The Academic Staff Union of the Colleges of Education made a demand on Thursday to release the underpaid salaries and benefits of its members, claiming that they were denied because of security vulnerabilities in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
In a statement issued by Smart Olugbeko, the National President of the Education Union, the union commended the Federal Executive Council for excluding postsecondary institutions from using the IPPIS platform, calling this move the best decision the current administration has taken thus far.
The Federal Government, led by President Bola Tinubu, had previously announced that post-secondary educational institutions would no longer be using the IPPIS platform.
“Has consistently put up a strong opposition against IPPIS as a fraudulent and ineffective platform,” the union claimed. It is regrettable that the educational system was subjected to the devastation caused by a platform with such blatant flaws for such a long period. The wounds inflicted by IPPIS will take a long time to heal completely in our institutions.
As of right now, some teachers who took sabbatical leave between 2020 and 2022 were compensated for a few months, while more than seventy lecturers were not paid during their whole vacation. Furthermore, many professors are still unpaid, and IPPIS was unable to provide an explanation for the omission. Making every attempt to get IPPIS pay these lecturers yielded no result.”
Thus, we implore Mr. President and the Honorable Minister of Education to exercise caution and take the necessary additional measures. These include making sure that postsecondary educational institutions have timely and unhindered access to their pay wallets, and that these wallets are sufficiently funded to meet the needs of the institutions with regard to monthly salaries, Peculiar Earned Academic Allowance sabbatical leave, and hiring new employees to cover open positions. The President and the Honorable Minister are assured by our Union that we will uphold our watchdog function and that we won’t let the Provosts or Governing Councils take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.
As a result, we implore Mr. President and the Honorable Minister of Education to exercise caution and take the necessary additional measures. These include making sure that postsecondary institutions have timely and unhindered access to their pay wallets, and that these wallets are adequately funded to meet the needs of the institutions with regard to monthly salaries, Peculiar Earned Academic Allowance sabbatical leave, and hiring new employees to cover open positions. Our Union is assuring Mr. President and the Honorable Minister that we will keep up our watchdog duty and won’t let the Provosts or Governing Councils take advantage of this wonderful chance.