By Idorenyin Aquaisua, Uyo
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Federal Government of playing a game of deceit by asking striking University Lecturers to enroll in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System before they are paid their outstanding salary insisting Government is playing a game of deception and manipulation over its demands to end the ongoing strike. ASUU president Abiodun Ogunyemi who expressed these views while speaking on ChannelsTV Sunrise Daily on Monday said “Government should stop this arm-twisting and manipulation, going back to universities to ask them to go and enrol in (Integrated Personnel and Payroll System) IPPIS so that they will go and migrate to UTAS; people see it as a game of deception and we cannot trust them.”
“What we need is a commitment; there is nothing like transition and what we are saying, in essence, is that government should just go ahead and pay what government has withheld – the salaries of our members; people have not been paid for eight or nine months on account of not registering on IPPIS,”
ASUU has embarked on a nationwide strike action on March 23rd over IPPIS as well as a disagreement pertaining to the revitalization of universities and earned academic allowances.
Series of dialogue on the issue ended in a stalemate as the federal government insist that the payment of the withheld salaries and other entitlements of striking lecturers would only be effected through the IPPIS, a payroll software ASUU had rejected.
Ogunyemi, however, said the Nigerian government is playing a game of deception, saying it has failed to show commitment to their demands.
He noted the need for the government to show more commitment to the ongoing negotiations in order to ensure lecturers and students return to the classroom.
Ogunyemi had said ASUU members would continue to stay away from classes until all pending issues were resolved.
He said since Federal Government’s implementation of IPPIS, payment to ASUU members had been haphazard and inconsistent, as lecturers were owed salaries, ranging from three to eight months.
ASUU also accused the Federal Government of non-remittance of five months dues of the union to its purse. It said the Federal Government between February and June this year deducted check-off dues on its behalf and refused to them.
