In view of the back and forth of the Federal Government and ASUU on payment platforms, Mr Sylvia Okolieaboh, the acting Accountant-General of the Federation has decided to intervene. Mr Sylvia made this decision known on Thursday while stating the need for a meeting with the leadership of ASUU to resolve the long-standing issue of payment platforms.
He also explained that the meeting is to ultimately resolve the seven month old strike. He made this statement at the tripartite reconciliatory meeting held prompted by the leadership of the House of Representatives, chaired by Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila. Honourable Femi also asserted that a conversation with the president on the strike will be made.
Mr Sylvia said that the issue will be attended to using the IPPIS payment solution because allowing the use of University Transparency Accountability Solution could spur other unions to make a similar demand. He said: “If there are peculiarities in the university salaries system, what we need to do is to sit down with ASUU and identify them and address them in IPPS. Are you willing to accept? If the answer is yes, then, the whole of the issues will be resolved.
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“What we need to do, in my own opinion, is to sit down with ASUU and know what the issues are and address them inside IPPIS.“One of the risks of adopting UTAS is that everybody will come and say give us our own salary. As we speak, the military is on IPPIS, the Police is on IPPIS. They have their own peculiarities. What we need to do is to sit down. IPPIS is not a perfect system.
“In the spirit of reconciliation, if ASUU knows any fibre that can help to resolve the issues that we have, ASUU should go ahead. If ASUU knows any solution, we are more than willing to accept. If we are going to use UTAS, it means we are going to build the salaries of the universities.
The speaker of the House of Representatives also addressed the issue and demanded if the platforms used for universities’ payments can be reviewed. He directed his enquiries to the Accountant-General and also the National Information Technology Development Agency ( NITDA). The NITDA director -general, Mr Kashifu Inuwa, who had earlier stated that all the three payment systems failed integrity tests and was not reliable,however, informed the House leadership that the agency is waiting for further directive from the government to continue with the testing.
“Our interactions with ASUU started in 2020. We keep identifying issues. We are always willing to continue with these engagements. We ended the last test in June 2022. We are waiting for the directive to continue. The last engagement was on the directive of the Chief of Staff to the President.
