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The leadership of the Senate on Monday waded into the raging dispute between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government (FG) over the implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).
President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, alongside some members of the Senate, met with ASUU leaders at the National Assembly to better understand the crux of the matter between the varsity teachers and the FG over the payroll system.
ASUU President, Biodun Ogunyemi who led his team, presented the union’s position and argued that the IPPIS should not be run within the university system in the country because it’s a violation of the University autonomy.
Responding, Lawan said the intervention by the Senate leadership was to find an amicable resolution of the matter to ensure that there is no disruption of the school system.
“For us at the National Assembly, we are always prepared to take every necessary step to intervene, to ensure that our tertiary institutions remain open and functional.
“At the end of the day, we don’t want our institutions closed because the repercussions are always much more on the students than on those who are supposed to deal with the issues.
“We are all in this together. We believe that Nigerian education sector, particularly at tertiary level, needs some serious support at this point,” Lawan said.
Before the meeting went into a closed door session, the Senate President said the next step will be to find out from the officials of the Federal Ministry of Finance what they consider as the way out of the disagreement to avert any strike.
Lawan added that he was not comfortable that some agreements were signed in the past even when the government was aware that such deals cannot be implemented.
On the issue of funding, the Senate President said “the truth is that, we can only do our best at this stage. We have serious financial challenges in terms of budgetary allocations.
“It is our duty as members of the National Assembly to ensure that any revenue due to the Federal government of Nigeria is captured and remitted properly so that when we have sufficient revenue, we can fund our educational sector better.
“We will work hard on this but I want to assure you that, in the legislature, you have a partner. We will work with you and ensure that we resolve this issue without recourse to any strike or closure of our institutions,” Lawan said.
Earlier, the FG had reiterated its commitment to full implementation of the IPPIS before the end of October, according to Acting Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), Folashade Yemi-Esan, who made the disclosure in Abuja at a capacity building workshop, organised by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria (CIPM).
Mrs Yemi-Esan said the federal government would stop staff members of the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) that were not under the system from collecting salaries by the end of October.
CIPM, established in 1968 and chartered by Act No. 58 of 1992, is the apex regulatory body for the practice of human resource management in Nigeria.
Part of its core mandates is to develop and maintain high standards of professional competence and ensure that the management of human resources in Nigeria, both in the public and private sectors, conforms to professional standards.
The workshop, held in collaboration with the office of the HOCSF, was attended by Heads of States` Civil Service and Permanent Secretaries across the 36 states of the federation.
While stressing the need for others to key into the IPPIS initiative, Mrs Yemi-Esan explained that it was one of the mechanisms introduced by the government to improve efficiency in service delivery to Nigerians.
She said the system has very good objective, which was meant to improve efficiency in the payroll system, enhance data integrity, eliminate ghost workers and consolidate staff records and management.
She, however, said while appreciable work had been put in place since the commencement of IPPIS, the process had also met with some impediments, particularly the refusal of some public servants to be enrolled.
“Notwithstanding this however, we are working round the clock to remove all the bottlenecks for the full implementation of the module, particularly following Mr President`s directive to that effect come October end,” she added.
While tasking the states’ HOCS on service delivery in their respective states, Mrs Yemi-Esan said public service had tried to reform itself and that a lot had been done even though the result had yet to be achieved.
“You will agree with me that managing people, which is crucial for change, is the most challenging and the most critical component of any institutional or organisational transformation process.
“A very good example, which many of us can relate to, can be drawn from the period between the late 90s and the turn of the millennium when government initiated moves to introduce e-governance to the public service.
“First by introducing ICT tools such as desktop computers to replace the manual typewriters.
“I discovered that the innovation met with the considerable amount of resistance, particularly from those who felt that their securities were threatened and that their schedules will be taken away from them,” she said.