By Muhammed Abubakar, Reporting
PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu has instructed that staff of public universities, polytechnics and Colleges of Education captured in the contentious Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) to exit the payment platform.
The Minister of Education, Prof Mamman Tahir, made the disclosure on Wednesday, shortly after the Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by President Tinubu.
Mamman said the President and the Council were concerned about the efficiency of management of the universities, noting that the decision had nothing to do with integrity or options of platforms.
He said the President could not understand why Vice Chancellors should be leaving their duty post and run to Abuja to get staff enlisted on IPPIS when they got recruited.
According to the Education Minister, the basic concern is that universities are governed by laws and those laws give them autonomy in certain respects and the IPPIS has, sort of, eroded that autonomy granted universities in accordance with their Act.
But offering more explanations on the Presidential directive, Minister of Information and National Orientation , Muhammed Idris, said, “Today, the universities and other tertiary institutions have gotten a very big relief from the integrated payroll and personnel information system.”
Stonix News reports that IPPIS regime was one of the major bone of contention that brought Federal universities to their knees for eight months when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) downtooled in 2022.
The then Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige, being ill-advised, stuck to his gun in his refusal to accept the option brought forward by the varsity lecturers given the yawning lapses of the payment system.
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