ASUU, FG and the IPPIS storm
Today makes it 78 days that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been locked in a protracted dispute with the Federal Government over the insistence by the latter to use the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) for the former and the non-implementation of the February 2019 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA).
The IPPIS is the government’s accountability softwaredeveloped for processing and payment of salary to over 300,000 Federal Government employees across the 459 MDAs.
It has been made compulsory for all public institutions, mainly for personnel payroll.
According to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Ajuri Ngelale, the introduction of the IPPIS for ASUU is aimed at curbing the excesses and corruption in the payment system of lecturers.
Its aim is to enrol into the platform all Federal Government MDAs that draw personnel cost fund from the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
Contrary to the position of ASUU, the government has repeatedly said that the IPPIS is not intended to take away the autonomy of the universities in the country but to make the system run more efficiently.
IPPIS issue was first brought up in 2013 by the Federal Government but ASUU rejected the use of the application for lecturers’ payment.
The union had argued that the World Bank designed the IPPIS for the civil service and not for the university system; that the software does not consider some of the peculiar operations of universities and that the software has never worked in the university system anywhere in the world.
ASUU is therefore contending that the IPPIS is unsuitable for the university system because it operates flexible payroll system owing to the Inflow and outflow of lecturers.
ASUU consequently promised the Federal Government to develop a better and credible alternative application it could use for its members.
Indeed, in 2014, ASUU started work on the project–Nigerian University Transparency and Accountability System (NUTAS) and had so far invested some funds on its development.
The union however said that the government did not say anything about the IPPIS again until November 2019 at a time when it thought that it had agreed with it and exempted university lecturers from being captured on the IPPIS.
In spite ASUU’s stiff opposition, some of its members had enrolled on the IPPISbetween November 2019 and January 2020, when the Federal Government threatened to stop their salary.
Sometimes in February 2020 or thereabouts, the Federal Government said that it had captured about 70% of the university lecturers on the IPPIS but ASUU said government was not saying the truth.
However, after about three-month dingdong between the warring parties, the Federal Government stopped the salary of lecturers who refused to be captured on the IPPIS.
ASUU then called out its members, first, on a two-week warning strike on March 9 before it declared an indefinite strike action on March 23, this year.
After the union embarked on the strike action, it explained that apart from the issue of IPPIS, the non-implementation of the Memorandum of Action signed with the Buhari government on February 7, 2019 was another reason for embarking on the action.
The MoA had timelines attached for the implementation of some itemscontained therein.
ASUU claimed that when the government did not meet any of the timelines, it brought up the issue of IPPIS as distraction.
ASUU, however, appealed to government to release the withheld salaries of the affected lecturers, saying that would pave way for meaningful engagement with government.
In response, the Federal Government requested the affected university lecturers to submit their BVN to enable it release the withheld salaries, a condition ASUU rejected.
The government later reversed itself and released the February and March salary of the lecturers who refused to be enrolled on the IPPIS unconditionally but sat on April’s.
It however used the opportunity to call on ASUU to suspend the ongoing strike before talks over the union’s grievances which led to the strike would resume.
The government said ithad, after all, demonstrated enough goodwill by releasing the withheld salaries of the striking lecturers as requested by ASUU to allow for peaceful negotiations of their dispute and that it would be immoral and despicable for ASUU members who should be conducting research for the discovery of new drugs and medical equipment that will be used during COVID-19 period to remain at home playing Ludo game.
ASUU has however refused to shift groundowing to fears that once it called off the strike, the government would renege, as usual, on its promise to address its grievances.
We are disturbed by the current impasse between the Federal Government and ASUU owing to evident distrust.
It is sad enough that a study found that between 1999 and 2018 alone, Nigerian universities had been on strike for a cumulative period of three years owing to this kind of disagreement between the two warring parties.
It is sadder that successive governments had indeed serially breached several agreements it voluntarily had with ASUUover the years, thereby leaving the ivory towers grossly underfunded and without capacity to offer qualitative education and guarantee a storehouse of knowledge in scientists, doctors, nurses, laboratory technologists and other medical and paramedical personnel for coping with a global pandemic such as COVID-19.
We therefore call on the warring parties, in the interest of the nation, to urgently sheathe their swords and resolve the lingering crisiseven as we advise the government to declare a state of emergency in the education sector and honour thepactsit voluntarily entered into with ASUU without further delay.
—
Ise-Oluwa Ige, PhD
