Job Racketeering: Reps Summon Security Chiefs, Heads Of NCC, NIMC, NCS Others

The House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee probing employment racketeering and gross mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) by Federal Government agencies on Tuesday, has directed security chiefs as well as all the intelligence agencies, among other stakeholders, appear before it on Wednesday (Today).

Hon. Yusuf Gagdi, chairman of the committee gave the directive in Abuja.

Hon. Gagdi who expressed displeasure over the absence though they were duly invited, said: “Let me say this to all agencies we have invited, I think we need to read their names clearly here.

“They are the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, the Nigerian Communication Commission, the Nigerian Post Services, the Nigerian frequency management Council, Galaxy Backbone, National Identity Management Commission, Nigerian Correctional Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Fire Service, Nigerian Police Force, Defence Intelligence Agency, State Security Service, National Intelligence Agency, Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, Nigerian Army, Nigerian Airforce, Nigerian Navy must appear tomorrow (Wednesday) since they have failed to appear today. This is the ruling of the committee,” Hon Gagdi said.

In her presentation, the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) who also denied allegations that her office was engaging in the enrolment of ghost workers for personal gains, disclosed that her office is working hard to fish out ghost workers who existed in the system before the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.

She said: “Having realised that this is a system that needs to be reviewed, on my assumption of duty, I met a series of issues around IPPIS and that made me organize stakeholders with all the service providers around the IPPIS, where the service providers came and made presentations, questions were asked.

The stakeholders meeting ran for two weeks where all the service providers were scheduled for each day and came with their technical hands while the technical team of the OAGF was also on the ground where we were discussing a series of issues about the system.

“And after the meeting, we further broke down into technical committees where a series of issues identified from the stakeholders’ meeting was subjected to further discussions.

“I have just received an interim report of this meeting, which we are looking at to see how we address all the issues that are emanating from this engagement to enable us to take further action on the management of the IPPIS.”

She said only 640 out of over 900 agencies of the Federal Government were captured on the IPPIS.

“As of today we have 640 MDAs registered on the IPPIS, enrolled on the IPPIS, because there are some that are not on the IPPIS like all the security agencies, federal government-owned enterprises that generate revenue, they are not on IPPIS.