President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed the withdrawal of lecturers of Federal Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, IPPIS.
The Minister of Education, Prof. Mamman Tahir made this known on Wednesday at the end of the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday at the presidential villa, Abuja.
Prof Tahir also disclosed that the President further directed recruitment waivers for the public Tertiary Institutions from the Head of Service, adding that management of federal universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education will no longer need to seek Clearance from the Head of Service before recruiting their staff.
The Minister stressed that the President issued the directives to facilitate efficiency and the autonomy of the tertiary institutions.
He said, “Today’s Council directed that Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education should be taken out of the IPPIS service to allow for efficiency in the management of the universities and tertiary institutions generally speaking
“Also, before now when the Tertiary institutions wanted to make recruitment they ran to the office of the Head of the service for waiver and approval, today the council through the directive of the President has exempted them from that.” The Minister added.
Prof. Tahir recalled that the members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities and other unions in higher institutions had protested their enlistment on the IPPIS platform saying, it had created challenges with recruitment and hindered smooth operation and other activities of the universities.
“Recall that university administrators have been complaining about the inefficiency of the IPPIS to the operations and management of public higher institutions in Nigeria. The Lecturers had complained that their subscription to the IPPIS has created challenges with the recruitment and many other activities of university administrative personnel very difficult” the Minister added.
Prof Tahir further added that all bottlenecks hindering the management of staff in the universities have also been removed.
He emphasised that the Federal Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education will now be guided by their establishing acts and with additional supervision from the National Universities Commission, NUC.
The Minister explained that deploying the University Transparency and Accountability Solution UTAS will further create confusion in the system hence the need to allow the acts establishing the universities to run.
“The IPPIS has been a source of challenge to the autonomy granted to universities under their act the President feels is not right the Vice chancellors leave their duty post and take so much time chasing issues about IPPIS.
“If you say you want to operate UTAS or any other one it will still bounce back to efficient management of any systems and that is why the President gave the directive that the universities should be permitted to run their affairs like any other universities in the world.
“It is not in their line of supervision. That bottleneck in the management of staff in the universities where they have to apply to the office and of the Head of service.
“It is a big relief and we hope these measures will be reciprocated by the institutions.” The Minister of Education added.
The Council also approved the development and construction of the senate building of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Professor Tahir also made known that the Executive Council approved funds for the National Examination Council NECO to efficiently run its forthcoming exams.
“Approval was also given to the development and construction of the Senate building in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and approval was also given for some money to NECO to run its forthcoming exams efficiently.
Dominica Nwabufo
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