FG to ASUU: Encourage your members to enrol on IPPIS

The Federal Government has appealed to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to encourage the remaining 40,926 members to comply with the established process by enrolling in the Integrated Payment and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, made the appeal on Thursday when President Muhammadu Buhari received the ASUU leadership led by Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi at the State House, Abuja.

Hajiya Ahmed, while speaking at the meeting, said out of the 137,016 academic and non-academic staff members of the universities, 96,090 had already been enrolled in the IPPIS.

The minister, who said a desk had been opened in the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation for registration of university staff, gave an assurance that the peculiarities of the tertiary institutions would be accommodated.

She said many anomalies were discovered in the university structures that had contributed to the increased cost burden, including staff working and earning pay in more than one university, contract staff on payroll of the government, tax reductions on PAYEE and multiple employments.

Ahmed said some universities had rushed to recruit more staff before the IPPIS registration commenced, which was then detected.

“While it is clear that ASUU has peculiarities, it should be recognised and rightly accommodated, and the allowances will be made, and not leaving the university out of IPPIS because of the peculiarities,” she added.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, also implored ASUU to comply with IPPIS in national interest as his office was already in the process of streamlining all issues of human resources in government.

In his remarks, the President of ASUU, Prof. Ogunyemi, while speaking on IPPIS and university operations, said the Federal Government’s Visitor initiative to the universities, at least once in five years, was the best guarantee for monitoring accountability processes that include internal and external audit processes.

The ASUU President, who said the IPPIS will be a “disruptive intrusion’’, added that “IPPIS violates the laws of the federation, violates university statutes, and violates agreements between the Federal Government and ASUU.”

“The Government should welcome ASUU’s ongoing innovation of a robust system of human resource management and compensation, called the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, which will address peculiarities of universities and end inappropriate recruitments,” he added.

President Buhari, while speaking, said Federal Government will give more attention to improving personnel and infrastructure of universities to produce quality graduates, assuring that education will, henceforth, be a top priority in development goals of the country.