The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Federal University of Otuoke, has demanded for the suspension of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) introduced by the Federal Government for payment of lecturers salaries, alleging that some of its members have suffered from either short-payment or non-payment of their salaries.
The ASUU in a statement issued in Otuoke in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State said that the IPPIS has made a mess of the university remuneration system as lecturers hardly know what they are paid nowadays, thereby making it impossible for lecturers to participate in sabbaticals, adjuncts and other exchange programs.
In the statement signed by the Chairperson, Dr Socrates Ebo, the ASUU also demanded the immediate deployment of University Transparency and Accountability Software (UTAS), a homegrown software, which he said has been subjected to integrity test and passed with excellent grades in the payment of salaries in Federal Universities.
The statement further noted that a recent report released by the Auditor-General of the Federation has shown that IPPIS is fraught with gross loopholes that have caused the Federal Government to lose billions of naira to sharp practices and outright inefficiency, and that as a result some lecturers have not been paid for months while some receive amputated salaries.
Among the demands of the ASUU is the signing of the renegotiated 2009 agreement and the amendment of the National Universities Commission (NUC) Act, to prevent state governments from establishing universities like constituency projects they are not willing to fund.
Parts of the statement read, “months after the seeming conclusion of the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement, the government has engaged in a game of ‘hide and seek’ in utter bad faith just to dodge having to sign the agreement. Fellow Nigerians, the salaries of lecturers in government universities are so poor that even some lecturers find it very difficult to afford to train their children in the very universities where they lecture.
“The average student in Nigerian university does not wish to become a lecturer because of the poor remuneration associated with lecturers in public universities. Our present-day salaries have little market value. It cannot continue like that because like the rest of humanity, lecturers deserve a living wage.
“The new fad nationwide is for state governments to establish universities like constituency projects. Politicians are outdoing themselves to establish universities in their villages. What these governors do is to establish universities they have no intention of funding, and then write to TETFUND to divert funds meant for the existing state university to their mushroom universities.
“The cumulative result is that the existing state universities which they never fund effectively are further weakened while the newly established ones never get enough funds to rise to the requisite standards. This must have to stop through the amendment of the NUC Act. No state government should be allowed to establish any university it has no intention to fund.
“The government is fond of giving ASUU a bad name in other to misrepresent it before the public. Where has ASUU gone wrong in any of these demands? Where has ASUU shown selfishness? Why is the government leaving strike as the only option available to us? We have been patient with the government. We have shown understanding. Yet the government keeps acting in bad faith. Fellow Nigerians, blame the government for any disruption in the academic calendar as the result of this impasse. ASUU is not to blame.”
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