FG trying to over-localise varsity system – ASUU president

The President of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, yesterday said the federal government wants to over localise the university system.

Biodun in an interview with newsmen in Makurdi shortly after his interaction with members of the union at the Federal University of Agriculture in Makurdi (FUAM), said the federal government was trying to tamper with the system through its insistence on the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).

“What they are trying to do in Nigeria is to over-localize us (ASUU) but universities are international learning and research environments. We are now in the age of internationalization.

“That is why people talk about global ranking of universities, they don’t talk of local ranking of universities. So, it would be an anathema for us to allow government to over localize us. To buy into IPPIS means we are surrendering the autonomy of the universities which is highly cherished all over the world,” he said.

The ASUU president contended that forcing the system back into core civil service would not augur well for the education at that level as the universities are meant to be governed by their employers – the Governing Councils and not the Head of Civil Service of the Federation.

He vowed that his members across the country would down tools if the federal government makes bold its threat not to pay salaries of those staff who refused to comply with the IPPIS directive.

“The employers of universities academics are their governing councils and not the Head of Service. Universities are not part of civil service and there is nowhere in the world where such practice as they are trying to impose on us in Nigeria obtains.

“And we have sited this example before. In Ghana at some point, they introduced IPPIS but later they excluded the universities because they know it would not work,” Ogunyemi maintained.