Federal universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions of learning have been exempted from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) with immediate effect.
The implication is that henceforth, remunerations to staff members of these institutions would no longer flow through the IPPIS platform.
The approval for the exemption was given by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its meeting on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, while briefing State House Correspondents after the FEC meeting, alongside other ministers, said the goal was to allow for the efficient running of public educational institutions nationwide.
He said that Wednesday’s move was not connected to the integrity of IPPIS, the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), or other similar systems advocated by various bodies.
“Simply, the president and the Council are just concerned about the efficiency of management of the universities, and so it has nothing to do with integrity or platform options,” Mamman said.
He said FEC also observed that Vice Chancellors of universities did not need to abandon their work to go to Abuja to process the salaries of personnel in their payroll.
“The President cannot understand why Vice Chancellors should be leaving their duty post and run to Abuja to get staff enlisted on IPPIS when they get recruited,” Mamman said.
“The basic concern is that universities are governed by laws. And those laws give them autonomy in certain respects and most respects and the IPPIS has sort of eroded that autonomy granted universities is accordance with their act,” he said.
As one of its reform initiatives for the effective storage of personnel records, the Federal Government introduced the IPPIS in 2006 in a move that it said would improve transparency and accountability. It also expanded the IPPIS to include all government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that draw personnel costs from the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
But the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of university lecturers in Nigeria, would have none of that, insisting on the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as its desired platform for payment.
This became a constant source of squabbles between ASUU and the Federal Government, leading to industrial actions by ASUU that disrupted educational activities.
The exemption of the universities and other institutions from may thus be the resolution of one of the major causes of misunderstanding between the government and ASUU in recent years.
Minister of the Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, who also briefed State House Correspondents on Wednesday, said the FG reasoned that the IPPIS does not afford tertiary institutions the freedom to run their affairs.
“Today, the universities and other tertiary institutions have gotten a very big relief from the Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System,” Idris said.
“You will recall that the university authorities and others have been clamouring for exempting the universities and other tertiary institutions from this system. Today, the Council has graciously approved that. What that means is that going forward, the universities, as the Honourable Minister of Education has said, and other tertiary institutions, the polytechnics and colleges of education will be taken off the IPPIS.
“What that means in simple language is that the university authorities and other tertiary institutions will now pay their personnel from their own end instead of relying on the IPPIS,” he said.
