The Integrated Personnel Payroll System project took off in 2007 with five important functions that include the management of federal staff records; timely and accurate payment of salaries and wages to federal employees; deduction of taxes and other third-party dues; remittance of payroll deductions to third parties; and the enrolment of employees into IPPIS data base.
Other features of IPPIS are helping the government in planning and managing payroll budget as well as appropriate control of personnel cost. In the past, records of personnel were incoherent and the payrolls of MDAs were open to abuse as ghost workers were fraudulently inserted at will by dishonest individuals and syndicates, thus draining billions of Naira from public funds.
The Accountant General of the Federation, Alhaji Ahmed Idris recently urged all federal Ministries, Department and Agencies that have not yet moved their payrolls to the Integrated Personnel Payroll System (IPPIS) in line with the directive issued by President Muhammadu Buhari to do so without further delay.
He made the call when he received the acting Inspector General of Police, Mr. Abubakar Adamu, during a courtesy call at the Treasury House in Abuja. He said that the successful integration of the Nigeria Police into the system has paved way for the enrollment of the Nigeria military as well.
Alhaji Idris explained that the enrolment of the Military demonstrates the robustness of the system, and assured Nigerians that his Office was committed to a transparent, accountable and efficient management of the nation’s funds in line with the best practice around the world.
As the efficacy of IPPIS manifests, Nigerians will be pleased to hear that the whopping sum of N206 billion, which is more than the contract sum for the re-construction of the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano dual carriageway, was saved in two years by eliminating ghost workers from the Federal Government wage bill. While the sum of N76 billion was saved in 2017, a total N130 billion was saved in 2018.
The Director of the Department of IPPIS in the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Olufehinti Olusegun, who disclosed the figures in a recent interview stated that so far 512 Ministries and Agencies have complied with the directive of the President on moving to the Integrated payroll system, which now contains the record of 740, 000 workers.
He said that as a result of the elimination of ghost workers from the federal payroll, government agencies and departments were able to employ 70, 000 new workers.
He attributed these achievements of the IPPIS department to the political will President Muhammadu Buhari and the support he extended to the Office of the Account General of the Federation for the diligent implementation of the project.
One significant reason for which the Accountant General of the Federation urged the MDAs to comply with the directive of the President to migrate their payrolls and personnel records to IPPIS is that, failure to comply will lead to the stoppage of salaries for the staff of the stubborn MDAs when the deadline to do so expires.
MDAs that have not yet obeyed the Presidential directive should do so as a way of demonstrating their support for policies and initiatives introduced by the federal government to safeguard and use the country’s financial resources for national development. Many Nigerians will also believe that compliance with the Presidential directive is a proof of loyalty to the government and evidence of willingness to contribute to the achievements of its objectives, including curbing corruption.
The IPPIS and other financial management tools were introduced by the Federal Government to stem the rising tide of siphoning of public money from the Treasury through various tricks. The tricks include the phenomenon of paying salaries and allowances to non-existent employees, the padding of contract sums and duplication of payment of wages to legitimate workers.
One other public financial management reform tool is the Treasury Single Account (TSA), which is a centralized account for the electronic payment to, and collections of revenues by the government, through its MDAs. The TSA enables the government to see all monies coming into the Consolidated Revenue Fund account continuously.
The Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) too is an aspect of the public financial management reform, which keeps constant surveillance on the payroll to ensure that it is not infiltrated by the insertion of ghost workers. It also audits the pay as you go pension payroll and in the process discovered fake pensioners, deceased and retired personnel who were still being paid salaries. They were removed and some of the money stolen through this fraud recovered.
In the course of its work, PICA has contributed in the elimination of 50, 000 workers from the payroll in 2016 and saved billions of Naira that would have been paid to such fake workers. Many civil servants involved in fraudulent activities that were detected by the PICA implementation team are facing prosecution before courts of law.
In a nutshell, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation deserves the continued support and cooperation of the federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies in discharging its mandates. This is simply because the objectives and outcomes of the discharging of those mandates had in a single case saved the country N206 billion in two years that would have gone down the drains of fraud. More of this success is desirable and essential in our match toward a better society.
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