Govt directive on payroll plot to suppress varsity autonomy, says ASUU

Rasaq Ibrahim, Ado-Ekiti

Federal Government’s Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) was a subterranean plot to invalidate university autonomy, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has said.

The union’s vice chairman at the Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Dr Habibat Adubiaro, stated this on Tuesday.

The union leader said forcing university lecturers to key into the centralised payroll system would destroy university administration.

He insisted that the policy is antithetical to the independence of Nigerian universities.

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Adubiaro told reporters on phone in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, that lecturers are not direct employers of the Federal Government but under the governing councils of their respective institutions.

President Muhammadu Buhari, during the 2020 budget presentation at the National Assembly on October 8, ordered that the payment of salaries of civil servants who failed to register for the IPPIS be stopped at the end of October (this month).

According to the President, the directive is part of efforts to manage personnel cost and engender accountability and transparency.

Adubiaro faulted the use of IPPIS for salary payment, saying ASUU’s decision not to enrol on the platform was not to promote corruption in the Education sector.

She said: “We are not condoning any corruption at all because we are an autonomous body. The Federal Government is not paying us directly; it does not employ us directly. We are getting our directive from the governing council and the governing council is the highest decision-making body in the university.

“Although I know the Federal Government appointed the governing council, but they did not give us appointment letters. That was done through the governing council.

“It is this same Federal Government that gives universities autonomy; that cannot be reversed since an agreement has been made. We are not in any way supporting corruption.

“Even the Senate President said, during his meeting with the leadership of ASUU, that since the Federal Government signed the agreement, it is binding on them. There is no going back on it.”