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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has commended President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, for the decision to remove tertiary institutions’ staff from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
COEASU President, Dr. Smart Olugbeko, in a statement, on Thursday, described the decision as the best policy announcement of the President since he came to office. “He has hearkened to the voice of reason and taken the decisive action.
He said: “COEASU has consistently put up a strong opposition against IPPIS as a fraudulent and ineffective platform. It is sad that such a platform with obvious lapses was allowed to wreak havoc on the education system for such a long time. It will take a long time before institutions can be completely healed of the injuries caused by IPPIS.
“As at today, more than 70 lecturers who embarked on sabbatical 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.
“With this decision, we 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 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 would be able to effectively exercise their statutory control over staff recruitment, promotion, discipline and payroll administration.
“This decision 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.
“This action has shown that the 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.”
The Union, thus demanded that IPPIS should be given a deadline to clear all liabilities to institutions as it will be detrimental to industrial tranquillity if the liabilities are transferred to the Governing Councils.
