Governor Ayade swears in New head of service, laments massive corruption

Governor Ben Ayade has decried the high rate of corruption within the Cross River State civil service.

Governor Ayade, who swore-in to office a new Head of Service, (HoS) Mrs Geraldine Ekanem at the state capital, Calabar, lamented the level of manipulation and fraud in the service.

Fugitive workers

Ayade urged the Head of Service to revamp the system, noting “at this time of the economy when the revenue allocation for Cross River has nosedived, I do not envy your job. The total allocation for the state last month put together was in the region of 900 million and it came at a time our wage bill is about 3.16 billion naira.

“As Head of Service, one of the greatest challenges before you is to fish out fugitive workers,” he stressed.

He further charged Ekanem to employ the necessary strategies to sanitize the system, saying “you have my support in transfers and demotions. Whatever power vested on me is passed to you so nobody will come back to say he is witch-haunted”.

According to him, “the fraud in the payroll system is huge. Today, we have a major lawsuit of about 16 billion and as we are struggling to survive. We have another litigation of more than 6.5 million dollars with ECOWAS.

“We have over 1,840 inherited court cases that warrants Cross River hiring lawyers. We are paying just so much so that I need a Head of Service, who will provide me sufficient capacity,” the governor said.

Payroll service

On the payroll, the governor accused the directors of personnel for muddling up the monthly personnel audit.

He noted, “if I walk into the ministries, I meet fairly empty offices, but when I come to the nominal roll, I see a massive wage bill. Each time I attempt to do an audit and reduce the payroll by about 60 million for example, I start receiving petitions. 

“When the workers are restored to the payroll, the 60 million that was reduced will become 70 million. So, for every audit, we end up having more names on the payroll,” Ayade lamented.

Privilege of service

Responding, Geraldine Ekanem, the new Head of Service thanked the governor for the appointment and pledged to give her best.

“I thank you for this privilege to serve the state. I promise to bring my wealth of knowledge to bear in the discharge of my responsibility especially as regards the challenges” Ekanem said.

Earlier, Tina Agbor, the Secretary to the State Government, said the swearing in of the HoS was in line with the provisions of the 1999 constitution.

She noted that the governor’s appointment of women into key positions in his government demonstrated his commitment to gender equity.

Geraldine Ekanem was called to bar in 1985 and joined the Cross River civil service in 1987.

Emmanuel Ukoh