In picture: Buhari and ASUU leaders meeting in Aso Rock in Abuja. Image credit: thecable.ng

Buhari and ASUU leaders do battle in Aso Rock over implementation of IPPIS in universities

ASUU leaders insist on UTAS as an alternative to IPPIS

ASUU maintains that University Governing Councils through UTAS should account for university staff information, recruitment and payrolls as established by the Autonomy Law and not IPPIS

Federal Government claims to have saved billions of naira through IPPIS Project

President Muhammadu Buhari met with the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU on Thursday in a battle to resolve the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information (IPPIS) Project, which ASUU rejected.

The meeting was held behind closed-doors at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

See also ASUU says Buhari hated education by continuously reducing budgetary allocation

Disclosing this in a tweet, President Buhari’s Special Assistant on New Media, Tolu Ogunlesi wrote that ASUU was meeting with the President that afternoon with Ministers of Education and Finance in attendance. 

The Minister of Education, Mallam  Adamu Adamu and his Finance counterpart, Zainab Ahmed were also part of the dignitaries in the meeting.

The federal government has made several efforts to make ASUU members see reasons they should embrace IPPIS but the leadership of the academic union is, however, insistent on staying off it.

ASUU had alternatively developed a solution called University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), which it claims is equivalent to IPPIS, but the Federal Government, is insisting on IPPIS. It would be recalled that the Federal Government had directed all federal government workers to enrol on IPPIS, including members of the university community.

The IPPIS scheme is domiciled in its secretariat, which is a department under the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. The secretariat is responsible for the payment of salaries and wages directly to government employee’s bank account, while its aim is to enrol into the platform, all Federal Government MDAs that draw personnel cost fund from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, with appropriate deductions and remittances of third party payments such as; Federal Inland Revenue Service, states’ Boards of Internal Revenue, National Health Insurance Scheme, National Housing Fund, Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs), cooperative societies, trade unions dues, association dues and bank loans.

The department claims that IPPIS Project has saved the Federal Government of Nigeria billions of naira by eliminating thousands of ghost workers since its inception in April 2007.

ASUU Charman, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi, said University Governing Councils through UTAS should account for the university staff information, recruitment and payrolls as established by the Autonomy Law instead of IPPIS.

tHE union boss insisted that IPPIS cannot serve the purpose of a 21st century university system but UTAS since universities are known, all over the world, for their flexible personnel recruitment and management.