By Adedapo Adesanya
The House of Representatives has moved to investigate allegations that the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) is riddled with fraud and some irregularities.
It was reported that these have led to the non-payment of salaries and allowances of federal civil servants.
The Public Accounts Committee of the House said the move was necessary to sanitise the system. The committee, while engaging tertiary institutions and other agencies on their financial audit reports for 2018-2019 on Tuesday, December 1, said it was alarmed by the leakages and sharp practices observed in its earlier engagement with other agencies, particularly the J.S. Tarkar University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State.
The Chairman of the Committee, Mr Wole Oke, while drilling the Rector of Auchi Polytechnic, Edo State, Mr Zubair Mustapha, on the expenditure and financial audit reports of the tertiary institution for the years 2018 and 2019, stated that efforts would be made to get to the root of the matter.
The Rector of the school told the Committee that pending salaries for the years under review were due to anomalies in the IPPIS, a salary payment system introduced by the President Muhammadu Buhari government in 2017.
According to him, “The backlog of salaries is from people who were not captured by IPPIS,” to which the Chairman said: “That’s why we must look into IPPIS. We were told here that the salaries of personnel of the University of Agriculture, Makurdi(Benue State), went into accounts of staff of Jigawa State.”
“IPPIS must be investigated to detect some of the irregularities observed in the system. We have observed some serious irregularities in the system,” he said.
The committee then resolved to write the Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, and the Accountant General of the Federation, Mr Ahmed Idris, to explain alleged sleaze in the federal staff payment system.
A motion for the inquest on IPPIS was raised by Mr Ibrahim Abdullahi, a member representing Dutse/Kiyawa Federal Constituency of Jigawa State on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Besides, the Public Accounts Committee also summoned the External Auditors of the accounts of Auchi Polytechnic over discrepancies in the audited reports of the school, for 2018-2019.
The committee also rejected the provided audited accounts for 2018-2019 from the Federal Polytechnic, Illaro as presented by its Rector, Mr Olusegun Aluko.
The Rector of the school, who claimed that the institution generated only N1.91 billion in 2019, however, failed to give a detailed and technical breakdown of the expenditure of the money and audits of the accounts to boot.
Representatives of the Office of the Auditor of the Federation, Mr Anthony Ayine, at the investigative session also strongly rejected his presentation before the committee.
Consequently, the panel placed the institution on status of enquiry in order to determine its financial status.
Dipo Olowookere