EFFECT OF INTEGRATED PERSONNEL AND PAYROLL INFORMATION SYSTEM (IPPIS) ON PERSONNEL COST IN THE NIGERIAN CIVIL SERVICE (2008 - 2020)

Abstract

The ghost worker syndrome payroll fraud, stealing, over-invoicing, sterile auditing/poor accounting, over-staffing etc have been a menace across all tiers of government in Nigeria and has led to government spending billions of naira resulting from the money being siphoned through the payment to non-existent workers. This is worrisome. Therefore, this paper examined the effect of integrated personnel and payroll information system (IPPIS) on personnel cost in the Nigerian civil service. The researcher applied the descriptive quantitative research method, using primary and secondary sources to elicit data, and analysed data using simple percentage, frequency tables and the critical values of the chi-square distribution with degree of freedom.
The paper discovered that the personnel records of Nigerian civil servants could be relied upon only to a low extent because of bloated staff strength, wrong dates of employment or wrong dates of birth that do normally affect personnel cost negatively. However, the study found out that the effects of IPPIS on personnel cost are positive because a lot of ghost workers were fished out and millions of naira was saved thereby reducing the personnel cost. It was concluded that proper implementation of IPPIS can eliminate payroll fraud in the Nigeria civil service. From these findings, this paper recommends that the practice of IPPIS in the civil service should seriously aim at improving personnel records as well as ensure that all civil servants should continue to be paid through bank and not by cash.
Also, government should strengthen the internal control mechanism of IPPIS so as to continually detect and block any loopholes that will give room for fraud. Government should budget enough money and make funds available for training and retraining of both civil servants that will be handling the program and the stakeholders to the programme. This will make for continuity and sustenance of the scheme. More states should endeavor to key into IPPIS to reap the benefits accruing therefrom.