The House of Representatives has decided to form an ad hoc committee to look into federal ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) as well as tertiary institutions regarding their alleged poor management of hiring personnel, employment racketeering, and violations of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
This came after Oluwole Oke (Osun PDP) had successfully introduced a resolution in the plenary on Wednesday.
The House took notice of the efforts made by the federal government to address other systemic abuses, including the threat posed by ghost workers.
The IPPIS had to be implemented as a result, it was included, in order to help catch a lot of ghost workers.
Oke, who was introducing the motion, said that widespread corruption had crept into the hiring and employment procedures for the public sector.
He said, “Public institutions have since stopped the process of advertising jobs and vacancies. Even in the few instances where adverts are published, the slots are already commoditised and available for the highest bidders.
“In other words, most public institutions now sell employment positions, notwithstanding the qualification of the applicant and the ability of the applicant to perform optimally on the job.
“They have also crafted methods that are being used to circumvent the BVN technology. This state of affairs is costing the Federal Government of Nigeria billions of naira monthly in salary payments to ghost workers and illegal payments to several civil servants across cadres.
“This poses a major risk and has indeed constituted itself into a channel for the underperformance of the Nigerian public service.
“Historically and specifically, since 1960 to the 1990s, Nigeria boasted one of the best crops of public servants in the world, and service delivery was at the highest level of professionalism.
“However, this situation has since changed, largely because of the method of recruitment and the quality of recruitment into these public institutions, which is driven by fraud, abuse, corruption and pecuniary considerations.”
The House therefore resolved to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the MDAS, parastatals, and tertiary institutions and report back within four weeks for further legislative action.