Allegation of bribery: Accusation is wild, cheap blackmail — AGF replies ASUU

By Uthman Salami

The office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) has declared the allegation made by the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) over bribe-for-salaries as cheap and “a sweeping blanket allegation seemingly to blackmail the AGF’s office.”

This was stated in a statement signed by the Director of Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) for the AGF, Dr. Nsijak Ben.

The AGF office was reacting to an earlier publication made by ASUU’s President, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, accusing the that the IPPIS was engulfed with corruption especially by some of the AGF’s officials who were accused of collecting bribe before payment of salaries were done.

The office maintained that the ASUU’s president, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi should have reeled out the names as well as other concrete evidence and how much ASUU’s members paid as bribe.

The office also added that it is very much unethical for any staff of the IPPIS to demand for bribe in the course of discharging his or her duties, saying that such act has never and will happened in the exalted office.

The office, however, admitted that there were few cases of “failed payments of sabbatical entitlements which is less than 0.05per cent in the payroll system and effort is on to clear them.”

The office explained that this error was due to “mismatch of account numbers with account names and absence of unique identifiers in the submissions by the respective universities.”

The office further urged the general public to disregard what it described as “wild allegation and cheap blackmail” from the ASUU’s president and urged them to continue to support Federal Government admirable policy.