All civil servants in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) caught manipulating the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) platform will be visited with the full weight of the law, Accountant General of the Federation Ahmed Idris has said.

Idris gave the warning on Wednesday, at the final phase of the nationwide training for IPPIS Role Players held in Minna, Niger State.

Let me remind you that there is no room for compromise and the government will deal decisively with any Role Player involved in any kind of infraction. Your schedule is a trust and you are expected to be above board,’ he said.

IPPIS Role Players are staff of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) including tertiary institutions and the Police that have been granted access to carry out certain roles on the centralised IPPIS platform. Recently, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation announced the decentralisation of the operations of the IPPIS, an action aimed at enabling Ministries, Departments, Agencies, tertiary institutions and the Police to handle some issues in their payroll without necessarily having to come to the IPPIS headquarters in Abuja.

The Accountant General of the Federation, who was represented at the occasion, reminded the IPPIS Role Players that they are an important part of the complex machinery meant to sustain a flawless payroll system and advised that they should be honest, diligent and correctly apply the ideas gained at the training in carrying out the responsibility assigned to them.

On the Presidential directive that all government personnel should be enrolled on the IPPIS, Idris maintained that although some individuals and associations have attempted to discredit the policy, a larger percentage of government personnel have been enrolled on the IPPIS platform. He assured that more efforts will be made to get the remaining government employees onto the IPPIS platform.

In his remarks at the event, the Director (IPPIS), Dr. Ben Nsikak appreciated the Accountant General of the Federation for approving the training exercise.

He expressed optimism that with the training, the IPPIS Role Players have been adequately equipped to carry out updates and variations in their payroll and advised the Role Players to limit themselves to the activities that are expected of them.

‘At the back end, you can carry out updates, however, there are updates that you are not entitled to do at the back end like updating the date of first appointment and date of birth. Limit yourselves to the activities that you are expected to do,’ he said.

He explained that in order to checkmate the abuse of the processes, updates and variations carried out by the Role-Players are to be reviewed by internal auditors in the respective MDAs. Furthermore, the accounting officers in the MDAs are to sign up and take responsibility for whatever updates have been carried out.

While re-echoing the need for the Role Players to be alive to their responsibility, Dr. Nsikak confirmed that if and when an anomaly is observed, such would be easily traced back to the individual concerned through the audit trail.

The nationwide training has been successfully held in the six geopolitical zones for IPPIS Role Players in various geopolitical zones of the country.