Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Federal Government of deliberately undermining the smooth operation of the newly introduced Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), which replaced the controversial Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
The union claims the government is employing deliberate tactics to ensure the new system disadvantages university workers, particularly lecturers—allegedly as retribution for their rejection of IPPIS.
ASUU National President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, made these allegations during an exclusive interview with the Nigerian Tribune over the weekend. He was responding to questions about the status of the N50 billion recently released by the Federal Government to settle part of the outstanding earned allowances for university staff.
Osodeke revealed that, two weeks after the government publicly announced the disbursement, neither ASUU members nor their non-academic counterparts had received the allowances. He further noted that some employees were still awaiting their April salaries.
“Many of us lecturers have not received our April salaries as we speak, and the issue is nothing other than to blackmail our members for rejecting IPPIS and to bring us back to the platform,” he said.
He disclosed that workers who are still on the IPPIS platform have already been paid their April salaries since the first week of May while those who migrated to the new platform have yet to be paid till date.
“The government’s action is a deliberate attempt to blackmail us for leaving IPPIS platform. Government will claim that we would have been paid all this money if we had remained under IPPIS platform.
“But we are only being patient, as we will make the issue out of the situation by next month if it remains unaddressed,” he said.
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