The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) has directed over 17,000 of its members, allegedly delisted from the monthly payroll of the Federal Government under the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), to remain calm as measures are being taken to address the situation.
Recall that apprehension was building up among civil servants when news filtered in that over 17,000 government employees were said to have been delisted from the IPPIS for failing to comply with a verification exercise spanning over five years.
Reacting to the development on Tuesday, the National President of the ASCSN, Comrade Tommy Etim Okon, alleged that there were also some discrepancies in the IPPIS verification process, disclosing that the names of personal assistants (PAs), special advisers (SAs), and, in some cases, ministers who had served in successive governments were found in the portal.
Comrade Okon, while addressing a press conference in Abuja, also criticised his members, wondering why most genuine civil servants feigned ignorance of the verification exercise while it lasted.
He, however, noted that the office of the Head of Service of the Federation has given a one-week grace period for affected employees who were erroneously omitted from the IPPIS portal to forward their documents for update, provided they had genuine cases.
He said, “We called your attention to what we heard or information at our disposal just a few days ago. We received information that over 17,000 workers in the core civil service did not carry out the online verification done by the office of the Head of Service of the Federation.
“Quickly, we swung into action to interface with the government through the HoSF. That informed the reasons because we have seen a lot of apprehensions from our members, receiving several phone calls.
We also looked at the timing because of the socio-economic challenges.
“We went deep into the document, where we also realised that even in some government agencies, the names of PAs, SAs, and some ministers were included in the IPPIS portal, whereas those people were political office holders in their own rights in various regimes.”
Speaking further on the lifeline available to the affected workers, he said a committee has already been constituted in the office of the HOSF to handle such cases, while calling on those with genuine complaints, who had initially done the online verification on the portal of the IPPIS, to submit a scanned copy of their document to the email that has been provided.
Comrade Okon, however, said the one-week deadline given by the HoSF to fully comply with the verification exercise was rather too limited, stressing that the government should, in its magnanimity, extend it because of the rigours involved.
His words were, “You know it is always said that when you want to kill a dog, you give it a bad name. That maybe justifies the inclusion of SAs and PAs in the bad name in the quote.
They came up with the claim that civil servants don’t come to work; they just sit at home and collect salaries. We say capital no to that.
“This information is very important to our members, and we are calling all our members to remain calm because the HoSF is doing her best to see that those workers who were genuinely captured and verified with evidence of clearance will be brought back to the payroll.
“The HoSF has given a window of one week to ensure that if you were genuinely verified on the online portal of IPPIS, you should submit the scanned copy to the email that has been provided.
You can also submit the document to the committee, which has already been set up in the office of the HoSF.
Let me also say this to our members: this exercise was not carried out last week. It has been over 5 years.
But one is taken aback by why some of us became recalcitrant about things that affected our careers and even our families.
“We know that a civil servant is responsible for more than 10 people in the family. When you take into cognizance the extended African culture, you realise that a civil servant does not only earn his salary but does so with every other member of the family.
So, on this note, we call on the government to exercise restraint over this exercise and give a good window so that we can select those who visited the portal and did the online verification and certification, whose names are appearing in this document so that names should be excluded.”
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