The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the federal government (FG) might clash again over a suitable salary payment system and the setup of new governing councils for universities.
Last year, the Nigerian government announced that federal tertiary institutions, such as universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, and monotechnics, are exempt from using the Integrated Personnel Payment System (IPPIS) for staff salaries and allowances.
The Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, who announced the development while addressing State House correspondents following the weekly Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting, said the new directive was to take immediate effect.
Mamman then said that the FEC observed that vice-chancellors of universities did not need to abandon their work to visit Abuja to process the salaries of their personnel as currently obtained.
However, findings showed that five months after President Bola Tinubu’s administration made the declaration, it’s yet to implement the new policy.
This is even as the Federal Government is said to have commenced plans to pay the salaries of lecturers in tertiary institutions through the Government Integrated Financial Management System, GIFMIS.
Recall that as an alternative to IPPIS, the union had suggested the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS, for their payment instead.
The development implies that the government has ditched the UTAS proposed by the lecturers.
