The Academic Staff Union of Universities has described Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) as exploitative, saying it taxed an associate professor as much as N670,000 per annum.
ASUU said the system could not tackle corruption as the government projected, adding that the instrument recognised by law to do the job was the visitation panel.
This is according to a statement signed by the union’s leaders of universities in Port Harcourt zone.
The statement was endorsed by Uzo Onyebinama, Zonal Coordinator, ASUU, Port Harcourt; Emmanuel Akpan, Chairperson, Federal University Otuoke (FUO); Endurance Joseph, Chairperson, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education; Tonbara Kingdom, Chairperson, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island and Austen Sado, Chairperson, University of Port Harcourt.
Onyebinama, who read the document, said: “IPPIS is not the legal instrument for solving the problem of monumental fraud perpetrated by some administrators of the universities.
“IPPIS taxes rent subsidy, allowances for journals, conferences, hazards among others. For instance an Associate Professor pays a tax of about N672,000 per annum.
“IPPIS breaches the due process for enrolment in the national housing scheme. IPPIS deducts pensions from the allowances earlier listed. IPPIS breaches university autonomy. IPPIS breaches the law.
“The legal instrument to probe corruption in the universities is the visitation panel. For almost a decade, ASUU has been clamoring for the constitution of visitation panels in federal universities.
“We are told that they are at the point of gazetting the panels for several weeks now. Maybe they will need like another five years to do the gazetting.
“Even when the panels visit, their reports will remain secret and empty white papers will be released with nothing actually to implement and this will be done in connivance with some unscrupulous officers of the Federal Government.”
“Yet this government was elected into office on the mantra of zero tolerance for corruption. State governments are proliferating universities without adequate funding for already established ones.
“Most vice-chancellors of state universities are at the beck and call of their visitors, unable to take any decision without recourse to their visitors.
“This struggle is not just for ASUU members. It belongs to the Nigerian people, the masses of this country. We are already down and he that is down has no reason to fear a fall. Let us all stand up for our public universities.”
