The Federal Government has come out to say that public universities in Nigeria stink of corruption.

The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echono, who spoke to newsmen recently said the current 2 weeks warning strike embarked by ASUU is meant to force FG to back down on IPPIS, so the massive fraud being perpetrated in public varsities will not be discovered.

According to him, 70 percent of workforce in the 37 federal universities had completely enrolled in the scheme, but the remaining 30 percent, mostly ASUU members, failed to follow suit.

He added that it is sad that ASUU keeps feeding Nigerians with false claims and information about IPPIS that has tremendously check payroll fraud in the public service in Nigeria.

His words, ”The fraud in the universities is amazing and you will be shocked. ICPC did a system check recently, and it was so shocking. In fact the worst two organisations they mentioned are the Teaching Hospitals and our universities and it is true, I am the accounting officer of the ministry.

“I can tell you, there is massive fraud going on there. There is hardly any university that is an exception. We will not have the record for state universities but you can imagine if it is a pattern.

“It is not unique to universities, before IPPIS we were having similar problems in the public service.

“People will tell you, I have 1,000 staff but in real terms is only 500 that you have. In fact, when we now migrate to IPPIS, you are journalists, you should know that there were so many secret recruitments just to see how to put their names because of the gap.

“If you have been claiming 1,000 and you have only 500 names somebody would look at it and say where are these millions going to every year. Many have not been able to fill all the gaps because they also have some challenges.

“If you recruit somebody today, you cannot put him on the nominal roll two years ago. So if you ask them for the nominal roll three years ago, there are two things you can do, is either you give us the correct thing which will show that you didn’t have them or you go and put fake names there now and tell us that those people were there before but they left. And if you go and put fake people, this can be verified.

“The system check by the ICPC was launched by the President and it is in the public knowledge. In the report they mentioned Constituency projects in National Assembly as a major source of fraud but our own it is the payroll system and Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in universities.

“Teaching Hospitals are the same thing. These are the three main areas of fraud within the system.

“In fact, the Minister, Adamu Adamu and myself had been very embarrassed because they say education sector, and not a single fraud was dictated in the Ministry of Education and our parastatals, JAMB, do not have any problem.”