The outgoing Vice Chancellor of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Professor Ganiu Olatunde, has advised the Federal Government to incorporate some of the features of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution into the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System to avoid another strike.
The OOU VC said this on Tuesday during a chat with journalists in his office to mark the end of his five-year tenure in office.
Olatunde said the only way to peacefully resolve the lingering crisis between the Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Federal Government over the preferable platform for payment of lecturers’ salaries was for the government to merge UTAS and IPPIS.
ASUU had rejected the IPPIS, a payment platform created by the FG to pay its workers and insisted on UTAS as its preferred payment option.
Reacting to the incessant strike by ASUU, Olatunde suggested an alternative means of resolving the industrial dispute between the lecturers and FG, saying “strike is a setback for us in this country, we are praying and hoping that we will have a way of resolving our issues without going on strike.”
“Must we have IPPIS? Why can’t we look at those things in UTAS and put them in the IPPIS such that it can give a faultless platform.
“Those things that are peculiar to UTAS input them in IPPIS to improve it and that is the thing we are now coming back to.
“If the government had ceded IPPIS, the non-academic unions would say the FG must accept their own too, others would want to bring their own too, so the FG will never agree. The Federal Government will never agree because it would drag them in the mud because they would say our own is superior.
“But, rather than change or allow your own (IPPIS) to come in, let us make those things in the our own (UTAS) and put them in the IPPIS, so that another group will not stand up and say accept our own too and that is where we are heading to now.
“ASUU has agreed that the components of those best things in UTAS should be incorporated in the IPPIS,” Olatunde said.
Meanwhile, Olatunde had commended the appointment of his Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor Deji Agboola, as the new Vice Chancellor of the institution.
He noted that Prof. Agboola is a supportive and loyal Deputy Vice Chancellor throughout his five years tenure.
He also described him as a conversant person who knows everything about the university.
He added that there is no crisis at the end of his tenure because he did not take any part during the process and showed no interest on any of the applicants.
