IPPIS verification uncovers 1,618 fake appointments

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folashade Yemi-Esan has said that the verification exercises of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System have exposed 1,618 civil servants with ‘fake/illegal’ employment letters.

Yemi-Esan also said that “69,308 civil servants who participated in the compulsory verification exercise have been fully integrated into the IPPIS after their verifications.”

She said this on Wednesday in Abuja, during a parley with media executives in commemoration of the 2024 Civil Service Week Celebrations.

She also said that the verification exercise, “exposed 1,618 civil servants with ‘fake/illegal’ employment letters.”

Yemi-Esan said that as part of efforts to build the capacity and talent of civil servants, 8,905 workers were trained under the Structured Mandatory Assessment-Based Training Programme in the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan.

She said her fight against corruption in the civil service has led the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission to identify and investigate over 3,600 public servants.

“There are efforts to tackle Nigerians who have relocated abroad to do 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,” Yemi-Esan said.

She said that civil servants who are outside the country without official permission and still on the payroll will be sacked after the ongoing verification is completed.

She said she did an overview of the report sent to her and discovered that several workers who had gone out of the country and were earning salaries were not even in the core ministries but mostly in the parastatals.

“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.