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University staff have condemned as a failure, the implementation of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) by the Nigerian government.
The IPPIS payment platform adopted by the federal government to resolve all salaries and other financial entitlements for university staff workers has remained contentious.
The university unions said government must discard the IPPIS for an alternative platform they were already working on and at final stage of completion: the University General and Peculiar Payment Platform (UG3P).
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), the trade union of senior members of staff in universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), the group for junior workers, in a recent address to the media, declared the IPPIS platform as a ‘monstrous failure.”
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of SSANU and NASU said the implementation of the IPPIS has not reduced financial waste or tame corruption in universities.
“Today, we pass a vote of no confidence on IPPIS and we wish to announce to you the ‘University General and Peculiar Payment Platform (UG3P) which is in its final stages of completion,” said President of SSANU, Comrade Samson Ugwoke.
“This is a payment platform created by our members in the ICT units and bursaries of various universities which comprehensively captures the peculiarities of the entire university system and if deployed, would provide lasting solution to all existing problems and confusion created by the IPPIS.
“We invite the Federal Government to adopt this platform as a solution to the problems of the University System on Salary payments instead of continuing on the IPPIS platform characterised by anarchy and confusion,” Ugwoke added.
Should the government fail to discard the IPPIS for UG3P, universities will have no alternative than to resort to a national strike, Ugwoke warned.
His words: “Our dear colleagues and friends, members of the public, industrial unrest looms in the university system. As responsible unions, we have avoided these crises but the irresponsibility of government and its officials have led us to a point where it has become inevitable. If fight we must, then fight we will.
“We have again cried out to the general public with a view to inviting stakeholders and well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on government to correct the anomalies of IPPIS, pay us the arrears of both earned allowances and minimum wage, among all the other issues highlighted above, failing which it will be a showdown in the university system effective from when universities would be directed to reopen for activities after the COVID 19 lockdown.”
