The leadership of the House of Representatives yesterday brokered a meeting between the Academic Staff Union of Universities ASUU and the office of the accountant general of the federation.
The meeting came after three weeks of deliberations with the union and all the relevant government agencies to resolve the teething issues that necessitated the 7-month-old strike of the lecturers.
Speaker of the House, Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila who led the principal officers of the House to the meeting had enquired from the Accountant-general and the NITDA if the universities payment systems can be re-evaluated.
While the Direct-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa said that all the three payment systems including University Transparency and Accountability Solution, UTAS; Integration Personnel and Information System, IPPIS and U3PS failed the integrity test and as such could not be relied upon, the Accountant general, Sylvia Okolieaboh offered for a meeting with ASUU to resolve the issues.
He said that the issues would be resolved using the IPPIS payment solution.
He said that adopting UTAS might prompt unwholesome requests from other agencies to be paid in their own salary structure.
Okolieaboh said: “If there are peculiarities in the university salaries system, what we need to do is to sit down with ASUU and identify them and address them in IPPS, are you willing to accept, if the answer is yes, then the whole of the issues will be resolved.
What we need to do, in my own opinion is to sit down with ASUU and know what the issues are and address them inside IPPS.
“One of the risks I’m adopting UTAS is that everybody will come and say give us our own salary. As we speak, the military is on IPPS, the police are on IPPS. They have their own peculiarities. What we need to do is sit down. IPPS is not a perfect system”.
He also offered ASUU to come up with any homegrown solution, assuring that the government will abide by it.
“In the spirit of reconciliation, if ASUU knows any fibre that can help to resolve the issues that we have, ASUU should go ahead. If ASUU knows any solution, we are more than willing to accept. if we are going to use UTAS, it means we are going to build the salaries of the universities”, Okolieaboh said.
Also speaking, the NITDA DG said they were waiting for further directives from the government to continue with the testing of the solutions.
“Our interactions with ASUU started in 2020. We keep identifying issues. We are always willing to continue with these engagements. We ended the last test in June 2022. We are waiting for the directive to continue. The last engagement was on the directive of the Chief of Staff to the President. We have 3 solutions. UTAS, U3PS and IPPIS. Professional advice, these solutions have failed. There are vulnerabilities in them as we identified. As far as a university payment system is concerned, these three solutions have failed”, he said.
Speaking also the Director General of the Budget Office, Ben Akabueze informed the lawmakers that they were opposed to adopting multiple solutions, stressing they will be expensive to fund.
He said “There is a dimension to this discussion. Acquiring and maintaining any application based on which we will pay thousands of people will cost money. If you decide to use any of them, you need a data centre and it will cost billions of naira. There has to be backup.
“We are vehemently opposed to multiple solutions because of our own fiscal situation. It’s still the government that will fund it. It doesn’t really make sense to us. Let’s determine which one is best but let’s not do multiple solutions”.
Similarly, the Head of Service, Yemi Esan contribution also said that “At this particular time, the country may not afford two payment platforms at this time. Running two platforms will be extremely expensive at this time. If we are using UTAS or IPPIS, let’s flush it and use it.”
On his part, the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige lauded the House leadership for the initiative, encouraging ASUU to stick with IPPIS to address their grievances.
He however regretted that ASUU hurriedly went on strike when negotiations were still ongoing without his notice, stressing he would not accept the failed systems.
The minister also mulled the financial autonomy for the university to generate its own funds.
“You started very well on the critical part, which is the renegotiation of their salaries and wages. It is money. The economy is bad. Biting on everybody. I don’t blame them.
“The answer to everything is that what you did at Briggs committee is still negotiation in progress, but when you go now and say it is an agreement to be signed by the government, nobody would agree. I would not agree because it did not pass through due process.
“The Minister for Education cannot even sign it alone. The ability to pay is a guiding principle of collective bargaining and agreement. You cannot offer what you don’t have.
“The issue is being addressed holistically by all. Here, I want to plead guilty to the offence that the day ASUU visited the President that they have UTAS, I was the one that raised my hand and said we should give them a trial in the spirit of the executive order.
“The AGF supported me. Some people said they have discovered something that would make us not lose foreign exchange, why won’t we embrace it? I am happy with the clarity the budget office has offered, that the three systems will look at it. Anyone that is good the government would adopt it for the whole country.
“So, no matter how much I love ASUU, I would not support something that failed a test. But the good news is that they said it is a continuous process. I had advised at that time when the first result came, to do a handshake with IPPIS. The peculiarities can be captured.