The chairman, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU) Awka chapter, Comrade Stephen Ufoaru, has said his chapter is solidly behind the decision of the national body on total rejection of Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
Ufoaru, in a chat with Blueprint in his office Thursday stated that ASUU NAU did not only resolve not to enroll on IPPIS but reaffirmed their stand on sanctioning any member, who dares to go contrary to the directive of the ASUU national body.
“The fundamental problem with IPIS is that the Act, which establishes every university, cannot be repealed by mere pronouncement. Again, IPPIS is a brainchild of World Bank and IMF.
“It was not intended to make Nigeria better as we are today. It is a private business. And as a union, we think we can do better as a country if we begin to explore the ability of our intellectuals and the academics.
“The alternative platform we proffered to this is called the university transparency accountability system (UTAS). This is a brainchild of Nigerians and will also accommodate all the peculiarities we have in university system such as professors and senior lecturers going for external assessments, assessing their colleagues going for promotion, going for adjunct and others in line with international best practices,” he said.
The ASUU NAU boss, while stressing that IPPIS was a distraction against Acts establishing universities and international standard, urged the federal government to allow universities to take care of their staff while they (federal government) should play its role of sending in monitoring team to the university as required by extant law, which unfortunately had not been done for over 15 years.
He further joined the executive leaders of the union to beckon on the National Assembly members, opinion leaders and other notable individuals and groups in the country to appeal to the federal government to attend to memorandum of actions and other it reached with them to avoid unforeseen crisis.
