Buhari orders NITDA to subject IPPIS, UTAS, U3PS to integrity test

16 May Buhari orders NITDA to subject IPPIS, UTAS, U3PS to integrity test

President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to subject the Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System (IPPIS) and the two other proposed payment solutions proposed by University workers to integrity test.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU and the non-teaching staff Joint Action Committee, JAC, comprising the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions, NASU, and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, had lamented that they were being shortchanged in their salary payment since the government introduced IPPIS as the official payment platform.

As an alternative, ASUU proposed to the government the University Transparency Accountability Solution, UTAS, while SSANU and NASU on their own, proposed the University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System, U3PS.

This is as the Federal Government is making efforts towards ensuring that the Consequential Adjustment/ minimum wage arrears are paid to the striking university workers this week in order to persuade them call off the ongoing strike.

SSANU and NASU claimed that the proposed U3PS accommodate the peculiarities in the Nigerian University system as it handles all employees’ financial records in a hassle-free, automated fashion.

The peculiarities include employees’ salaries, bonuses, deductions, net pay, generation of pay-advice and other financial reports using accounting best practices and also seek to essentially automate those micro administrative tasks performed by accountant general office and bursars of federal institutions, thereby giving the office the mental bandwidth to focus on the macro.

In a tripartite plus meeting attended by the leadership of the university-based unions including the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige and other relevant stakeholders, at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Buhari directed NITDA to subject the three payment solutions to integrity test.

The Tripartite Plus meeting chaired by the Chief of Staff to the President, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, gave NITDA three weeks to carry out the integrity test and report back the results.