1,618 ‘Phoney’ FG Workers In Stormy Waters, Face ICPC Probe
- Embargo on their salaries for now
- Reps move against illegal recruitments in Buhari’s years
BY EDMOND ODOK – In what tongues are already wagging could be the subtle commencement of investigation into activities surrounding the eight years’ tenure of immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, over 1,618 ‘phoney’ workers currently in the Federal Government’s employ have a lot of explanations to do.
These ‘civil servants’ are now ‘special guests’ of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) as they battle to authenticate the employment letters in their possession.
According to the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, the over 1,618 staff with fake employment letters are already having their day with the anti-graft agency as part of efforts to smash the notorious employment syndicate, sanitise the system and bring all culprits to book.
The Head of Civil Service of the federation, Folashade Yemi-Esan, told journalists in Abuja that those with the phoney employment letters were uncovered following the control mechanisms introduced to address loopholes identified in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
Arising from this discovery, it is now bad news for everyone involved as the affected personnel have been yanked off the IPPIS platform in the interim pending the conclusion of investigations by the ICPC.
Already, insiders are hinting that aside from not accessing their salaries from the government in the meantime, any of the workers identified to have entered the Service through a compromised process, popularly referred to as the “backdoor”, would be made to vomit whatever accrued to him or her illegally during the period under investigation, especially in relations to the last eight years of the Buhari-led administration.
The Head of Service and the ICPC collaboration comes on the heels of the House of Representatives’ decision requesting that Chief Executive Officers of Federal Government Institutions and parastatals should appear before its Ad-hoc Committee investigating the recruitment into various Public Institutions, including Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the now privately-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) from 2015 till date.
In a recent resolution during one of its plenary, the Green Chamber moved to investigate what the lawmakers termed the mismanagement of personnel recruitment, employment racketeering and gross mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and other institutions.
Also the Committee’s terms of reference cover probing recruitments into various public tertiary institutions, including teaching hospitals, Federal Medical Centres, Neuro-Psychiatric Hospitals, Orthopedic Hospitals, National Eye Centre and National Ear Care Centre among others.
The lower Legislative Chamber is also not taking its eyes away from scrutinising employments for all Federal Universities; Polytechnics; Colleges of Education; Federal Government Colleges; Research institutes; River Basin Development Authorities; and Commissions directly under the presidency’s supervision.
