Salary commission seeks more funding to curb corruption in government agencies

The Nigerian National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, NSIWC, has called for more funding to monitor the personnel budget of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), to reduce the alleged irregularities in the public service.

NSIWC Chairman, Mr. Ekpo Nta, made the appeal during a public hearing on a motion to investigate the “high level of corruption on nominal rolls of MDAs” by the House of Representatives Committees on Anti-Corruption and Public Service Matters.

Mr. Nta said many agencies assigned salaries and non-regular allowances to themselves without recourse to the Commission whose duty was to approve such.

He said “the Commission carries out salary inspections every year to selected MDAs but, this was inadequate as it should be done more frequently.

We need to begin to look at the processes of paying for monitoring in personnel. Last year my Commission had N24 million to monitor personnel budget that runs into trillions. You cannot go round the country with that kind of sum. 

If we can get 0.005 percent of the budget, most of the issues we are looking at here would have been substantially addressed. In a place where I am getting 24 million, what I calculated was that we need about N184 million minimum to have gone round and then work on the electronic platforms.

We need to do a bit more monitoring of the personnel budget the way we monitor capital budgets and overheads. So those agencies involved in the monitoring should be given more funds to carry out routine monitoring. We should not wait till the end of the year.”

The chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, in his submission before the committee indicted the Ministry of Labour and Employment and the University College Hospital, UCH, Ibadan for padding their nominal rolls.

Prof. Owasanoye said they were investigating the nominal rolls of some agencies at the request of the Head of Service.

The agencies under investigation he said were the Ministry of Labour and Employment; the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Interior; the Ministry of Information and Culture; and the University College Hospital, Ibadan.

He said so far the Ministry of Labour and UCH have been found culpable of padding their nominal rolls.

“They were referred to us by HoS. Interior did not do any recruitment. We have not finished with Health. But Labour and UCH were implicated definitely. Those two were definitely implicated,” he said.

The Committee’ acting Chairman, Mr. Dachung Musa Bagos, expressed the commitment of the House to ensure the issue of padding nominal rolls is addressed.

Bilkisu Pai