THE recent apprehension and sacking of six officials of the Abia State Ministry of Justice on account of fraudulent salary manipulations in their favour is a welcome development. It comes at a time when Nigerians are seriously worried over lack of political will power on the part of many governors and the president of the country to restore the society to a state of sanity in terms of corruption, injustice and tribal discriminations.
According to the Chairperson, Abia State Civil Service Commission, Ms. Eno Jerry-Eze, the workers identified as Dickson Eze, a Principal Accountant, Esther Emeruwa, senior Accountant, Ijeoma Jonathan, chief executive officer, Treasure Isinguzo, assistant chief executive officer, ChiomaErondu, principal executive officer, accounts, and Hannah Eze, senior executive officer, General Duties were found to have manipulated payroll systems, which gave them unauthorised access to salaries exceeding their entitlements for some time.
Commendable as the government action is, it has further exposed the porous and weak structure of financial systems’ administration at all levels of governance in the country. Even though huge sums of money are spent yearly on acquiring computers and other Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-related items as provided for, in annual budgets, many government activities have remained, at best, the middle between manual and full system automation.
Due to the poor reward system in Nigeria, many skilled ICT experts have continued to distance themselves from government employments, thereby leaving the technical aspects of government in the hands of those who view government jobs merely as ‘you-chop-I-chop’ engagements requiring no serious competency quotient, with the exception of a few.
During the debate for workers’ salary increase, it was discovered on-line that there were 720,000 public servants on federal government’s payroll. Till date, the best a researcher can get online about the staff strength of the federal civil service is the fact that there are 696 MDAs on IPPIS (Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System) platform as at June, 2020. The information on the internet adds that IPPIS is responsible for the payment of the salaries of 1,139,633 federal government employees. It now becomes extremely difficult to reconcile this figure with the 720,000 seen in 2023 as the number of federal workers.
It is therefore, either the persons in charge of the handling of the technology aspect of governance are not briefed properly on the figures to work with or there is negligence on their part, partly because of their limited understanding of the level of harm that can result from using the wrong data for computation.
Apart from the inability of government salary structure to attract competent computer science professionals, many of the consultants often hired to bridge the competency gaps are also not financially encouraged to offer sufficient trainings for the in-house managers of automated administrative structures. The result of this is that when the contract tenure of the consultants elapse, ministries are left with no options than, either resorting back to manual operations or something very close to it. And this position only remains with the officers responsible for handling the systems while their overseeing superior officers are left to believe that all things are in order.
In today’s world of computer-based financial managements, there is a very thin line of demarcation between the knowledge base of a financial software developer and professional accountant as well as auditors. But unfortunately, in Nigeria, there are so many accountants and auditors that are not even computer literate in the real sense of it, let alone understanding how computer programs work. The same goes for many financial computer programmers who do not understand enough of accounting principles and auditing.
The irony of this is that instead of these professionals enrolling in courses that will deepen their career knowledge, they opt for higher degrees, including PhDs that though, intellectually desirable are not necessary beyond boosting their egos and perhaps the chances of being appointed as ministers or commissioners or retiring to the universities as lecturers at old age.
Furthermore, software in use in government offices are not normally subjected to regular updates from providers with a view to rectifying observed lapses. To worsen the scenario, local software development consultants are seldom hired to provide local content solutions to needing areas of government finance.
Meanwhile, avoiding a continued repeat of Abia experience requires that those six staff found culpable must not be left off the hook at the level of sacking only. The law on financial crimes must be invoked over them and take its course in order to serve as deterrent to others with similar intentions.
Auditing through the computer must take the centre stage in the financial checks and balances. This requires that government officials saddled with the responsibilities for functioning in these directions must be exposed to government-sponsored competency trainings that align with global best practices.
Again, even if the civil service salary structure may not permit preferential remuneration treatment of personnel in finance-related job functions, motivating allowances can be attached to their normal take-home pays. This will go a long way into attracting highly qualified persons into ICT positions in government establishments.
From the job titles of the suspected culprits, enough clues have been established regarding areas for the human and software supervisors of financial systems to rely on, for further strengthening of government accounting and financial procedures.
In addition to continuous training of monetary personnel in government circles, there is need to always ensure that the input of accountants, auditors and ICT experts are taken into consideration while developing any financial system that is expected to run with fraud-proof modules.
Beyond meting appropriate sanctions to the ‘Abia Six’, the role of auditors in vetting documents that are put together for contractual and other payments must be awakened. Any payment voucher-related authority that is not certified by a certified auditor should not be honoured and where an auditor approves a payment that is fraudulent, he or she should be regarded to, as an accomplice. With this kind of checks amongst others, fraudulent practices in MDAs will be drastically reduced if not entirely eliminated.
