Federal Government will before the end of the year migrate the military to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), signalling initial steps to closely monitor the way finances are handled at the nation’s Armed Forces.
Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, said this on Tuesday in Abuja during a meeting of the Continuous Audit Team of the Federal Government with the military finance team.
Adeosun had just a few days ago announced an investigation into the payrolls of the Air Force, the Navy and the Army by the Continuous Audit Team, fallout of recent revelations allegedly implicating the military in illegal fund diversions.
Adeosun’s directive followed “revelations in the course of the trial of the former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, at the Federal High Court, Abuja, that the sum of N558.2 million was allegedly diverted monthly from the Nigeria Air Force account into private pockets.”
Already, the Continuous Audit team has been charged with the responsibility of scrutinising the payrolls of the three services, which have not yet been put on the IPPIS, to ensure that all possible loopholes that could lead to leakages were blocked, the ministry said.
According to the minister, investigations will now, in the first instance, verify whether the allegations of bloated military payroll were true or not.
“We do have the plan to enrol all our military payroll to IPPIS before the end of the year but in the interim, it is necessary to respond to allegations and revelations of excesses on the payroll.
“We want to investigate whether or not they are true and correct and also to ensure and to access that whatever step have been taken to block those leakages in future are effective and adequate.
“So, it is in this light that I discussed with the Minster of Defence, the need to carry out an audit of the military payroll, to improve the controls and make sure that every naira going to the military is for valid reasons,” she said.
President Goodluck’s administration initiated the IPPIS with which it was unable to substantially cut down huge numbers of ghost workers, but it was just unable to bring the military under that platform.
“So, we are making efforts to quickly automate the payroll of all the branches of the armed forces,” Adeosun told the military officers at the meeting.
She said the ministry was making efforts to quickly automate the payroll of all the branches of the armed forces to avoid such occurrences in future.
At the meeting, which commenced the process of the audit, Danladi Sheni, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence, assured the audit team of the ministry’s cooperation throughout the exercise.
“This initiative could not have come at a better time, as the Minister of Defence and I are concerned about the revelations in the papers about certain activities concerning the payroll of the armed forces.
“Afterwards, we began a process which led us to the ministry of finance and we are very comfortable with the actions that is been taken today,” he said.
Also, the Head of the Continuous Audit Team, Mohammed Dikwa said the team would also be looking at enrolling the military into the The Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).
Dikwara said tons would help to keep proper account and effective monitoring of the resources of the Army, Navy and Air Force
