The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been vindicated again as many civil servants across several Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) including the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) were suspended for alleged salary padding on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
The allegation was confirmed by RMAFC Chairman, Mohammed Bello Shehu, who said those identified had been placed on suspension pending investigation.
The affected workers were found to have manipulated the IPPIS system to pad their salaries above their threshold.
Recall the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) against the IPPIS was part of ASUU’s demand in its last strike which was suspended in October 2022.
IPPIS which was conceptualized in October 2006 government as one of its Reform Programme, to curb corruption such as payment of salaries to ghost workers, as being said to have contributed to about 75% of problems affecting Nigeria’s university system.
A report by Nigeria’s Auditor General revealed that as of November 2020, more than 14 years after the rollout of IPPIS, a fraud of over N3.96 billion was identified. Recently, Nigeria’s former Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris was detained for an alleged N90 billion fraud that involved comprising the IPPIS.
Aside from the aforementioned frauds, IPPIS does not cater for the peculiarities of ASUU members, such as their earned allowances. In a 2019 FGN/ASUU agreement, the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) was introduced by ASUU to make up for the gaps within IPPIS’s operations.
However, in the new development, an Assistant Director at the OAGF in charge in charge of staff salaries was alleged to have connived with some staff to pad up the salaries of unspecified number of lower level staff.
The scheme was discovered when a level 7 officer whose salary should be in the range of N60,000 was paid over N400,000, which was in the range of a salary package of a Director.
The salary padding racket had been on for a while among a small clique of civil servants in different MDAs with the IPPIS office in the OAGF as the epicentre.
Reacting to the development, the OAGF in a statement said it was, “in receipt of enquiries over alleged ‘salary padding’ on the IPPIS involving some unspecified MDAs.”
“In the meantime, a staff suspected to be connected with the breach has been suspended to allow for thorough investigation. “All necessary steps are being taken to strengthen the controls around the IPPIS payment platform and an independent forensic audit of the entire payroll system is underway to ascertain if the reported breach is isolated or widespread,” Shehu said.
He said if the indicted officials were found culpable of the salary padding allegations, they would be handed over to the appropriate authorities for prosecution.
