Alhaji Ahmed Idris, Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF)
Alhaji Ahmed Idris, Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF)

In line with the efforts of the Federal Government to promote transparency and accountability in the service through a centralized payroll system, the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) Alhaji Ahmed Idris has commenced the implementation of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) in the Nigeria Police Force.

The exercise involves the verification of all Officers and the Civilian Staff who are on the payroll of the Nigerian Police Force and whose salaries are being paid in Kaduna and Ogun states. The exercise aimed, among others, at identifying and weeding out those staff that have retired, died, those without genuine documents as well as duplicated names, with a view to having a clean payroll for the Nigeria Police Force.

The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) is carrying out the exercise in conjunction with Nigeria Police Force and the Police Service Commission.  The exercise took place simultaneously in eight locations in Kaduna State and five locations in Ogun State.
According to a press statement from the OAGF, the verification of all staff in the payroll of the Nigeria Police Force in all other states and locations will follow immediately.

The IPPIS is one of the Federal Government Reform Initiatives conceived to transform the Nigerian Public Service and make it more efficient and effective in service delivery. The IPPIS initiative is aimed at improving the management of human resources and providing a centralized payroll system in the service. The project implementation commenced at the Bureau of Public Service Reforms before its management was transferred to the OAGF in October 2008.

The objectives of the programme among others are to centralise payment of salaries; facilitate convenient staff remuneration payment with minimal wastage; facilitate easy storage, update and retrieve personnel record for administrative and pension processing; as well as aid manpower planning and budgeting.

Other objectives of the scheme are to ascertain actual personnel emoluments of the Federal Government employees; prompt deduction and remittance to accounts of all third parties such as PFAs, NHF, and PAYE.

The benefits of IPPIS programme include: prompt and easy payment of salaries to public servants; storage of personnel records in a centralised database; ascertain actual personnel costs of Federal Public servants; biometric capturing of all staff;  elimination of ghost workers in the Public Service; prompt remittances of third parties deductions to PFAs, NHF and PAYE etc; and  substantial savings in personnel costs by Federal Government which are being used for Overhead and Capital releases to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

The MDAs on board IPPIS enjoy the flexibility to carry out some basic operations on the IPPIS Application. This is to enable them execute some transactions, without recourse to IPPIS secretariat. These, among others, include suspension/re-instatement into payroll, changes of bank records and change of grade levels/steps. These operations are, however, subject to necessary approvals.

Already, a total of 447 MDAs are on IPPIS including all the core Ministries, Medical and Allied Health Institutions, Agencies under Ministry of Science and Technology, among others. According to OAGF, 56 of them came on board in 2016 and savings of over N220 billion have been recorded by IPPIS from inception to date.

The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun has been giving support to IPPIS in ensuring that this directive is carried out. The outstanding MDAs include the Nigeria Police Force and other Para-Military Agencies (Nigeria Prisons, Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps and Federal Fire Services), the Military (Army, Navy and Air Force) and all Federal Institutions (Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education) as well as Agencies in the Petroleum sector.  It was gathered that plans have reached different stages of their enrolment processes and are to be completed before the end of 2016 financial year.

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