The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has reiterated that it won’t change its position on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) of the federal government.
Biodun Ogunyemi, the union’s president, spoke on Thursday during Channels TV’s ‘Politics Today’.
He blamed the payroll software for alleged irregularities in the payment of the salaries and allowances of lecturers, claiming that some professors received N8,000 as monthly salaries for some months.
“So, the platform does not recognise negotiated agreements like we are talking about allowance—unacademic allowances, research journal, and other things,” he said.
“What we call amputated salary came into it because the IPPIS platform was not designed for the university system.
“In fact, there were professors that were paid like N8,000 in some months on our campuses. So, we don’t expect anything otherwise because that platform was not meant for the university system.”
Biodun also opined that the IPPIS cannot work for the university system, especially in the area of taxation.
According to him, the federal government had given the lecturers a one-line salary scale, which means taxes are being deducted from allowances — an attribute he complained doesn’t apply to the workers in the civil service.
When asked whether the lecturers are willing to return to classes despite the failure of ASUU and the government to reach a decisive conclusion, the ASUU president added: “I believe our students and parents would understand.
“If we have lecturers that have not been paid for eight, nine months, how can we have that person putting in his or her best in a system?
“If people are going back to universities and they will be paid less of their usual salary, how can we cope with that?”
