The latest audit report on Federal MDAs’ salaries and emoluments has indicated that a total sum of N195.94 billion was overpaid as personnel costs to employees enrolled on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) in 2016.
The anomaly occurred despite the IPPIS’ acclaimed robustness and capacity to prevent frauds in public finance
The fiscal blunder was discovered in the 2016 annual audit report prepared and just published by the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation.
The report was submitted to the National Assembly in June this year through a letter to the Clerk of the National Assembly, with reference, C/AR.2016/CONF/VOL.1/01.
According to the latest report by the Auditor General indicated that a review of funds released by the Funds Department in the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) to the IPPIS reflected anomalies in respect of the salaries paid out under the scheme.
For instance, while the IPPIS had a total of N457.3bn as actual performance for personnel costs in respect of the 450 MDAs, the amount released by the Funds Department in the OAGF totalled N421.28bn, representing a difference of N36.03bn.
The audit report also indicated that findings by the office of the Auditor General, as a result of the observations by auditors, after necessary reconciliations had been made, reflected “irregular balance of N656.43bn being presented to us as the amount released by the IPPIS, meaning an over funding of the IPPIS by N195.94bn out of N460.49bn stated as the amount paid.”
The Auditor General, Anthony Ayine, stated that his office was unable to verify the accuracy of the balances.
The report indicated further that instances of the IPPIS payments and extra-budgetary expenditure becoming more than the amount released by the OAGF reflected an inherent weakness in budgeting and in accounting systems for expenditure.
Providing details of the extra budgetary expenditure during the year in review, the report stated that for the MDAs under the administrative sector, the sum of N37.27bn was approved for them while the MDAs incurred a total of N55.41bn as actual personnel cost.
Similarly, the report showed that the MDAs in the economic sector, got budgetary approval of N165bn but spent N517.72bn while the MDAs under the law and justice sector got budgetary approval for N710.05m but spent N13.96bn.
According to the report, while the social sector MDAs had budgetary provisions for N94.65bn for personnel costs, their expenditure for the year stood at N119.24bn.
The report stated further: “During the examination of salaries and wages component of the Statement of Financial Performance, the following observations were made.
“The actual personnel cost of some MDAs for the year 2016, when compared with the personnel cost budget, revealed extra budgetary expenditure of N408,708,433,835.25.
“It was also observed that 12 MDAs had actual personnel cost for the financial year without any approved budget, which resulted in seeming extra budgetary expenditure of N6,049,260,633.08”, it added.
The report listed MDAs that incurred personnel costs without budgetary approval to include Foreign Mission (Tel Aviv Christian Pilgrims), N143.68m; Permanent Mission Caracas, N54.54m; Military Pension Board, N2.08m; and Permanent Mission of D-8 Secretariat in Turkey, N60.58m.
Others are, Presidential Technical Committee on Land Reforms, N5m; and Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, N11.46m; Consular Mission in Cameroon, N35.94m; Police Pension Board, N41.88m; Public Complaints Commission, N2.79bn; the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), N129.2m; Kaduna Polytechnic and Institute of Child Health in Benin paid N2.76bn and N195,000 as salaries without approval, respectively.
The IPPIS implementation, which commenced in 2007 with seven MDAs, is one of the Federal Government’s public finance reforms measures aimed at determining the actual strength of federal public sector workforce and assist in yearly budgetary planning for them.
Specifically, it was designed to undertake human resources management activities from recruitment to separation, payroll and pension processing.
