They wear tattered clothes but have millions in the bank

 To most of his colleagues, Chukwuma Onyeoshi is a quintessential civil servant who lives on his meagre salary of grade level 13. His wardrobe consists of three well-worn shirts, two pairs of trousers and an equally well-worn native attire that he wears to work on Fridays. His only car that spends more time with the mechanic than bringing him to the office is a Peugeot 504 saloon car that he bought when old cars were auctioned in the office. His sight evokes pity from his colleagues as many see him as a man who is always struggling to make ends meet.


 Façade

 But outside the office and amongst his community members in Abuja and back in his home town, Onyeoshi is a well-to-do man who lives in a mansion in a choice area of Abuja, drives posh cars, with his children attending some of the best schools in town. He owns a magnificent country home and is the first point of call when his community needs funds to embark on any community project. Mr Onyeoshi represents the typical Nigerian civil servant who presents a facade of living in penury to hide the stupendously acquired wealth from the commonwealth of the nation.

Sophistication

Nigerian civil servants have evolved in their dubious talents of pilfering from public funds over time. In the early ’60s up to the early eighties, what then constituted corruption among the civil servants majorly was when a lowly officer would sometimes hide a file in order to compel any body interested in the information in such files to grease his palm before producing same. But thereafter, corruption in the civil service gradually began to assume a certain level of sophistication. From hiding files, senior civil servants in the upper echelon of the service began to see their position as an avenue to enrich themselves. They began to negotiate with contractors and other service providers to add a certain amount to quoted contracts so that the added figure would be paid back to the civil servants after such jobs have been completed. In some cases, outright negotiations are made that ten percent of the profit made from any job would be paid back to service the “boys”. This was later to go up to 15 to 20 percent. The several years of military rule however helped in honing the looting skills of the civil servants. It is important to point out that though the many military officials who occupied executive positions at the hey day of the military rule were interested in dipping their fingers into the public till, they lacked the necessary skills to do so without leaving a loud trail. They had to fall back on the experiences of the civil servants to pull out money and make it look as if it was for a genuine cause. The more those in executive position became satiated with the desire to steal, the more the civil servants became deeply involved in corruption too. They became adept at setting up elaborate scam that deliberately sidetracked all safety measures put up in the civil service to check corruption. With the presence of the military at the helm of affairs, the Nigerian civil servants took the art of corruption a notch higher. It will be recalled that during the military era, the civil servant was the most powerful public officer. He it was that prepared the budget and in the absence of a National Assembly to scrutinize what has been included in the budget, the civil servant became the only one in the chain of government that had the expertise and processes of preparing the budget for the nation. The consequence of this was that monies allocated for projects were not fully released for such projects and in few cases where they were, the civil servants colluded with contractors to share the money without any tangible result to show for the huge releases made.

Democratic dispensation, improved tactics

 With the return to civil rule in 1999 and the campaign by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to stamp out corruption in the country, the civil servants, majority of whom were sired by corruption, had to adapt new ways to carry on their nefarious trade. And because the then President Obasanjo’s war against corruption focused more on politicians and political office holders, the civil servants had ample time to adjust to the new challenge. And before the government’s attention could refocus on the civil service, incalculable damage had been done by the civil servants. But the return to democratic rule and the focus on fighting corruption engendered a change of approach by the civil servants. The setting up of two anti-corruption agencies, the ICPC and the EFCC and the introduction of stringent measures in the public procurement procedure necessitated a change of approach. For instance, while the Public Procurement Act prescribed that all contracts must be advertised and due process followed, the civil servant found a way of circumventing it. For example, while it prescribed that all contracts must be open to competitive bidding process, the civil servants have found a creative way of registering companies either in their friends’ or relatives’ name and bidding for several jobs. Since they are in the know of the benchmark for such projects, the bid from their companies are deliberately skewed to meet the criteria for the bids.

 Expanding the scope

 But even beyond the contracts, the civil servants have devised other ingenious ways of enriching themselves. While senior members organize fake foreign workshops where they collect huge estacode for themselves, the junior ones equally source for local training opportunities but never attend. Since the bosses are also into such slimy deals, they tend to turn a blind eye to such infractions. With renewed interest in the effect of corruption on the country, the determined civil servants had to devise new ways to take off attention from themselves. While it is seen as normal for politician and political office holders to live flamboyant lifestyle because of their fat pay package, the paltry remuneration of the average civil servants cannot sustain the luxurious lifestyle of most civil servants.

Therefore, in order to cover up for this, the public image presented by the average civil servant is that of penury while the real worth of the average civil servant in Abuja is millions in naira in bank accounts, Substantial mansions in major cities, remarkable investments in all sectors of the economy and a secure future for their children. The sustenance of the anti-corruption war may force many of them to take a more deeper measure of concealing their ill-gotten wealth. However, the lifestyle of their dependants may be the area of interest for the serious investigators to watch and observe for any lead that would open the huge can of worms being sealed by the hypocritical posturing by the civil servant presenting him as a victim of a weak system that denies him some measures of good living.

 [Vanguard Newspaper]