The Federal Government of Nigeria has revealed that it has in the last one year uncovered 1,618 officers in the Civil Service with illegal and fake employment letters and have deleted them from the Integration Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS).
The Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan made this known in Abuja on Wednesday, during a media parley organized as part of the programmes marking the 2024 Civil Service Week, with the theme: Education an African fit for the 21s Century: Building Resilient Education System for Increased Access to Inclusive Longlife, Quality and relevant Learning in Africa.
She also disclosed that through physical verification conducted by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of Government, the once over-bloated federal civil service has now been brought down from over 100,000 to 69,308 who have been verified and are on the payroll.
Dr. Yemi-Esan revealed that apart from the ghost workers who were parading fake employment letters, there was also the issue of civil servants who “japa” for greener pasture overseas that were caught napping during the physical verification exercise.
According to her, some of the workers who came into the country for the verification exercise like one or two weeks after the exercise had been conducted under the pretext that they were not aware of the scheduled physical verification exercise, were graciously given two weeks to appear for the verification exercise.
Curiously, she said that instead of waiting for the two weeks in addition to the days they had already spent in Nigeria, “a lot of them tendered their resignation letters because no UK organization would afford to give two additional weeks in the country to perfect the verification process.
On the issue of endemic corruption in the public service, Dr. Yemi-Esan said that her office has been working in synergy with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in ensuring that underhand dealings were eliminated from the system.
Dr. Folashade also spoke on the efforts to reposition the Federal Civil Service for optimum and quality service to Nigerians, while expressing confidence that by the end of 2025, the entire service would be fully digitized.
She disclosed that significant progress has been made by the current administration to transform and digitize work processes.
“From the service wide perspective, all MDAs, all other ministries are also running with the digitalization programme and there are different stages of implementation, but they have a mandate for all to achieve full migration by the end of 2025,” she stated.
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