The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Nsukka zone at the weekend said the federal government’s newly introduced Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) cannot be applicable in the university system.
Addressing a press conference in Makurdi, the union maintained that there are extant legal provisions and negotiated agreements arising from the nature and peculiarities of the Nigerian universities which make IPPIS in its current form inappropriate and inapplicable to the university system.
Zonal coordinator of ASUU, Nsukka zone, Dr. Igbana Ajir, said those peculiarities included the violation of university autonomy, federal government agreement with ASUU as well as peculiarities, nature and structure of the Nigerian universities.
“The IPPIS which compels all staff in federal universities in Nigeria to enrol and be paid centrally not only violates the autonomy of the universities but contradicts the superiority of the Governing Council in the control and management of university funds, employment, discipline and promotion of staff,” he said.
Ajir added that the IPPIS lacked constitutional backing as well as support of any Act of the National Assembly to subject the universities to the direction and control of the Accountant General of the Federation in terms of the payment of remuneration.
He further argued that the introduction of the IPPIS in the universities would only compound the problem of irregular flow of funds and personnel management, rather than solve it.
The union zonal coordinator therefore urged government to grant ASUU’s request to be allowed to develop an alternative to IPPIS ‘‘which can take care of the peculiarities of the university system with different levels of control and be accessed periodically by each university as practiced in other African universities such as Legon in Ghana’’.
