IPPIS: AGF threatens to withhold lecturers’ salaries

Isola Moses

Nigeria’s Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) has threatened to suspend the January 2020 salaries of University lecturers for failing to enroll in the Integrated Payment Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

The reports that a circular from the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) office was sent to all public universities on Thursday, January 23 to that effect.

Sources said Dr. Ade Adejumo, Zonal Coordinator of ASUU, Ibadan Zone, who confirmed the circular from the AGF’s office, reminded the government that the union had a standing ‘no pay, no work’ resolution.

Adejumo expressed utter disappointment with the threat of the AGF on the matter, especially at a time when President Mohammadu Buhari, after a meeting with the academic union, promised to set up a panel to look into the issues tabled by the lecturers.

He, however, described the threat to withhold the January salary of lecturers as another attempt to throw the University education in the country into chaos.

He warned that if they carry out the threat, ASUU would not hesitate to declare total strike in the sector.

On the agreement reached with President Buhari on IPPIS, the ASUU leader disclosed that following the rejection of the IPPIS, the union had provided an alternative platform called University Transparency and Accountability Solutions (UTAS), which would take care of the peculiarities of the University system.

“Our position is that the principles of IPPIS are in contradiction to the principles of the autonomy of the University system.

“The constitution is clear enough because each university has its legal pattern, and it doesn’t have provision for IPPIS and it does not even capture the peculiarities of the university system.

“Forcing academics to enroll in the IPPIS is like dragging us back in the civil service system, and that will create a lot of problems,” he declared.

According to him, it was on the basis of that, that ASUU has developed an alternative platform called University Transparency and Accountability Solutions (UTAS), which will take care of the university peculiarities we are talking about.

“So, with these sayings that ASUU is encouraging corruption because ASUU has refused to enroll in the IPPIS are nothing but a cheap propaganda to blackmail ASUU.

He stressed that the Union cannot be blackmailed “because it is a union of intellectuals.” So, we have provided an alternative, it’s for the government to look into it and embrace the alternative so that we can move forward,” Dr. Adejumo stated.