Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila has invited the minister of labour and employment Chris Ngige, the secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha and the head of civil service of the federation, as we as the accountant-general of the federation to a meeting with the leadership of the Academic Staff Union it Universities (ASUU).
The follow-up meeting is scheduled to hold Thursday next week.
Other invitees to the meeting are the director-general, Salaries, Income and Wages Commission, the director-general of Budget Office among others.
Gbajabiamila made the announcement at a meeting with the HoS, Mrs Folashade Yemi-Esan, the chairman of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, Mr. Ekpo Nta, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), among other government officials called to resolve the lingering strike embarked upon by ASUU.
Last Tuesday, the Speaker met with the leadership of ASUU led by its national president, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke and the minister of state for education, Goodluck Oppaiah. Its outcome necessitated yesterday’s meeting.
In its presentation yesterday, NITDA said the Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) and the University Peculiar Personnel and Payroll System (U3PS) failed the agency’s integrity tests March and June this year.
A NITDA official, Usman Abdullahi, the director of information infrastructure at the meeting, told the House leadership that the government directed the agency to test UTAS in October, 2020, and that the platform failed the two integrity tests conducted on it.
He said following the first test, ASUU was asked to go back and review, which it did. Yet, the platform did not meet NITDA’s requirements the second time.
For the third time, NITDA was then asked to conduct tests on UTAS, IPPIS and U3PS, which the official said all the three platforms failed its requirements regarding the payroll system of universities.
He said: “In the first test, the system (UTAS) failed. The system could not meet the requirement. It was communicated to ASUU, full report was submitted directly to ASUU. The second report was submitted through the office of the minister. ASUU went back, did the review that NITDA recommended.
“In the assessment, we did in March this year, we spent two weeks carrying out the assessment in the presence of observers. At the end of the exercise, UTAS failed the due diligence test. Of course, ASUU agreed to work on the solution and resubmit for assessment.
“Until when the chief of staff (Ibrahim Gambari) convened the tripartite committee when the third test was ordered. In the third round, we were asked to conduct the test on three payment systems. UTAS 2020, U3PS by SSANU and NASU, and IPPIS. The report is the outcome of the assessment we did. In this report, we have criteria. None of the solutions met NITDA criteria”.
Gbajabiamila who appeared unsatisfied with the submission, asked if NITDA advised the government to take action on the lapses found on IPPIS, which had been in operation by the government since 2011 to which the NITDA official said they were not in a position to do that.
He further asked if NITDA queried the IPPIS platform to which the official also said no.
In the same vein, the Deputy Speaker, Idris Wase picked holes in NITDA’s action, saying it ought to have advised the government on the appropriate measure to take in view of its discovery on IPPIS.
In her presentation, the HoS said the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy in a letter informed her office following NITDA’s observations about IPPIS on the need to take a holistic look at the platform and that a committee was empaneled to carry out the assignment.
According to her, the IPPIS apart from being a payment platform also has a human resource component, which all government agencies have been directed to activate to which many had complied.
Similarly, the chairman of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, Nta, said that his office advised the government on the increments of universities, Polytechnics, and colleges of education.
He said the government later decided to increase the salaries of lecturers in the universities by a certain percentage but the professors demanded higher.
On his part, Okolieaboh faulted ASUU’s insistence on UTAS, saying they were not to dictate for the government on how they would be paid.
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