The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is not happy with the way the government is paying lecturers.
They don’t like that the government is still using something called the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) to pay their salaries.
The President of ASUU, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, said in an interview that the government promised to stop using IPPIS for universities, but they haven’t done it yet. He said that in February, the salaries were still paid through IPPIS.
IPPIS was started in 2006 to make it easier for the government to manage payroll for its workers. Later, it was used for universities and colleges too.
But many workers didn’t like it because they found some problems with it. This led to strikes in 2020 and 2021.
Prof. Osodeke said that even though the government announced in December 2023 that universities would not use IPPIS anymore, it hasn’t happened yet.
He also said that the government promised to increase salaries by 35% for university workers starting from January 2023.
But they haven’t received that yet. Also, the government said they would pay four months’ salaries for the time when workers were on strike in 2022. But that hasn’t happened either.
ASUU has been asking for many things, like more money for working hard (called Earned Academic Allowance) and changing some agreements made in 2009.
Because the government hasn’t done these things, there have been many strikes in universities.
Prof. Osodeke said that ASUU members will decide if they want to go on strike again to make the government listen to them.
He said that even though they went on strike before for similar reasons, the government didn’t do much.
He said that ASUU will tell everyone their decision through a press release soon.
