Chairman of the University of Lagos chapter of the Non Academic Staff Union of Universities and Allied Institutions, Mr. Kehinde Ajibade, has described the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) used to pay civil servants as fraudulent. He accused the Federal Government of deceiving the Union to sign up for it.
NASU and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) began an indefinite strike last Friday to protest the skewed operations of the IPPIS platform and the nonpayment of arrears of earned allowances, among others.
“IPPIS is a scam; it is fraudulent; in fact it is not sustainable within the university system. That is just the fact because we found out that the federal government just deceived us to enrol on that platform,” he said in an interview.
Giving details of the poor operations of the IPPIS, Ajibade said many members of the union had been shortchanged because IPPIS does not pay their full salaries, deducts union dues indiscriminately and fails to remit same.
He said: “Since February 2020,the federal government started using IPPIS for our salary payment. Number one, some of our members are not being paid. If they pay A this month, B will be affected next month. We have made series of complaints through the office of our bursar to the IPPIS office. Up till now nothing has been done.
“Number two, we had issues with our dues. The IPPIS office muddled up our dues; lumped up our union dues, warehousing our dues for months. The IPPIS warehoused our dues for almost eight months. It was released in the month of September last year. Although we are receiving it now on monthly basis but we are still having many issues.
“Also our cooperative (dues) – you know as a government worker, we rely on cooperative. IPPIS did not pick some of our deductions and when they deduct it, they warehoused it. I don’t know when IPPIS became CBN that will now be deducting salaries of Nigerians and warehousing it, keeping it. The people that are there are so fraudulent. The government said through IPPIS they want to fight corruption. The corruption that is happening in IPPIS is even more than what we had in the past,” he said.
Ajibade said the union’s strike would be total because the government was insincere. He said the government reneged on its agreement with the union and had not dealt with the issues it raised as promised.
“Government said it wants to set up a committee to look into the issue of IPPIS. Is it now that you want to look into the issue when you have signed MOU in October? So the government is not even sincere. You said our minimum wage arrears has been forwarded to office of the accountant general; that we should wait for supplementary budget – supplementary budget that will scale through the first reading, second reading, third reading in the national assembly. So there is no time frame. Even when you tell us that you are going to answer us December 31 you did not fulfill it. Is it when you now you did not give timeline to our agitation you will now fulfill?”
Other issues NASU wants the government to address are – nonpayment of retirement benefits to retirees, and nonpayment of minimum wage arrears which has been paid to other ministries, departments and agencies. It also rejected the 75-25 per cent sharing formula for the earned allowance in favour of ASUU, urging the government not to lump the union with others.
