By Felix Khanoba
The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has commended the decision of the Federal Government to exempt tertiary institutions from the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System (IPPIS) platform.
COEASU President, Dr Smart Olugbeko, gave the commendation in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.
He, however, warned those he described as saboteurs against any act that would undermine the gesture of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in listening to the demands of the staff unions of tertiary institutions in the country.
Olugbeko said the government’s decision was one of the best taken so far by the President since he assumed office, adding that by the history of the union’s long-drawn struggle against IPPIS platform, he was sure that “certain persons in critical ministries whose parochial interests have been wounded by the president’s action will try to sabotage lecturers by putting up measures to ensure that higher institutions have problem accessing their funds, leading to shortfalls and inability to pay salaries promptly in order to seek selfish vindication for IPPIS.
He, therefore, called on Federal Government to give IPPIS a deadline to clear all its liabilities to institutions, “as it will be detrimental to industrial tranquillity if these liabilities are transferred to the Governing Councils.”
Olegbeko urged President Tinubu and the Minister of Education to be wary and take appropriate steps further by ensuring that tertiary institutions have unhindered and timely access to their pay wallets and the wallets should be well funded to take care of the needs of the institutions in the areas of monthly salaries, Peculiar Earned Academic Allowance (PEAA), sabbatical leave and recruitment of new staff to fill existing vacancies.
Part of the statement read: “Our union is giving the assurance to Mr President and the Honourable Minister that we shall continue to play our role as a watchdog and will not allow the golden opportunity to be abused by the Provosts or Governing Councils.
“We commend President Tinubu for hearkening to the voice of reason and taking the decisive action. This action has further shown that Mr President is not just a listening leader with a great passion for fairness and smooth-running of the Nigerian education sector, he is also in charge of his administration.
“We equally commend the Honourable Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, who brought the attention of President Tinubu to the obnoxious IPPIS and its damaging effects on the education sector.
“By this development, the College of Education (COE) system in particular and the tertiary education sector in general, have been delivered from the backward bureaucratic bottlenecks, encumbrances and corrupt practices associated with the centralized pay system.
“Our exemption from IPPIS has restored normal procedure for staff recruitment as it will stop the donation of staff by some opaque stakeholders. Now, the Governing Councils and Provosts will be able to perform their constitutional roles as the managers of their respective institutions; they will be able to effectively exercise their statutory control over staff recruitment, promotion, discipline and payroll administration.
“It has also ended the frustrations imposed by intractable errors of IPPIS against individual staff, such as short-payment, regular pay omission, withholding and/or delay in remittance of third party deductions, to mention just a few,” he said.
The union leader further said COEASU had consistently put up a strong opposition against IPPIS as a fraudulent and ineffective platform, adding that it was sad that such a platform with its obvious lapses was allowed to wreak havoc on the education system for such a long time.
“It will take a long time before our institutions can be completely healed of the injuries caused by IPPIS. As of today, more than seventy lecturers who embarked on sabbatical leave between 2020 and 2022 were not paid salaries throughout the duration of the sabbatical leave while some were paid for a few months. Also, many lecturers are still being owed salaries and IPPIS could not explain the reasons for the omission. All efforts to make IPPIS effect payment to those lecturers yielded no result.”
