The ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will continues as the meeting between the Federal government and the leadership of union held Wednesday night, again, ended in a deadlock.
The meeting headed by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, failed to resolve the contentious issue of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), especially approved platform for payment of the university.
It was however learned that other issues in contention have been resolved and agreed on, apart from the issue of IPPIS and on which platform to continue paying them before the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) developed locally and proposed by ASUU passes all integrity tests.
The issues, such as the Funding for Revitalisation of Public Universities; Earned Academic Allowances; Salary shortfall; state of State universities, Reconstitution of the Government Renegotiating Team; Visitation panels to Federal Universities; and the issue of University Pension System have all been resolved. The meeting is to be reconvened on Wednesday next week.
The meeting had earlier been informed that ASUU has met its timeline regarding the first stage of the initial demonstration of the efficacy of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) to government.
The meeting had also agreed that if UTAS passes all the different stages of the integrity test, which would involve National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the Office of the National Security Advisers (NSA) and after ascertaining its efficacy, it would be adopted for the payment of all university staff.
However, the meeting could not agree on how payment would be done for ASUU members during the transition period of UTAS tests, even as the government’s side again appealed to ASUU to enroll on IPPIS platform in view of the Presidential directive that all Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) employees should be paid via IPPIS.
The government reportedly appealed to ASUU that its members can thereafter be migrated to UTAS whenever UTAS is certified digitally efficient and effective with accompanying security coverage.
But ASUU maintained that given ASUU’s invention of UTAS, it should be exempted from IPPIS in the transition period.
Also on the issue of withheld salaries, the meeting agreed that the government will pay the money as soon as the mode of payment is agreed upon by both parties.
Meanwhile, President, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, while featuring on a Channels Television programme on Thursday evening, buttressed opposition of the union to the IPPIS platform owing to constant amputation of salaries of academic staff.
He said members of ASUU now had their salaries cut by between 50 and 70 per cent, such that some professors got N8,000 as salary for some months.
According to Ogunyemi, the IPPIS was a software originally designed for the civil service and did not take care of peculiarities of the university system, like earned academic allowances, research journal and taxation.
He stressed that the flaws of the IPPIS could be seen in the software taxing its allowances and failing to recognise negotiated agreements.
Ogunyemi said the Federal government is deliberately causing confusion by selectively paying ASUU members in various universities and asking members to first migrate to IPPIS and then come back to its UTAS platform.
Ogunyemi sought understanding of students and parents, noting that it would be difficult for lecturers to return to their universities if they received less than their usual salaries, allowances not paid, while the issue of salary scale where members remained on the same salary structure for many years remained unattended to.
Ogunyemi said: “The issue of amputated salaries came into it because the IPPIS platform was not designed for the university system. The platform does not recognise negotiated agreements like earned academic allowances, research journal, taxation and others.
“Those were areas IPPIS does not factor into account like they gave us a one-line salary scale. In that case, it means they are taxing even allowances which is not the case even with people in the civil service because IPPIS was designed for the civil service.
“The programme was not designed for the university system. This is a software that will set aside the collective bargaining aspect of people’s income. People are losing as much as 50 percent, 70 per cent of their salaries. There were professors that were paid about N8,000 in some months. The IPPIS is not flexible to the peculiarities of the university system.
“We have those who have not been paid any month salary since February till date, we have those where lecturers were paid up to June, then we have lecturers who have not been paid since July. Government picks and chooses.
“Last month, in Uthman Dan Fodio University, 20 lecturers were paid and these are those who did not register on IPPIS. So there is no particular pattern and it appears as if there is deliberate mischief, causing confusion on our various campuses.”