Four months have gone and the ASUU strike still lingers, the federal government has been accused of reneging on previous agreements including the agreement to increase funding for public universities.
It is important to note that ASUU is on strike for the same reason they went on strike in the past – the urgent need for the revitalization of the university system.
The federal government has not implemented the funding agreement it reached with the Union in 2012, 2013, and the Memorandum of Agreement of 2017 which is why ASUU is deploying strike action as a strategy.
ASUU is taking this Action to drive national dialogue on the necessity to proliferate universities across the nation.
What baffles one is that all significant infrastructural development or new policy on the administration of our universities has been achieved by ASUU critically engaging the government using strike action as a motivator.
Not once in the past decade has an allocation to the ministry of Education reached 10% of the budget.
Unfortunately, the education sector had been left by the government to rot.
Nigerian public universities won’t be able to compete globally again, they are handicapped as long as they are primarily tied to government funding.
If not for ASUU’s struggle for the autonomy of universities, our academy would have been nothing to write home about.
This article aims to highlight the reason why ASUU has been at loggerheads with the government.
Some of the issues are the payment of Earned Academic Allowance, revitalization fund, the discontinuation of the use of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System(IPPIS), and replacing it with the University Transparency and Accountability System(UTAS), a few of which will be buttressed.
N30bn take-off grant for new varsities.
In a bid to Proliferate universities, senators now have a bill that demands that universities be set up in their various constituencies without adequate provisions made for the funding.
This raises the question of where the funds are supposed to come from, some state governments are owing lecturers in their universities with over six months in salary arrears, and the existing ones are still being developed and largely unequipped.
ASUU hereby suggests that the law mandating the National Universities Commission(NUC) to license new universities be amended to ensure that a new university would have a take-off grant of not less than N30 billion in reserve.
The discontinuation of the IPPIS and replacement with UTAS payment infrastructure is the same reason the union went on a nine-month strike in 2020.
So it is important to dissect this concept;
What is IPPIS and What is UTAS?
According to Business Day;
What is IPPIS? The federal government of Nigeria in October 2006 introduced the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) as one of its reform programs to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the storage of personnel records and administration of monthly payroll in such a way to enhance confidence in staff emolument costs and budgeting.
According to top government staff, the aim was to buttress the government’s commitment to efficient and effective service delivery
What is UTAS?
However, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) preferred a payment option known as the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as an alternative to IPPIS.
About 711 ministries, departments, and agencies of government in Nigeria are on the IPPIS platform, but ASUU insists on being the only one standing out.
ASUU maintains that the federal government must pull out of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS)
Now, are these issues worth the interruption of the dreams of young Nigerians?
