ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), has declared that dialogue with the Buhari-led federal government is not always fruitful noting that the government has taken their patience for granted.
The Zonal Coordinator, ASUU, Bauchi Zone, Prof. Lawan Abubakar, stated this during a press conference, held at the Union’s Secretariat, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi on Tuesday.
He wondered if some individuals are “feeding fat” on the high cost of maintenance and consultancy fees on IPPIS as against the freely developed and more efficient UTAS that has taken care of the University peculiarities, in line with extant Laws.
He questioned that “could this be the reason for the foot dragging by federal government to deploy UTAS in the Universities?”
Abubakar accused the federal government of “only being interested in provoking another strike because since the suspension of the strike in December, 2020, the federal government has simply gone to sleep over the implementation of most items agreed upon as contained in the Memorandum of Action.”
He said that “I don’t think any politician is concerned about Nigeria. They are only concerned about themselves and their families.
“We cannot dialogue with government forever. The dialogue with this government is not fruitful. I am sure government can resolve all these issues in one day because we’ve been discussing them over the years.”
According to him, members of ASUU, Bauchi Zone have been stretched beyond their elastic limits and cannot continue to wait for government and its agents displaying all manners of antics which amount to delay tactics.
He declared that the Union cannot, in view of the foregoing, guarantee industrial harmony saying that very soon, they will embark on an indefinite strike until their demands are met.
“Our patience has been taken for granted. We, the leaders of this Union in the various branches, the zones and the National, cannot continue to manage our members, honestly. They are not happy with us because they have waited all this long with the timelines expiring since, more than eight months ago and we have not called them back.
“Anytime from now, the Union will conclude the process we have already started and there is no going back; when we exhaust our procedures, then, we will announce the date for the strike.
“We are pained to bring these issues to the public because more than 9 months after suspending the 2020 strike, Government has again reneged on the FGN-ASUU 2020 MoA. The public, in this circumstance, should not hold our Union responsible for any disruption of Academic activities in the Nigerian Public Universities,” he said.
The ASUU Zonal Coordinator, lamented that 95 of its members in three institutions in the Zone have not been paid their salaries up to 13 months.
He said that since they were “forced” on the Integrated payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), their members have continuously been omitted from the payments of their salaries monthly.
He stated: “The inconsistencies observed in the application of the IPPIS in the payments of salaries, remittances of third-party deductions have continued in all the Federal Universities. Since the introduction of IPPIS in February 2020, our members have continued to be ommited from the payments of salary on monthly basis.
“This is the situation across all the Federal Universities in the country. Every month when salary is paid, a different set of staff will have their names ommited from the payment for that particular month.
“As we speak now, about 61 lecturers from the University of Jos, are being owed salary arrears of 2 to 13 months; it is the same situation in ATBU, Bauchi which has 16 lecturers and Federal University of Kashere with 18 lecturers.
“This is deliberate and amounts to victimization of ASUU members by IPPIS Office as a ploy to force them to enrol, thereby frustrating the implementation of UTAS (University Transparency and Accountability Solution), as agreed before the strike was suspended in 2020.”
According to him, another disturbing trend to the Union is that Professors and Readers (Associate Professors), who are supposed to retire at the age of 70, are now being forcefully retired by IPPIS through abrupt stoppage of their salaries in violation of the Universities Miscellaneous Act of 2012.
He noted that the salaries paid to their members are not commensurate with their ranks based on the prevailing salary Table, wondering where the “unauthorized” deductions are taken to.
He said: “What we have been suffering is a theft on our salaries. At the end of every month, no one can say for certain what his or her exact salary would be as a result of unauthorized deductions; one must just do with what IPPIS throws at you.
“When UTAS is deployed, we will ask for the running of our salaries from January 2020, to see clearly what we were supposed to get and what we got, then, we will demand them to pay us the backlog of our salaries they have been deducting. There will be trouble, it is imminent.”
Abubakar accused the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, and the Accountant General of the Federation of not being willing to solve their problems either because they are benefitting from the IPPIS or simply incompetent to address them.
“It’s either he (Ngige) is not willing to solve these problems or he’s simply incompetent to address them. There were times we noted that these government functionaries, as they sit down to discuss labour issues such as ours to resolve issues, they take huge sums of money as sitting allowance. We don’t know whether it is those huge sums of money that they are working for and they don’t want the problems to end.
“The AGF has been evading us, carefully because we know he is a problem. We know how they are eating fat on IPPIS and we know how they have held our various university administrations to ransom on the issue of employment,” he said.
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