VCs are governments’ errand boys, says Ibadan ASUU

Youths blast union for rejecting IPPIS

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Ibadan chapter, has affirmed that vice chancellors of the nation’s universities have become errand boys of governments at all levels, describing it as a painful development.It decried the proposed Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information Systems (IPPIS) by the Federal Government and described it as illegal and fraudulent.

The chairman, Dr. Ade Adejumo, said yesterday that IPPIS clearly violated extant laws.He said: “The Universities Miscellaneous Provisions (Amendment) Act 2003 provides in Section 2A(a) that the 1992 Act establishing, for example, the Federal Universities of Agriculture Section 8 (1 and 4) made it clear that although government has control over budgets of universities, the responsibility of dispensing of finance is vested, by law, in the respective university councils that employed the staff.

“Our union is appalled that government is losing sight of the provisions of the law, hence it reeled out the ill-advised presidential directive that all employees of Federal Government in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) should enrol in IPPIS by October, and that erring MDAs will be denied their due emoluments.”

ASUU president, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, had on Saturday noted a situation whereby VCs were constrained to go cap in hand to Abuja for funds to run the institutions was a mockery of the peculiarity of universities and the autonomy they should enjoy.

But Yoruba Youth Socio-cultural Association (YYSA) has criticised ASUU for rejecting the IPPIS.In a statement in Ibadan yesterday by its national president, Olalekan Hammed, the group described the rejection as unethical.

“The rejection of IPPIS by ASUU is unethical. IPPIS had been adopted by many federal agencies, and we have seen how it revealed corrupt practices MDAs.
“Some MDAs like Ministry of Defence, Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Department of State Services (DSS) that are more peculiar were among government establishments that embraced IPPIS,” it stated.

Educational institutions, the youths added, are supposed to be moral exemplifiers, which would be the first to enforce principles that have to do with transparency and accountability.They alleged, “The institutions that depend on the Federal Government for salary can never be exempted from IPPIS implementation by claiming to be autonomous. “In fact, the attitude of ASUU towards the implementation of IPPIS in various universities further expose the extent to which corruption reigns in Nigerian university system.”