The Federal Government, on Wednesday, approved the exemption of federal universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions of learning from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.
Henceforth, remunerations to staff members of these institutions will no longer flow through the platform, it said.
The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, disclosed this while speaking to journalists at the end of this week’s Federal Executive Council meeting at the State House, Abuja.
Mamman said, “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.”
Explaining the rationale for the decision, the education minister said, “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.
“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.”
Reacting to the development on Wednesday, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, which had for long clamoured for exemption from IPPIS, commended the government for the decision.
But the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics urged the government to explain the reason for the decision.
In October 2006, the Federal Government introduced the IPPIS as one of its reform initiatives for the effective storage of personnel records, saying the move would improve transparency and accountability.
IPPIS, which was expanded to cover all ministries, departments and agencies that draw personnel costs from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, had been touted by the government to save billions of naira and improve transparency in salary payments.
However, ASUU, the umbrella body for lecturers in Nigerian universities, resisted the implementation of IPPIS within universities, arguing that it undermined university autonomy and does not accommodate the unique nature of academic work.
ASUU had instead proposed an alternative system called the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, which they believe better addresses the peculiarities of the university system, such as sabbatical leave, adjunct engagements and part-time contracts.
This led to tensions and a protracted standoff, with ASUU continuing to push for the adoption of UTAS over IPPIS, which they saw as a foreign-imposed system unsuitable for the Nigerian tertiary education sector.
ASUU National President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, in an interview with The PUNCH, said, “We commend the government but it is more than three years. We want them to resolve other issues like the seven-and-a-half-month arrears in which we were punished for going on strike, the Earned Academic Allowance, and others.”
While speaking on the impact of the removal from IPPIS, he said, “The approval will change every wrong thing in the system, vice-chancellors, and our colleagues don’t have to run to Abuja for anything, and the issue of multiple employment, and wrong deductions, will no longer occur. Our colleagues don’t have to run to Abuja over infractions in their salaries.
“All that universities need to do now is to go to the National Assembly and defend its budget and any VC that exceeds the figure should be punished. They should set the rules. There is no need to run to Abuja or the Ministry of Education for anything.
“They should resolve all these issues so we can all be on a clean slate and if there is a smooth relationship between the union and government, the better.”
But ASUP urged President Bola Tinubu’s led administration to explain the reason for the decision.
The union’s President, Dr. Anderson Ezeibe who spoke to our correspondent on Wednesday, said, “We are still studying the situation we need to know what has led to this. We need to know the plans they have. We don’t know whether they want institutions to be self-funding. We don’t want to be caught unaware. We need the policy documents. We need to know their plans. Until we see that we can’t give any reaction.
“Remember that was how the announcement for the removal of fuel subsidy came on and people were happy until it became another thing so we want them to explain fully before we can know whether we will be happy or not.”
