Yemisi Izuora
The Federal Government has explained that the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, categorized as revenue agencies may be excluded from the Integrated Personnel Payroll Integrated System, IPPIS, but again might be enrolled on the platform later.
The Director of the IPPIS, Olufehinti Olusegun, said the clarification on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Wednesday while reacting to complaints by ASUU that the Federal Government was partial in its implementation of the IPPIS initiative by exempting some government agencies.
Olusegun said, “The President’s directive was direct that all ministries, departments and agencies or institutions drawing their salaries from the consolidated revenue fund, which is a Federal Government account, are to key into the IPPIS.
“The government knows that all agencies cannot be brought on the drawing board at the same time. But for those who draw their salaries and personnel costs from the consolidated revenue of the Federal Government, they must come on the drawing board.
“For the CBN, FIRS and NNPC, they are revenue agencies and they live on cost of collection. They are revenue generating agencies and they don’t draw from the consolidated revenue fund. So, it is left to the government on what to do next but it is a journey that just started.”
He said so far, over 937,000 federal employees including the military were on the IPPIS.
The director said the initiative had been able to save billions of naira belonging to the government which had hitherto been entering private pockets.
However, the President of ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, argued that universities could not be categorised as a ministry, department or agency.
Ogunyemi said in the IPPIS blueprint, universities were not supposed to be captured in the scheme.
The ASUU President said IPPIS, if implemented, would affect the ability of universities to attract visiting professors.
He said, “Just three weeks ago we were at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, where scholars in the Diaspora came together to think of how best they could help revitalise higher education in Africa and a lot of case studies were presented.
“The case of our late friend, Prof. Pius Adesanmi, who was until his death, the Director of African Studies in Carlton, Canada, came up for mention. This professor was a visiting professor to more than three universities in Africa.
“In fact, the Director of African Studies in Legon, Ghana, recalled that Adesanmi was on their payroll as a visiting scholar and he would be visiting for at least three months and he would go back and he did that for more than five years. He did the same for two other universities in South Africa.
