The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union COEASU has called on the Federal Government to drop its ego and accept the University Transparency and Accountability Solution UTAS, as a payment solution in all tertiary institutions in Nigeria .
COEASU also welcome the use of University Transparency and Accountability Solution UTAS saying it addresses it concerns on payroll security and the peculiarities of the tertiary education system in general.
According to the Union, UTAS being a home-grown and hack-proof payment system,
the Federal government should adopt the solution for the entire tertiary education sector as it takes care of the peculiarities of the institutions including financial autonomy, sabbatical service, and the administration of discipline.
The Union stated these in a statement signed and made available to journalists in Abuja, by it President ,Smart Olugbeko
, on the acceptance of UTAS in place of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) deployed by the federal government as payment solution in tertiary institutions.
According to COEASU, the challenges created by the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) has been a great source of worry and constituted one of the major issues prone to industrial crisis in the College of Education (COE) system.
The Union stated that IPPIS breaches the establishment integrity of the tertiary institutions system, undermines the statutory functions of the Governing Councils, and opens the payroll up to unilateral manipulations.
“Within a short time after its unilateral imposition on tertiary institutions by the FG in February 2020, academic Unions’ opposition to it was vindicated as the IPPIS pay platform engendered several irregularities, such as salary omission, accommodation of ghost workers, mutilated salary, and inconsistency in payment of salary of staff on sabbatical and study leaves”.
“Details of the audit findings submitted to the National Assembly in September 2021 by the office of the Auditor General of the Federation (OAuGF) revealed how operators of the IPPIS connived with the consulting vendors and operators to defraud the government”COEASU President said.
It further added , ” We are therefore thrown aback by the latest game of sheer ego resorted to by the FG through the lazy and mischievous blackmail of UTAS because of unsubstantiated claims of inadequacy”
COEASU disclosed that the National Information Technology Development Agency’s (NITDA) assessment of UTAS done between 8th and 16th of March 2022 which subjected the solution to 698 cases gave UTAS 97.4% and 99.3% before and after remediation respectively.
This great feat is enough for FG to give kudos to ASUU for providing a home-grown solution to the problem of payment system in the country and quickly adopt it for payment, rather the FG resorted to blackmailing of ASUU and UTAS.
