By Tom Okpe
The House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee probing employment racketeering and gross mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, (IPPIS) by agencies of the Federal Government has summoned the Nigerian Army, Navy, Airforce, the Police and intelligence agencies, among others, to appear before it on Wednesday, (Today) 2nd August, 2023.
Chairman of the Committee, Yusuf Gagdi, who handed down the directive at the committee’s hearing on Tuesday expressed displeasure over their absence, after being duly invited.
Gàgdi said: “Let me say this to all agencies we have invited, I think we need to read their names clearly here. They are the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, the Nigerian Communication Commission, the Nigerian Post Services, the Nigerian frequency management Council, Galaxy backbone, National Identity management Commission, Nigerian Correctional Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Fire Service, Nigerian Police Force, Defence Intelligence Agency, State Security Service, national Intelligence Agency, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, Nigerian Army, Nigerian Airforce and the Nigerian Navy must appear tomorrow, since they have failed to appear today. This is the ruling of the committee.”
Also at the hearing, the Accountant General of the Federation said her office is working hard to fish out ghost workers who existed in the system before the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, (IPPIS).
She denied allegations that her office was engaging in the enrolment of ghost workers for personal gains.
The Accountant-General also said her office was working hard to address problems with the IPPIS.
“Having realized that this is a system that needs to be reviewed, on my assumption of duty, I met series of issues around IPPIS and that made me organize stakeholders with all service providers around the IPPIS, where the service providers came and made presentations, questions were asked.
“The stockholders meeting ran for two weeks where all service providers were scheduled for each day and came with their technical hands while the technical team of the oAGF were also on the ground, discussing series of issues about the system.
“After the meeting, we further broke down into technical committees where series of issues identified from the stakeholders meeting were subjected to further discussions.
“I have just received an interim report of this meeting, which we are looking at to see how we addressed all issues, emanating from this engagement to enable us, take further action on the management of the scheme.”
She said only 640 out of over 900 agencies of the Federal Government were captured on the IPPIS.
“As of today, we have 640 MDAs registered on the IPPIS, there are some that are not on the IPPIS like all the security agencies, federal government owned enterprises that generate revenue, are not on IPPIS.
“Then self funding agencies are not on IPPIS. Some parastatals that have different arrangements for the payment of their salaries like those that are receiving first line transfers like the National Assembly are not on the IPPIS and so many others like that.
“So, if we put the number of those outside IPPIS, it may get to over 900. Except if an Act of the National Assembly makes it compulsory that all government agencies must be on IPPIS.”
Director of the IPPIS, Emma Deko, accused some Universities of sending more names than required to be captured on the system.
“We are all aware of the issue of ASUU. We were told to enrol them and the enrolment did not pass through the normal process because it was an ad hoc thing.
It was an emergency. They refused to come on board. But when the government persuaded them to come on. We were asked to enrol them without going through the process. So, I want to place it on record that some of them were given numbers to enrol; people who were on their payroll prior to that time.
“But in a bid to increase their payroll, some of them enrolled more than what was previously on their payroll.
“For instance, if somebody is told to enrol 1000, they will enroll 1, 300 or 1, 400, and only 1000 that the Budget Office provided money for, would be paid.
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“I want to give an instance, the University College Hospital, Ibadan. Our staff went there to enroll what was approved. They were held hostage. They were forced to enrol everybody and you know that to protect themselves, it is only someone who is alive that can come back to tell you the story.
“So, they played along, and enrolled everybody but when we came back, we had to payroll only money provided in the budget.”
He added that there are other University Teaching Hospitals with similar cases.
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