IPPIS: 3,657 civil servants under probe by ICPC – Yemi-Esan

The Head of Service of the Federation (HoS), Folashade Yemi-Esan has said that the Federal Government has saved a total of N2 billion from the implementation of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System, IPPIS.

According to her, about N180 million is being saved on a monthly basis adding that about N2 billion was saved annually from the implementation of the IPPIS.

She also disclosed that a total of 3,657 civil servants are facing the Independent and Corrupt Practices and related offences Commission (ICPC) for prosecution for failing to get verified on the IPPIS.

According to her, a total of 61,446 civil servants in the core Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have now been verified.

Yemi-Esan revealed this at the ministerial media briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Thursday.

She also stressed that another 1,618 applicants were found to have used illegal or fake letters while 874 officers have been suspended from IPPIS platform.

Yemi-Esan, however, promised that the payment platform could accommodate the salaries of university lecturers who have since rejected it in preference for the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) which is yet to pass relevant integrity tests.

The Head of Service regretted that some former permanent secretaries have been jailed for fraud, stating that the country’s body of Permanent Secretaries has dissected what led to their downfall to stop the trend.

She told permanent secretaries to be more careful on their elevation and to ensure a holistic adherence to procure rules.

“You know, the position of a permanent secretary and an accounting officer is a very precarious one.

“When Permanent Secretaries are appointed, the first thing I tell them is that your position as permanent secretary is one that shouldn’t be celebrated. It is one that should make you become even more cautious.

“This is because even when somebody else has committed a crime, it is the Permanent Secretary that will be held liable for that. That is what the Procurement Act has done to permanent secretaries.

“We had a procurement retreat, where jailed permanent secretaries were talked about in very great detail.

“I think it is called vicarious liability. When somebody else commits a crime, it is the Permanent Secretary that will be held responsible and that is what the Procurement Act says today.

“And that is even the case of the female Permanent Secretary (a former Perm sec at the Ministry of Interior, Anastasia Daniel-Nwobia jailed in respect of the charges of fraud arising from the conduct of the botched Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise in 2014), because we had to get the details of the judgment so that we could examine it and see where permanent secretaries should be more careful

“And we saw that even the judge said there was no intent to defraud the government by the permanent secretary but because the Procurement Act was not followed as it is stipulated, and as the Bureau of Public Procurement also wrote that the Procurement Act was not followed in details

“So those are the issues that we face and we are learning lessons from all those cases. I think that is the most important thing. When things happen, we should learn lessons from them, and be more careful.

“And that is what we have done.

“We had a retreat, where we dissected those judgments. And we actually learnt a lot of lessons from that. I actually went to speak with some of those permanent secretaries (jailed) and the impression they gave is that looking back now, maybe they should even have retired when those things were happening, and that it would have been much better for them than going through all they have gone through

“So, we are learning lessons from all those things as a body of permanent secretaries. And the good thing is that the permanent secretaries have now are not transactional permanent secretaries anymore.

“They’re transformative, permanent secretaries. And I’m sure that we will not have any of these problems with any of the permanent secretaries today,” she said.