FIJ reports that in November 2022, the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) platform deducted N4.39 million from the salaries of Kwara National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) staff, intended for the Kwara Staff Multipurpose Co-operative Society, but has yet to remit the amount as required.

According to Oyebanjo Oladeji, a principal statistician at Kwara NBS, the IPPIS system is mandated to deduct monthly loan repayments from staff salaries and transfer those funds to the cooperative society by the first week of each month. Oladeji discussed this mandate with FIJ on Thursday.

“Usually, what we do is to send lists of staff members who are co-operative members to IPPIS to deduct from (the) source, because they are in charge of payments of our salaries. We feel it is convenient and comfortable to deduct from source,” Oladeji said.

“That has been the usual practice over the years. What IPPIS does is that they deduct members’ money, and during the first week of the following month, then they return the cumulative amount into the bank account of our co-operative society.”

Every month, the co-operative society sends names and deduction variations of owing members to the IPPIS.

After this deduction, the payroll platform is expected to remit the total deductions back to the co-operative society.

“What we normally do in our co-operative is that we give different loans to our members; emergency loans, real loans and other loans like that. We then prepare the variation. A person may have the agreement to pay the loan back within a year,” Samuel Adegboro, secretary of the co-operative society, explained.

“In that instance, if the loan is N100,000 or N200,000, we then divide it by 12 months. We will now send the variation to IPPIS for deduction. They would continue deducting for those twelve months.”

Oladeji also said that the December 2021 deduction made by the IPPIS was expected to be remitted to them in January 2022, but the IPPIS has held on to the N4,420,000 since then.

He added that the organisation once faced a similar issue in November 2020 which was not resolved until they sent a non-remittance letter to the IPPIS.

Oladeji, who is no longer a member of the co-operative society, said the financial capacity of the society took a significant hit due to the IPPIS’s failure to fulfil its end of the bargain.

“Some of the members who needed loans to service some necessities in their daily lives could no longer access it due to this,” Oladeji said.

Oladeji also told FIJ that some of the members are retired while some are late.

Adegboro said that the only way they could and have always contacted the IPPIS was to send a physical letter. He said they have neither an email nor a phone number to which they could forward any sort of complaint.

He also showed FIJ a letter they had drafted and were waiting to send to Abuja.

FIJ tried the phone number found on the IPPIS website, but it did not connect. There was also no email on the website that FIJ could write to.

FIJ tried the IPPIS hotline on Friday and Monday but no representative answered the phone calls, save for an automated voice that kept speaking for hours on end.