The lingering issue of recognising members of staff of the University of Ibadan Staff School on Monday reared its ugly head as Chairman, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) Comrade Wale Akinremi led members in peaceful protest against the decision of the university management to remove the names of the staff of the staff school to enrol on the Integrated Payment and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
Non-Academic staff of the University had gathered at the Trenchard Hall of the University for clearance on enrolment on the scheme, but the mini protest stalled the process from going ahead temporarily.
The University of Ibadan SSANU has been in the forefront of agitation against the removal of staff of the institution school from its payroll over the years.
ALSO READ:Â Sanwo-Olu urges corps members to be agents of positive change
For about four hours, the non-academic staff were hell-bound for hours as the University management, representatives of SSANU, the staff of the IPPIS and other non-academic members went into a closed-door meeting to resolve the issue.
The chairman, University of Ibadan SSANU, Comrade Wale Akinremi came out to confirm that the union actually went into a meeting with the management.
Akinremi after meeting said he was surprised at the turn of event and disclosed that the union decided to insist that the staff of the University of Ibadan staff school must be captured in the process according to the order of the federal government.
According to him, ” The non-teaching members of staff in the universities agreed that the federal government is working towards reducing corruption in terms of emoluments payments and all those things, we are willing to support and we believe we will be able to capture some peculiarity of the university system.
“Unfortunately, the University of Ibadan, as usual, has been recalcitrant about the issue of staff school. Federal Government wrote to them that they should capture staff school teachers, we have court judgment but the management of this university unilaterally refuse to register the staff school teachers.
So, we have an instruction from our national headquarters that wherever such is happening, we should close down the university. we did not even do that here today but we decided to carry out a protest here and stopped the data capturing until the affected teachers are captured.
“But overnight the management decided to cave to pressure mounted on them by our union. we don’t know why they are doing that.
“We have met with the IPPS staff and they actually informed us authoritatively that they are capturing the staff school teachers and all members of the non-teaching staff in the university.
Like the time our correspondent left the place, the deputy registrar, human resource, University of Ibadan, Mr Ibukun Akinbola also assured the non-academic teaching staff that the Staff of the University of Ibadan staff school will be captured in the exercise.
He informed them that the exercise will commence as agreed by between 12.30 and 1:00 pm.
When our correspondent called, it was gathered that the staff school were eventually captured for the IPPIS exercise.
and then