The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union, COEASU, has said that the exemption of tertiary institutions from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) will deliver them from most of the encumbrances that hitherto bedeviled the system.
National President of COEASU, Mr. Smart Olugbeko in a statement commended the Federal Executive Council and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the bold decision, which they say will increase their autonomy in the management of the tertiary education system in the country.
The statement reads:
“We welcome and applaud the decision of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) under the leadership of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to exempt tertiary institutions from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
“This is one of the best decisions taken so far by the President since he assumed office. We commend President Tinubu for hearkening to the voice of reason and taking decisive action. This action has further shown that Mr. President is not just a listening leader with 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 to 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,” noted the statement.
It further stated that the exemption from IPPIS has restored normal procedure for staff recruitment as it will stop donation of staff by some opaque stakeholders as well as enable the Governing Councils and Provosts to 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, and 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.
“As at 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 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 these lecturers yielded no result,” highlighted the statement.
The Union, however called adequate funding of their payment wallets, while drawing attention of the government to possible meddling by saboteurs in the system who may be wanting to scuttle the profiting decision so far made by the president.
“However, by the history of our long-drawn struggle against the problematic pay platform, we are sure that certain persons in critical ministries whose parochial interests have been wounded by the President’s action will play sabotage by putting up measures to ensure that our institutions have problem accessing their funds, leading to shortfalls and inability to pay salaries promptly in order to seek selfish vindication for IPPIS.
Also, IPPIS should be given 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. Therefore, we urge Mr. President and the Honourable 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.
“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,” added the statement.
The Union assured the President and the Honourable Minister that they shall continue to play the role of a watch dog and will not allow the golden opportunity to be abused by the Provosts or Governing Councils.
Dominica Nwabufo
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