The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASSU, have won a major concession from the Federal Government.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday supported the removal of the union from IPPIS.
The Government granted the approval to exempt federal universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, and other tertiary institutions from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
Prof Tahir Mamman,Education Minister
This has been a major lingering demand of ASSU.
Consequently, the remuneration for staff members of these institutions will no longer be processed through the IPPIS platform.
The Union had asked the Federal Government to respect the portal designed by its members to save cost and fight corruption.
Subsequent governments have refused to honour the demand.
The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, during a press briefing following the conclusion of this week’s Federal Executive Council meeting at the State House in Abuja announced the new deal.
Prof. Tahir stated, “Today, the council directed that universities, polytechnics and colleges of education should be taken out of the IPPIS service to allow for efficiency in the management of the universities and tertiary institutions, generally speaking.”
“Also, before now, when the tertiary institutions wanted to make recruitment, they ran to the office of the Head of Service for waiver and approval.
“Today, the council, through the directive of the President, has exempted them from that.”
Clarifying the reasoning behind the decision, the Minister of Education stated that, “Simply, the President and the council are just concerned about the efficiency of management of the universities, and so it has nothing to do with integrity or platform options.
“The President cannot understand why vice chancellors should leave 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 by their act.
ASUU PRESIDENT
“Today, the universities and other tertiary institutions have got a very big relief from the IPPIS. What that means in simple language is that the university authorities and other tertiary institutions will now pay their personnel from their own end instead of relying on the IPPIS.”
In response to the recent development on Wednesday, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a longstanding advocate for exemption from IPPIS, commended the government for its decision. Conversely, the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics called on the government to provide an explanation for the move.
Introduced by the Federal Government in October 2006, the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) was part of its reform initiatives aimed at efficiently storing personnel records to enhance transparency and accountability. Initially applied to all ministries, departments, and agencies drawing personnel costs from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, IPPIS was promoted by the government as a mechanism to save billions of naira and improve salary payment transparency.
Despite these intentions, ASUU, representing university lecturers in Nigeria, opposed the implementation of IPPIS within universities, contending that it undermined university autonomy and failed to accommodate the unique nature of academic work. ASUU proposed an alternative system, the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), asserting that it better addressed the specificities of the university system, such as sabbatical leave, adjunct engagements, and part-time contracts.
This disagreement resulted in prolonged tensions, with ASUU advocating for the adoption of UTAS over IPPIS, which they deemed a foreign-imposed system unsuitable for the Nigerian tertiary education sector.
