The chairman of the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating employment racketeering in the country, Hon. Yusuf Adamu Gagdi, said on Wednesday that there are serious allegations of extortion against officials of the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS) for their refusal to capture workers duly employed in the government payroll.

Gagdi spoke just as the director general of the Directorate for Technical Cooperation in Africa (DTCA), Amb. Rabiu Dagari said that government agencies now resort to the waiver for recruitment as a way of cutting corners and avoiding doing the right thing.

Drawing the attention of the IPPIS Desk officer at the committee hearing to the failure of the agency to capture some staff of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa on the payroll, Gagdi said “IPPIS, we have allegations against you that you are collecting 10 per cent from agencies for recruitment.

“The next agency we will put before us here is IPPIS. Have you taken note of the fact that they wrote to you concerning the recruitment they did?

“They have a balance of resources as a result of retirement and other reasons. These monies are always ‘absconded’ and not returned to the treasury.

“They wrote two letters to IPPIS to capture the people that they followed due process in recruiting and you refused. There are allegations that you go to agencies to ask for money before you capture the people you want to

“If an agency wrote to IPPIS to capture people that were recruited, it means that the employment is legitimate. Otherwise, the head of the agency will not be writing to you. Is it that IPPIS captures only people that pay money into their Bank account or what?

“We are emphasising this so that when we start to engage IPPIS, you will not think that we are joking. So, report to them so that when they are appearing before us, they will provide an explanation for all these,” he said.

Dagari, however, explained that the use of waiver was denying the government the opportunity of employing some of the best hands-to-man strategic positions in the service.

He said: “Before I became DG of this agency, I was a Foreign Service Officer for 34 and had years. During our time, I never heard of waivers. Maybe during our time, people were not as desperate as they are now.

“But I know that during our time, if there was something like a waiver, some of us would not be holding the position we are holding today. I come from a very remote area in Yobe State. Without knowing anybody, I did my exams without anybody assisting me.

“If we had this type of situation then, some of us will not be holding the position we are holding today and maybe I will not be sitting here talking to you.

“I am not in support of waiver because so much cutting corners are done when it comes to waiver. We are having so many problems in this country because we refuse to do the right thing and waiver is an opportunity for people to cut corners. Something has to be done about it,” he reiterated.

He said waiver should only be used in employment when it becomes exceptionally necessary.

Responding to a question on why some staff employed in 2019 were not captured, he told the committee that even though he inherited the issue, he wrote two separate letters to the Accountant General of the Federation to ensure that they were captured on the opposite platform.

Speaking on the status of the agency, he said: “I met a situation where the Directorate has been operating without an act backing the establishment of the Directorate. We have been working on that.

“The agency is a separate body from the ministry of foreign affairs. It was established through a Presidential Fiat in 2001.” (The Nation)

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