Agreement On IPPIS Is Interim – ASUU

-AGF Promises To Resolve Issues On IPPIS In 3 Months

By Linda Ike

The Academic Staff Union of the Universities (ASUU) said that the agreement to be paid through the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) was an interim arrangement.

The President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this during a meeting with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila and Accountant General for the Federation, Sylva Okolieaboh,

He said the interim agreement on IPPIS was due to the fact that it cannot accommodate the union peculiarities demand.

Prof. Osodeke assured that the union would revert to its demand to be paid through the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) and that what the union agreed on was UTAS as IPPIS was a temporary measure.

“There is no way IPPIS can represent the universities, the greatest problem university has is funding. No university can invest again because of Treasury Single Account(TSA)”.

Osodeke said the union had called off the strike based on trust and that the country’s education was in dire need of human resources.

The Accountant General of the Federation, Sylva Okolieaboh, called for a comprehensive peculiarities list of ASUU, and assured that the issue would be resolved in three months.

He said contrary to insinuation by ASUU, IPPIS was designed locally by Oracle and remained the best at the moment and that whatever agreement it had with oracle was a normal agreement.

He therefore appealed to the union to trust the Executive and let the issue be laid to rest, even as he promised that IPPIS will live up to expectation.

“We will sit down with ASUU and look at what could be done and the material peculiarities that ASUU was complaining about”, the AoGF said.

The Speaker, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, asked ASUU to submit its peculiarities to the AGF so that the issue could be addressed.

Addressing the issue of funding, Gbajabiamila told the union that it has been addressed as about 500 billion was included for ASUU in the 2023 budget.

He pleaded with the union to let bygone be bygone and that by January and February 2023, the AGF had promised that everything would be settled.

The Speaker also stated that the House would be having a summit on universities with critical stakeholders next month and that all the issues raised by ASUU as to funding were slated to be addressed for a long term solution.