The University of Ibadan (UI) and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) chapters of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have lamented that lecturers are being paid with the IPPIS platform, News About Nigeria reports.
The chairmen of the two universities’ union, Professor Ayo Akinwole of UI and Dr. Babatunde Lawal of LAUTECH, made their grievances known while addressing newsmen on Thursday.
They demanded that the Federal Government return union funds deducted from their salaries during the recent strike action, while tasking the government to give more and due attention to tertiary education funding.
They maintained that the Federal Government must release the third-party deductions, which include cooperative contributions, pension deductions, and union check-off dues made through the IPPIS platform, to the union.
“IPPIS is a violation of university autonomy as well as the Acts establishing universities. Added to this illegality is its notoriety as a fraudulent platform that is inflicting unprecedented hardship on Nigerian academics and corruptly distorting university operations with respect to payroll management.
“It is on these grounds that ASUU is consistently rejecting IPPIS. We are, however, worried that the grip of IPPIS on the universities is far from being eased more than four months after the government directed the exit of federal universities and other tertiary institutions from the discredited payment platform.”
“As of today, the salaries of our members are still whimsically withheld, just as third-party deductions (cooperative contributions, pension deductions, and union check-off dues) are not released.
“The platform, with all its encumbrances, is still being used to pay our members under the disguise of ‘New IPPIS’ contrary to the Federal Executive Council’s (FEC’s) directive,” they stated.
