AGF Denies Allegation Of Engaging Ghost Workers
The Accountant-General of the Federation, Mrs Oluwatoyin Madein on Tuesday in Abuja denied allegations that her office was enrolling ghost workers.
She also said her office was addressing problems associated with the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the IT platform used in paying salaries of federal civil servants.
Madein made the declarations while fielding questions before the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating alleged employment racketeering and mismanagement of the IPPIS by agencies of the Federal Government.
She said her office was working hard to fish out ghost workers who existed in the system before the introduction of the IPPIS in October 2006.
“Having realised that this is a system that needs to be reviewed, I organised a stakeholders meeting with all service providers around the IPPIS on my assumption of duty,’’ she said.
She said the service providers made presentations and it was discovered that only 640 out of the more than 900 agencies of the Federal Government were enrolled in the IPPIS.
“As of today we have 640 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) enrolled in the IPPIS.
“Some agencies, like security agencies are not in the scheme,’’ she said.
Madein also told the committee that some revenue-generating Federal Government-owned enterprises and some self-funding ones were not enrolled on the IPPIS.
She listed some parastatal agencies that have different arrangements for the payment of salaries and those receiving first line transfers such as the National Assembly as not enrolled in the IPPIS.
“If we input Federal Government agencies currently outside the IPPIS in the scheme, there should be more than 900 agencies enrolled in it.
“It is only an Act of the National Assembly that can make it compulsory for all government agencies to be enrolled in the IPPIS,’’ she said.
In her submissions, Director of the IPPIS, Ms Emma Deko, accused some universities of sending more names than required to be enrolled in the scheme.
“We are all aware of the issue of ASUU. We were told to enrol ASUU members 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 government persuaded them to come, we were asked to enrol them without going through the process.
“In a bid to increase their nominal roll, some of them enrolled more than what was previously on their payrolls,’’ she said.
Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Yusuf Gagdi, summoned the Nigerian Army, Navy, Air Force and the Police among other agencies of government to appear before it on Aug. 4 over allegations of job racketeering.
