President Muhammadu Buhari has asked all lecturers in Nigerian universities to enroll in the Integrated Payment and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) to enable transparency in the payment of their salaries.
The Herald gathered that the executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund), Professor Suleiman Elias Bogoro, made the disclosure at the 31st and 32nd convocation ceremony of the University of Jos.
Speaking on behalf of President Buhari, Bogoro said the IPPIS enrolment was one of the measures the federal government had adopted to eliminate corruption from tertiary institutions. He, however, urged universities in the country to do their best in upholding high educational standard that will make Nigerian universities compete globally.
Meanwhile, The Herald reported that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in the south east insisted that enrollment of its members into the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) will erode the autonomy of universities.
The ASUU leaders, who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in separate interviews, said they were in total support of the position of the national leadership of the union. Dr Egwu Ogugua, ASUU chairman of Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu Alike, Ikwo (AE-FUNAI), Ebonyi pointed out that members of the union were committed to the collective struggle.
“We have recorded 100 per cent compliance to ASUU National Executive Council (NEC) and the ASUU AE-FUNAI Congress resolution to reject the forceful migration to IPPIS. We are committed to the struggle and no member of the branch has shown up to be enrolled.
“The university is an autonomous entity and enrolling lecturers into the IPPIS will erode and violate this autonomy with attendant ugly effect on the standard of university education in Nigeria. It violates existing laws and autonomy of the universities and also IPPIS does not make provisions for payment of arrears of promotion, study leave allowance and responsibility allowance among others,” Ogugua said.
Dr Gilbert Ekuma, a university lecturer and human rights activist urged the Federal Government to toe the path of dialogue with ASUU to avert disruption of academic activities in the nation’s federal universities.