The Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) has explained that there were no shortfalls in salaries paid to federal workers in January and February 2025.
The OAGF explained the salaries that workers received in January and February 2025 were their normal salaries after the various arrears that were paid from October to December 2024 were exhausted.
According to the OAGF in a statement on Friday, “It is imperative to make clarifications on the purported shortfall in January and February 2025 salaries in order to ease any anxiety in the minds of workers.
“Various salary arrears were paid in the last quarter of 2024, namely: minimum wage arrears, 25 per cent /35 per cent increase in salary arrears and wage award arrears. “All these arrears were paid from the month of October 2024 to December 2024. This made salaries to increase abnormally over the last quarter of 2024.”
The Office said payment of normal salaries after exhausting the various arrears began in January 2025, which made some workers think that they were shortchanged, when in actual sense, it was their real salaries.
The OAGF noted that baring any other salary arrears in the future, what was paid in January and February 2025 shall continue to be the salaries, until such a time that the Federal Government reviews the salaries.
The OAGF revealed that there were cases of overpayments in the month of December 2024 due to system error, adding that the error has been corrected and deductions in respect of the overpayments from the salaries of affected workers was on-going and shall continue until such overpayments were fully recovered.
On the payment of promotion arrears, the OAGF said the exercise is handled by a Standing Committee on Promotion and Salary Arrears in the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF) which compiles and vets all salary and promotion arrears from various MDAs before such is channeled in batches to IPPIS for payment.
The OAGF said IPPIS has fully paid batches 1 to 6 and is awaiting more batches from the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF) for payment.
The Office reiterated its determination to efficiently manage the IPPIS in view of its importance to workers and advised workers with genuine complaints about their salaries to follow the formal processes to get such resolved as quickly as possible.