The Vice Chancellor of Nasarawa University, Professor Suleiman Bala Mohammed, has urged both federal government and the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to resolve their disagreement over the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) in the interest of the nation.
Professor Mohammed who spoke with Blueprint in Keffi, said both ASUU and federal government mean well for the country, adding that dialogue and negotiation should be embraced by all to avoid shutting down of the university system.
”My advice is that the FG should look into the issue; they should commence negotiation with ASUU so that amicable resolution is found. Because you will agreed that the trend over time is that there would be threat of strike, the action will take place, and the universities will be shut down at the end of the day, it is only through dialogue and discussion that you resolve the issues and open up the universities.
“So, what I’m appealing to government to do is to ensure that they get the leadership of ASUU to discussion and ensure that we don’t get into the place of strike. I am sure the issue is not the one that can’t be resolved because the leadership of the union met with Mr President and I believe with that there should be room for dialogue and negotiation and there should be room for amicable resolution of the matter, which is my hope”.
He said while federal government is concerned about ending corruption and ensuring transparency in the system, the union is also in agreement but wants their peculiarity which the system did not capture be address.
Professor Mohammed explained that for instance, “ there are jobs that we do that are not captured on the public service scheme, for example sabbatical leave, adjoin appointment whether as visiting lecturer or as temporary staff and the IPPIS does not capture all these.”
The university don further expressed confidence that despite a recent circular that those yet to be capture on the system would not be paid, the matter would be resolved amicably between government and the lecturers.
On the report that Nasarawa State University increased tuition for 2019/2020 session, the VC said such information was false as the institution maintained 2018/2019 school fees for all students.
He stated that what the school did was to insist on best practice by insisting that all graduating students should pay five thousand naira for transcript and those who live on hostel to pay three thousand naira maintenance fee.
“I want to state categorically that there has been no increment in school fees, in fact when we got the news I told them that is fake news and that is why after a while the agitation came down. What we did was to maintain the structure of the fees for last session, but we introduce two things that are confusing students to think that we have increase school fees.
“The first one is transcript, anybody who graduate and needs transcript he comes and apply, pay five thousand naira and get the transcript. But the situation I met on ground, even the result are not well kept to the extent that a lot of people are missing their transcript and I have to work on that. We have tidied them up. We then said we are going to do best practice, and that is if your result is ready, you can download the transcript. We therefore said the five thousand that you pay when you want has to be paid now so that we can improve our facilities and make sure that all the transcripts are there so that you don’t need to come to us.”
