The House of Representatives has said it will set up an ad hoc committee to investigate Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) over the alleged sale of job opportunities.
Daily Report Nigeria reports that the House will also probe the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) violations in federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), and tertiary institutions for the same illegality.
This follows the passing of a resolution via a motion moved by Oluwole Oke (Osun PDP) during Wednesday’s plenary.
The Green Chamber explained that the federal government has tried to address other abuses in the system, particularly the threat of ghost workers.
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It added that the above necessitated the introduction of IPPIS to help weed out large numbers of ghost workers.
In his motion, Oke stated that the recruitment and hiring process in the civil service was widespread due to corruption.
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The Lawmaker 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.”
Accordingly, the House decided to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate MDAs, state, and higher education institutions and submit a report within four weeks for further legislative action.
