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Blocking leakages in the system, the Federal Government on Wednesday revealed that it has uncovered 1,618 officers in the Civil Service with illegal and fake employment letters and have been deleted them from the Integration Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS) in the last one year.
This was disclosed by the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, during a media parley organized as part of programmes marking the 2024 Civil Service Week in Abuja.
It was themed: "Education an African fit for the 21s Century: Building Resilient Education System for Increased Access to Inclusive Longlife, Quality and relevant Learning in Africa."
Through physical verification conducted by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of Government, she said, the once over-bloated federal civil service has now been brought down from over 100,000 to 69,308 staff now verified and on the payroll.
Apart from the ghost workers who were parading fake employment letters, she said, there was also the issue of some civil servants who “japa” for greener pastures in overseas that were caught napping during the physical verification exercise.
She said some of them who came into the country for the verification exercise like one or two weeks after the exercise had been conducted under the pretext that they were not aware of the scheduled physical verification exercise, were graciously given two weeks to appear for the verification exercise.
The Head of Civil Service of the Federation, noted that instead of waiting for the two weeks in addition to the days they had already spent in Nigeria, “a lot of them tendered their resignation letters because no UK organization would afford to give two additional weeks in the country to perfect the verification process."
Speaking on the issue of endemic corruption in the public service, Yemi-Esan said her office has been working in synergy with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in ensuring that underhand dealings were eliminated from the system.
On the efforts to reposition the Federal Civil Service for optimum and quality service to Nigerians, She disclosed that the entire service would be fully digitized.
by the end of 2025.
According to her, significant progress has been made by the current administration to transform and digitize work processes.
“From the service wide perspective, all MDAs, all other ministries are also running with the digitalization programme and there are different stages of implementation, but they have a mandate for all to achieve full migration by the end of 2025,” she stated.