Vice-chancellors secure a short reprieve in payroll feud

Threats to withhold the October salaries of lecturers in Nigerian federal universities unless they register their details with the new Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) have not been carried out after an intervention by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVC).

University World News-Africa has reliably learned that the CVC prevailed upon the federal government to give the universities a one month grace period during which time a workable and amicable solution would be sought to the ongoing disagreement over IPPIS.

The new system – seen by academics as a threat to the autonomy of the university system – has pitted the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation (OAGF) against the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).

Tension mounted after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who is also the Visitor of all public tertiary education institutions, warned in the National Assembly recently that any staff member who had not registered on the IPPIS platform would not be paid from October onwards.

Zainab Ahmed, Nigeria’s minister of finance, budget and national planning, accused union members of flouting authority and trying to set themselves apart from other government staff. “[So], it is a pity if ASUU carries out this strike because what ASUU is saying now is that they should be treated differently from other staff of the government of Nigeria who are also on IPPIS,” she is reported to have said.

Workable alternative

In an attempt to defuse tensions, a delegation of ASUU members led by the union’s national president, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, met with Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan, president of Nigeria’s upper chamber (Senate), and some senators on 28 October. The senate asked the union to devise a workable alternative payroll that would suit the peculiarities of the universities.

Presenting an ASUU position paper to the meeting, Ogunyemi said: “The enforcement of IPPIS is a violation of the law on university autonomy. Section 2AA of the Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Act of 2003 states that ‘the powers of the council shall be exercised as in the law and statutes of each university and to that extent establishment circulars that are inconsistent with the laws and statutes of the university shall not apply to the universities'.

“Section 2A of the act also empowers the governing council of each university to manage the personnel and finances of the university in line with the approved budget. Academics are employees of the governing councils. This means that circulars meant for centralised payment of salaries should not and cannot be binding.”

The current disagreement between OAGF and universities over IPPIS goes back several years. According to an official memorandum dated 25 February 2013, signed by Professor Abubakar Rasheed, then vice-chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, 12 universities including his own were selected for a test run of the current template of IPPIS.

‘Peculiar nature’ of university systems

In the memorandum, Rasheed said the IPPIS template was too restrictive and did not take cognisance of the peculiar nature of the university system. For example, there was no provision for staff on sabbatical leave or training, contract staff appointments, honorary consultant lecturers and part-time lecturers, among other gaps.

Rasheed, who is now the executive secretary of the National Universities Commission, raised concerns with what he perceived as some of the dangers of the rigid payroll software that he said could threaten “the autonomy of the university system”.

Among the other problems highlighted were the fact that the system did not recognise the authority of universities to hire and fire any teaching or non-teaching staff. Furthermore, it did not take account of universities’ responsibility for the creation of new departments and their powers to staff them.

Rasheed’s memorandum also pointed to the fact that outsourcing of some key essential services such as security and cleaning, as well as the employment of casual workers, were not captured by the proposed payroll system. Furthermore, there was no provision for a university’s endowment fund.

Rasheed said the problems with the system had been “observed by various universities and others, including resistance by other unions”, and a special meeting of the CVC had been held on the matter in March 2012, after which it took up the issue with OAGF representatives who “promised to look into them before the implementation of IPPIS in the universities”.

Criticisms of the new system

However, despite this intervention, criticisms continue to be made against the system.

The zonal branches of ASUU have been meeting to map out strategies to counter any move by the central government and a clear directive has been sent to all union members to the effect that they should not register on the payroll because the system in its current form is in conflict with the laws that originally established the universities.

Dr Toyin Enikuomehin, a lecturer of computer science at Lagos State University, said the controversy over the software payroll system was unnecessary.

He said the OAGF simply needs to ask the CVC to provide an outline of the peculiarities facing universities “and the software engineers and technicians can go to the open source website and produce a customised university payroll. And the crisis is resolved.”