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From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Head of Service of the Federation (HoS), Folashade Yemi-Esan, has disclosed that a total of 3,657 civil servants have been taken before the Independent and Corrupt Practices and related offences Commission (ICPC) for prosecution for failing to get verified on the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
This is even as she said that a total of 61,446 civil servants in the core Ministries, Departments and Agencuea (MDAs) have now been verified.
She made these disclosures
Thursday while appearing on the Ministerial Media Briefing organized by the Presidential Communications Team at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Yemi-Esan also said another 1,618 applicants were found to have used illegal or fake letters while 874 officers have been suspended from IPPIS platform.
She added that about N180 million is being saved on a monthly basis and about N2 billion annually from the implementation of the IPPIS.
The Head of Service also assured that the payment platform can accommodate the salaries of university lecturers who have since rejected it in preference for University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) which is yet to pass relevant integrity tests.
Yemi-Esan, while regretting that some former permanent secretaries have been jailed for fraud, she said that the country’s body of permanent secretaries have dissected what led to their downfall so that they won’t be a repeat.
According to her,
She said: “You know, the position of a permanent secretary and an accounting officer is a very precarious one. When permanent secretaries are appointed, the first thing I tell them is that your position as permanent secretary is one that shouldn’t be celebrated, is one that should make you become even more cautious. Because even when somebody else has committed a crime, it is the Permanent Secretary that will be held liable for that. That is what the Procurement Act has done to permanent secretaries.
“We had a procurement retreat, where that (jailed permanent secretaries) was talked about in very great details. I think it’s called precarious liability, when even somebody else commits a crime it is the Permanent Secretary that will be held responsible that is what the Procurement Act says today. And that is why even for the female Permanent Secretary (a former Perm sec at the Ministry of Interior, Anastasia Daniel-Nwobia jailed in respect of the charges of fraud arising from the conduct of the botched Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise in 2014), because we had to get the details of the judgment so that we could examine it and see where permanent secretaries should be more careful.
“And we saw that even the judge said there was no intent to defraud government by the permanent secretary. But because the Procurement Act was not followed as it is stipulated, and as the Bureau of Public Procurement also wrote that the Procurement Act was not followed in details.
“So those are the issues that we face and we are learning lessons from all those cases, I think that is the most important thing. When things happen we should learn lessons from them, and be more careful. And that is what we have done.
“We had a retreat, where we dissected those judgments. And we actually learnt a lot of lessons from that. Because I actually went to speak with some of those permanent secretaries (jailed) and the impression they gave is that looking back now, maybe they should even have retired when those things were happening and that would have been much better for them than going through all they have gone through.
“So we are learning lessons from all those things as a body of permanent secretaries. And the good thing is that the permanent secretaries have now are not transactional permanent secretaries anymore. They’re transformative, permanent secretaries. And I’m sure that we will not have any of these problems with any of the permanent secretaries today.”
Yemi-Esan also explained that government decided to abolish the Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER) with a new method known as Performance Management System, in adherence to the directive by President Muhammadu Buhari.
She said the new system, which is in line with global best practices, will go a long way in rewarding the performance of public workers.
“Because we are not proud of the APER system, we thought that it is important to have a Performance Management System that actually rewards performance and not one where you will just fill a form and submit, just for promotion alone.
“So, we have begun implementing an ideal performance management system and because it has been decentralised, various ministries are at different levels of implementation of this. It is worthy to note that some agencies have even actually gone beyond what we are doing in the ministries and have instituted Performance Management System in their agencies. Ekiti State is also working on Performance Management System,” she said.
She noted with dismay that the objectives of APER system in the public service was very noble at the beginning but the implementation later became very defective thus denying the country the benefits derivable from a productive and performance output framework.
“The journey began in 2021 where the President had a retreat with Ministers on the nine priority areas of his administration and the institutional performance management was measured effectively and he gave the directive that the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation should institutionalise the employee Performance Management System in the public service to replace the APER. So, we were energized to do so,” She stated.
The Head of Civil Service added that based on the new Performance Management System, civil servants will be assessed quarterly.
She said Nigeria is planning to get its entire public service gets certified by the International Standard for Standardization (ISO).
“What we are planning is that by the grace of God, the whole of the civil service will become ISO certified therefore, we have advised that all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should go on to the ISO certification with the Permanent Secretaries as top drivers in their MDAs,” she said.
