IPPIS Exemption: College Lecturers Laud Tinubu, Demand Payment Of Salary Backlogs

The Colleges Of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has commended the decision of President Bola Tinubu over the exemption of tertiary institutions from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

The Union in a statement signed by its president, Dr. Smart Olugbeko on Monday, said the removal from IPPIS has delivered the tertiary education sector in the country ‘from the backward bureaucratic bottlenecks, encumbrances and corrupt practices associated with the centralized pay system’.

The statement also stated that it was one of the best decisions taken so far by the president since he assumed office, adding that it shows that he is a listening leader with passion for fairness and smooth-running of the Nigerian education sector.

“We equally commend the Honourable Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, who brought the attention of President Tinubu to the obnoxious IPPIS and its damaging effects to the education sector.

“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 will be able to effectively exercise their statutory control over staff recruitment, promotion, discipline and payroll administration.

“It 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,” it said.

While speaking on the many disadvantages of the IPPIS, the Union lamented that more than 70 lecturers who embarked on sabbatical leave between 2020 and 2022 were not paid salaries throughout the sabbatical leave while some were paid for a 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,” it said.

The Union stated that the IPPIS should be given a deadline to clear all its liabilities to institutions as it will be detrimental if the liabilities are transferred to the Governing Councils.

“Our Union is giving the assurance to Mr President and the Honourable Minister that we shall continue to play our role as a watchdog and will not allow the golden opportunity to be abused by the Provosts or Governing Councils,” it said.