The Federal Government has commenced the processes of implementing the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) in the federal universities with the inauguration of a committee to develop the payment template after taking due cognisance of the peculiarities of the Nigerian university system.
The committee which was inaugurated at the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation in Abuja by the IPPIS Coordinator, Mrs Fatimah Mede, had representatives from stakeholders in the university system namely, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (NASU), among others.
The committee was also mandated to review the current Management Information System (MIS) of the universities, and evaluate the IPPIS in its current form with a view of identifying the areas that needed to be reviewed to facilitate its streamlining with the features of the operating payroll system in the tertiary institutions.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Mede said that currently, 318 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government had been integrated to the IPPIS platform, noting that their movement had been able to facilitate prompt payment of workers’ salaries.
For instance, she said in April, government was able to pay 254,000 workers on the IPPIS platform, totalling N25 billion as salary before the Easter celebrations.
She said, “Now, we are here because our universities, colleges of education and polytechnics are yet to come on board. When members of staff of these institutions come on board, we believe that we can better manage salaries of our public institutions.
The universities are sceptical about coming on board because we have not taken in their peculiarities. “We have been on his project for four years and I will crave your indulgence to abridge all the protocols, to see if we can come up with a solution within the next two weeks to present.
We have been on the universities system since 2012 and we have gone round but unfortunately, the unions boycotted the meetings and we are willing to work with you to ensure the success of this programme”, Mede added.
The Federal Government had given universities and polytechnics a deadline of November 30 this year to migrate their payroll to the IPPIS platform.
