BY EDMOND ODOK – In a move that Nigerian University lecturers are already touting as a victory for their ‘worthy cause’, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has finally excluded universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, and other tertiary institutions from the contentious Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) payment platform.
Consequently, heads of these institutions have also gotten the government’s backing to embark on their internal recruitment exercises henceforth without recourse to the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF).
The Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Maman conveyed the decision after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) presided over by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the Presidential Villa Council Chambers in Abuja on Wednesday.
He explained that the President directed that the Vice Chancellor be taken out of the platform that made recruitment difficult to ensure efficient management of those education institutions, adding; “Simply, the president and the council are just concerned about efficiency of management of the universities and so it has nothing to do with integrity or options of platforms.
“The president cannot understand why Vice Chancellors should be leaving their duty post and run to Abuja to get staff enlisted on IPPIS when they get recruited.
“The basic concern is that universities are governed by laws. And those laws give them autonomy in certain respects and most respects and the IPPIS has sort of eroded that autonomy granted universities under their act.”
Also commenting on the development, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Muhammed Idris, told State House Correspondents; “Today, the universities and other tertiary institutions have gotten a very big relief from the integrated personnel payroll and information system. You will recall that the university authorities and others have been clamouring for the exemption of universities and other tertiary institutions from this system.
“Today, the Council has graciously approved that. What that means is that going forward, the universities, as the Honorable Minister of Education has said and other tertiary institutions, the polytechnics, and colleges of education will be taken off the IPPIS.
“What that means in simple language is that the university authorities and other tertiary institutions will now be paying their personnel from their end instead of relying on the IPPIS.”
Forefront News recalls that issues surrounding deploying the University Transparency Accountability System (UTAS) and the University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System (UP3S) were part of the reasons the lecturers and non-academic staff downed tools for about eight months during the immediate past presidency of Muhammadu Buhari.
In the heat of ASUU’s rejection of the IPPIS, the Federal Government had promised to modify the System to accommodate the peculiarities of UTAS, a payroll system developed by ASUU for the payment of salaries and allowances of University lecturers and the UP3S, developed by the Joint Action Committee of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASUU) and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU)
For the university workers, their rejection of IPPIS was due to its inconsistencies and failure to capture the peculiarities of the nation’s university system.
