SAN FRANCISCO, November 05, (THEWILL) – Students in Nigerian public universities are to remain at home until disagreement between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Non Academic Staff of University (NASU) is resolved.
THEWILL gathered that the Federal Government and the ASUU are yet to reach an agreement.
While ASUU insists on using its indigenous platform– University Transparency and Accountability System (UTAS) to pay its members or return teaching staff to the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), the government insisted that UTAS is not going to be feasible in the next six months. It also ruled out a return to GIFMIS, saying the platform has been dismantled.
This has now formed a stumbling block to the conclusion of the agreement, as this is the only area of disagreement between the two parties.
Addressing newsmen on Wednesday at the end of a closed-door conciliation meeting between Federal Government representatives and ASUU, Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige said the cardinal issue was the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) versus the Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
Ngige added that ASUU had submitted its document on UTAS for onward submission to the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). “As you know last week, the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy had approved that NITDA gets ASUU system (UTAS) and subject it to integrity test. This test should be conducted without fear or favour and as early as possible. So today, they have submitted the document for onward transmission to NITDA.
“One other issue that has arisen is the issue of the transition period. How do ASUU get the Earned Academic Allowances that are due to them and any other entitlement that the government wants to pay them?
“So that is where we are for now. So we are all going back to our principals and they will receive via me the irreducible minimum of what the Federal Government has to offer. “The government side will meet on Friday and after that, they will communicate to ASUU and in communicating with them, if there is a need for a meeting, a date will be fixed for it.”
Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, ASUU President said that the union would wait for the Federal Government to meet on Friday and get back to the union by next week.
In the meantime, the Non-Academic Staff Union of Education and Associated Institutions (NASU) said it will not accept the payment of its members via the ASUU platform.
The General Secretary of NASU, Peters Adeyemi said UTAS is not known to the union and its Senior Staff Association of Universities (SSANU).
Adeyemi revealed that both unions have developed their own payment platform named, ‘University General Peculiar Payroll Payment System (UGPPPS)’ which takes the peculiarities of non-teaching staffers into consideration. He said NASU and SSANU will resist the imposition of UTAS on their members.
“We are aware that ASUU desires to have its own platform. We are warning that if the ASUU platform will be used to pay staffers in the universities, none of our members should be paid using that platform by the Federal Government. The reason for this is that we were not privy to how the system was developed. If the Federal Government will completely take off IPPIS from the universities and wants to use the ASUU platform, then they will use the ASUU platform for ASUU members while the government will use our own platform for our members”, he said.
