The federal government says, it has, in the last one year, uncovered 1,618 officers in the civil service with “illegal/fake employment letters” and have been deleted them from the integration personnel payroll and information system (IPPIS).
This revelation was made by the Head of civil service of the federation, Folasade Yemi-Esan on Wednesday in Abuja, during a media parley organized as part of programs marking the 2024 civil service week.
She disclosed that through physical verification conducted by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government, has reduced the staff strength from over 100,000 to 69,308 who have been verified and are on the payroll.
“(The verification exercise) exposed 1,618 civil servants with ‘fake/illegal’ employment letters.”
“69,308 civil servants who participated in the compulsory verification exercise have been fully integrated into the IPPIS after their verifications.”
The head of service also said her fight against corruption in the civil service had led the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission to identify and investigate over 3,600 public servants.
“There are efforts to tackle Nigerians who have relocated abroad doing new jobs but are still under the payroll of the civil service. The Federal Government is going hard on them, as many of them are voluntarily resigning after the physical verifications,” she said.
She further disclosed she did an overview of the report sent to her and discovered that a number of workers who had relocated out of the country were still earning salaries, noting that most were not even in the core ministries but mostly in the parastatals.
She said civil servants who were outside the country without official permission and still on the payroll would be sacked after the ongoing verification was completed.
“It is a Nigerian thing. We are running hard against the culture that tolerates it. Outsiders don’t know the bashing we get every day trying to do the right thing. I expect that once the verification report comes anybody who is not in the country automatically loses his job. What we discovered in the last month of that verification is that most of them are now resigning their appointment, which is a good development,” Yemi-Esan said.
