The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Abuja Zone, has decried the continuous payment of members’ salaries through the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) four months after the federal government removed tertiary institutions from it.
The Coordinator of ASUU Abuja Zone, Salahu Mohammed Lawal, disclosed this during a press conference in Abuja on Monday. He said, “We are surprised that over four months after the FGN realised the inadequacies of the platform and ordered the exit of tertiary institutions from it, our members are now being curiously paid under the ‘New IPPIS’ platform.”
Lawal added, “This violates the understanding reached at the 11th January 2024 stakeholders meeting at the National Universities Commission (NUC) which gave birth to a ‘Guidelines for Good Governance and Financial Management in Tertiary Institutions Post IPPIS Exit of 8th April 2024.’”
ASUU also called for the reinstatement of Governing Councils whose tenures are yet to elapse and reconstitute those whose tenures have elapsed so that the universities can run under their laws.
The union also advised the Federal and State Governments to brace up to their responsibility of adequate funding to arrest the emergent rot and decay on the campuses of Nigeria’s public universities despite the intervention efforts of TETFund whose funds it is channeling to the Students Education Loan Scheme.
Lawal said, “This is antithetical to the original intendment of the Law establishing the Education Tax Fund which now operates as TETFund. ASUU encourages the Federal Government not to divert TETFund resources to funding loans so as not to water down the impact of its intervention.”
He added, “Again, our members in many state universities are being owed arrears of EAA withheld salaries, third-party deductions, and other entitlements due to them.”
The union also called on the Federal Government to expedite action and conclude the renegotiation of the FGN/ASUU 2009 Agreement, saying lecturers in public universities in Nigeria have been on the same salary structure since 2009 despite the hyperinflation that has engulfed the economy.