Revenue shortage: FG must capitalise on IPPIS, devise other techniques to flush out ghost workers

As Nigeria suffers from dwindling revenue with the Government gradually becoming handicapped to fund critical capital projects to propel economic growth, the submissions before the Government for rescue out of the entanglements have been forthcoming in line with the pressing necessity.

One of the very resounding submissions has been the need to cut cost of governance, as well as block leakages within the system. While there are faces of in-roads to the perspective, the subject of the spread of ghost workers has been one of deep concern.

Over the years, the grip of unidentified and unverified workers receiving pays from the system has held the government coffers to ransom. Having noted the depth of the grip of the scourge on government expenditure, various measures over time have been conceived to sanitise the system from ghost workers.

Recently, the government introduced the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) as a measure to check out the heavy grip of ghost workers on the system. On its measure of implementation, recently the Federal Government disclosed it will on Friday, 27th, October, 2023, stop the salaries of any public officer whose records could not be verified on the IPPIS.

According to a statement signed by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, a two-week verification, which will end on Friday, October 27, 2023, was put in place as an act of magnanimity for officers who did not participate in the earlier verifications.

“Adequate arrangements were put in place for a smooth exercise in designated areas of the FCT, however, the officers’ impatience and lack of orderliness in the first two days made the exercise rowdy. This has been duly addressed and the two-week exercise, scheduled to end on Friday, October 27, 2023, is progressing very well.

“The verification of records of all civil servants will be finalised at the end of the ongoing exercise and any officer whose record could not be verified will be delisted from the payroll of the government,” the statement read.

It was recalled that in 2013, the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF), being the repository of official records and information on all public servants, was saddled with the responsibility of cleansing the record on the payroll. Leveraging technology, the Office recalled it opened a verification portal in April 2017 and directed all public servants to carry out online updates of their records.

The Office added it carried out aggressive sensitisation and publicity via official, conventional, and social media. According to the statement, an initial period of three months was given for compliance, which was extended to one year, May 2018, to enable all officers to update their records.

The statement added, “Sequel to another wide publicity accompanied by numerous pre-verification sensitisation visits by IPPIS staff to Ministries, extra-ministerial Departments, and Agencies nationwide, the second phase of the exercise, the physical verification, commenced in 2018.

“In this regard, 500 staff from the OHCSF were trained and deployed, in well-communicated and coordinated phases, to the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT between 2018 and 2019 to enable officers to carry out the physical verification in their states and save them from traveling to Abuja.”

The Office further maintained that some erring officers’ pleas to be given the last opportunity to comply were granted, adding that the portal was, therefore, reopened from October 3-13, 2023, for them to update their records and now to Friday, October 27, 2023, before action is taken on defaulters.

It is pertinent that the government sanitise the system to free the purse from leakages which have made funding of capital projects compromised. This has become a necessity as the pressure to revamp the economy has become a matter of urgency. The resort to loans to fund projects is absurd, when the system could be sanitised and freed from illegal holdings to save up funds for project execution.

It is high time the government woke up to formidable initiatives to free the system from leakages that have kept on frustrating the growth process. This will speak more prudence than the cyclical resort to loans which have left the Country in huge debt, which many have continued to fear would throw the Country into a trap.