By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
The Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dr. Dasuki Arabi on Thursday said that the introduction of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system (IPPIS) has brought several benefits to the government including the elimination of ghost workers in the public service and great improvement in transacting government businesses.
Dr. Arabi stated this during a Special Press Briefing organised by the State House Media Team at State House Press Gallery, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He briefed on the key updates in the strides being made by his agency in the execution of its core mandate of initiating, coordinating and ensuring the full implementation of reform policies and programmes for the Government.
The BPSR boss posited that IPPIS which was conceptualized in October 2006 by the Federal Government as one of its Reform Programme, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the storage of personnel records and administration of monthly payroll in such a way to enhance confidence in staff emolument costs and budgeting has met the expectations.
Said he: “What contained in the next slide are some of the benefits that we think government or Nigerians have benefited out of the work that we have been doing in collaboration with other agencies of government, where with the introduction of IPPIS about 70,000 ghost workers have been eliminated from the payroll”.
“We have a one stop opportunity to look at IPPIS and say, as at today, we have 720,000 public servants working for Nigeria. This is a great achievement which I think we need to encode and we need to get it celebrated by all of us”.
“We’ve been able to reduce more than N220 billion wastage through wrong management of IPPIS on payroll by Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDA) of government. We have reduced the budget deficits and change the budget composition”.
“We have succeeded in getting the Treasury single account deployed in all ministries, departments and agencies of government. challenges have come in that implementation at the initial stage, but we are overcoming that and government is able to save over N10 trillion over the years because whatever you’re generating now goes into a treasury single account that is managed by somebody else, not you”.
“And government, especially at the top is always able to see what has come into our treasury single account today and what has gone out of that. So planning has been simplified. Budgeting has been simplified. Our distribution and allocation of resources have been simplified and streamlined”.
Speaking further Arabi said: “GIFMIS have succeeded in making us paperless and it has reduced man to man contact and processing, payments in Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government”.
“Transparency has been improved. A lot of things are done even outside the office. But the most important thing is the ability given to central agencies, Office of Accountant General of the Federation, and the Ministry of Finance to see what is happening in all Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government because GIFMIS is not controlled by the agencies, it is controlled by the central agencies but every activity you are doing under GIFMIS somebody, is watching you and is monitoring that activity. This is a great achievement for us and for all of you and for all Nigerians”.
“There is better access to information on finances in this country. Whatever you do, somebody’s watching you and somebody can request and get those information. International rating agencies standards and co have more confidence in Nigeria now because they have access to information and data that they were not able to get before this time”.
“Again, this is a breakdown of some of the benefits of the reforms that we’ve been driving”.
“Now COVID-19 has come to show us as I said that we have to be ready for another change. That one came. We have to commend the government for being able to keep the machinery of government running during the lockdown and along that a lot of reforms that have taken place around use of IT to simplifying processes of accessing services, our documentation processes to improve transparency and other things.
“But the most important thing that has shown us is we have to upskill and reskill, we have to get the public service to be trained to that level where they’ll provide 21st century public service to the citizens of this country”.
“Now these are some of the things we’re looking at post COVID-19 Public Service reforms in Nigeria. In conclusion, I want to tell you that the essence of reforms that we have been driving over the years, is to make sure that government workers put the citizens at the center of governance. The citizens are ahead of us. Nigerians are ahead of us. And we have driven a process of transformation to improve access to government services, to improve the quality of life of citizens of this country, to improve transparency, and give the citizens the opportunity to participate in governance”.
“We have just started if you compare us with the United Kingdom will be far away. But if you compare us with other countries in Africa and the Asia that we’ve started, I think we have done quite a lot. We have set in a foundation for transformation that will change the fortunes of this country. We have not been able to do this without the support of the central government.
“The President and other agencies of government that have been supporting us to drive this, the media and the civil society groups. We urge you to continue to support us directly or indirectly, to ensure that we succeed in transforming Nigerian public service and to make sure that by the year 2025 We will be among the first 20 public services in the world”.
