The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has applauded President Bola Tinubu for exempting tertiary institutions from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
The COEASU President, Dr Smart Olugbeko made this known in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja on Thursday.
Olugbeko said this gesture was one of the best decisions taken so far by the President since he assumed office.
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He said this action had further shown that the President was not just a listening leader with great passion for fairness and smooth-running of the Nigerian education sector, but also in charge of his administration.
“By this development, the College of Education (COE) system in particular and the tertiary education sector in general, have been delivered from the backward bureaucratic bottlenecks, encumbrances and corrupt practices associated with the centralised 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 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,” he said.
Olugbeko added that as at today, more than 70 lecturers who embarked on sabbatical leave between 2020 and 2022 were not paid salaries throughout the duration of the sabbatical leave.
According to him, some were even 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.
” Also, IPPIS should be given a deadline to clear all its liabilities to institutions as it will be detrimental to industrial tranquillity if these liabilities are transferred to the governing councils.
“Therefore, we urge the President and the Honourable Minister of Education to be wary and take appropriate steps further by ensuring that tertiary institutions have unhindered and timely access to their pay wallets.
“And the wallets should be well funded to take care of the needs of the institutions in the areas of monthly salaries, Peculiar Earned Academic Allowance (PEAA), sabbatical leave and recruitment of new staff to fill existing vacancies,” he added.
