The Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) was adopted as the Federal Government’s payment platform, and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has declared that it will soon expose those gorging fat on this adoption.
This comes shortly after the union claimed that certain employees of the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation were undermining its attempts to negotiate a settlement on the contentious payment system with the federal government.

This was said on Sunday in an interview with Vanguard by Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, the National President of ASUU.

In response to a memo from the AGF’s office stating that starting in November of this year, any federal employee who had not yet registered on the IPPIS platform would not be paid, Ogunyemi made the following observation

All the agreements we have been having since 1992 with the government have always been having the provision that circulars emanating from the civil service which don’t have origin in collective bargaining with the government won’t be binding on us.

“Circulars that will be binding on us are those coming out of our negotiation with the government like what we had in autonomy for university, retirement age and others. They can be respected because they are products of collective bargaining,” he said.

On why the union would not accept IPPIS, the ASUU boss explained that there was a meeting with the government where it was agreed that if ASUU could develop a better alternative to IPPIS, such an alternative would be adopted.

“Based on that, our members started work on the University Transparency and Accountability System, UTAS, and in the presence of the Minister, the Permanent Secretary and the leadership of the National Universities Commission, NUC, we demonstrated its use.

Some universities may decide to skip a semester even when they eventually reopen.

For example, first-year University of Ibadan students admitted for the 2019–2020 academic year have not yet started classes before the nation’s institutions were closed down because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Those who are to be admitted for the 2020–2021 session are in the waiting room.

A related development is that while certain Federal Polytechnics might start soon, a later strike by teaching and non-teaching staff could cause difficulties.