.

​Disgruntled workers and labor leaders across the state have raised grave concerns over the handling of the verification contract, which was outsourced to external consultants. Civil servants complain that the exercise was marred by widespread technical glitches, poor data management, and fundamental errors in biometric capturing. Rather than streamlining state operations, the outsourced audit created severe systemic failures—mistakenly delisting legitimate senior officers, misplacing verification files, and locking hundreds of active civil servants out of the state payroll.

​The human cost of these administrative lapses has fallen heavily on senior citizens and elderly retirees. Hundreds of senior officers who served the state for decades have had their monthly salaries abruptly stopped, forcing them into repeated, humiliating visits to the State Secretariat and the Civil Service Commission to prove they are still alive and actively employed. Furthermore, despite repeated promises by the state government to clear inherited pension and gratuity liabilities, thousands of retirees who concluded verification processes dating back to 2024 remain unpaid, as the government continually subjects them to fresh rounds of verification schedules.

​Compounding the public outrage is the absolute lack of official transparency surrounding the outcome of the two-year exercise. Stakeholders note that no comprehensive audit report has been submitted to the Enugu State House of Assembly, nor has any verified breakdown been published for public scrutiny. Although state officials routinely claim to have saved billions of naira monthly from the removal of "ghost workers", the public remains completely in the dark regarding exact figures:

​How many ghost workers were officially identified and unmasked?

​What is the exact sum of public funds recovered to date?

​Which individuals or entities were held accountable for payroll fraud?

​Instead of delivering a modernized, digital civil service, the continuous cycle of verifications has exposed an administrative system plagued by operational breakdowns. Civil servants and organized labor in Enugu State are now demanding an immediate halt to repetitive screening exercises, the immediate release of a transparent audit report to the House of Assembly, and the prompt payment of all outstanding salaries, pensions, and gratuities owed to the state's workforce.