Buhari directs varsities to enrol on IPPIS

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has directed that all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), including universities, drawing their personnel cost from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) must enroll in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

The Accountant-General of the Federation, Alhaji Ahmed Idris, made this known during a meeting with university-based unions convened in Abuja by the executive secretary of National Universities Commission, Professor Abubakar Rasheed.

The AGF explained that the meeting was a continuation of previous meetings, including the meeting with vice chancellors, registrars and bursars of federal universities held on Tuesday, 18 June, 2019.

Idris revealed that the presidential directive had been duly complied with by the Nigeria Police, the para-military and the armed forces.

He said that he was not unaware of fears expressed in the university community on the policy in relation to university autonomy and the peculiarity in such payments as sabbatical leave, part-time programmes, staffing of new programmes, visitation, payment of out-sourced services and earned allowances.

According to NUC’s weekly bulletin obtained by Tribune Education, the AGF said though the fears were genuine, they were unnecessary as the system is flexible enough to accommodate all those peculiarities.

He said a centralised payroll would be prepared by individual universities but coordinated by IPPIS, while the total management of the human resource would rest squarely on the universities.

Idris reassured the participants that it would not in any way compromise the autonomy of universities, adding that all deductions such as the National Housing Fund (NHF), National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), check-off and other dues deducted from staff salaries would be remitted to the appropriate accounts as and when due.

He said all the grey areas had been duly considered during the previous meeting in June and six resolutions were reached – including the need for interaction with other stakeholders, particularly the staff unions.

The AGF also said that there was a need to set up a committee to look into issues of funding of out-sourced services through the Federal Ministry of Education, and how IPPIS could accommodate all peculiarities relating to universities.

“It is a known fact that as of today, IPPIS has a current staff count of 755,422 from 561 MDAs as against 235,858 in 2015. This tremendous increase in enrolment has created a cumulative savings of over N273,809,842,071.99 on IPPIS platform between 2017 and 2018.

“This fund would have been lost, but is now available for government to deploy for other uses,” he declared.

The executive secretary of the NUC and chairman of the meeting, Professor Abubakar Rasheed, in his remark, further clarified that the objectives of the presidential directive were to engender transparency, accountability and probity in government expenditure as well as centralise the payroll systems of the Federal Government.

He explained that enrolling in IPPIS would be beneficial to both the government and the unions.

He enumerated some of the advantages to include facilitating easy storage, updating and retrieval of personnel records for administrative and pension processing, ascertaining the actual personnel emoluments of the Federal Government, and aiding manpower planning.

He solicited the cooperation of the unions towards achieving seamless enrolment in compliance with the presidential directive.

However, the ASUU president, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, expressed the fear that if implemented, IPPIS could erode university autonomy and the powers of university councils.

Also in their contributions, the presidents of SSANU and NASU called for wider consultations and enlightenment on the policy.