Seven-Month Strike Lingers As ASUU, Govt Fight Over Payment Platform

 The Federal Government on Sunday criticised the Academic Staff Union Universities, saying issues concerning seven-month strike by  the union were confusing.

The Minister of State for Education,  Emeka Nwajiuba, who stated this in an interview with one of  correspondents in Abuja, accused the union of muddling things up over the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.

But in its response, the union said government wanted to turn Nigerians against university lecturers.

Recall that ASUU had on March 23 begun an indefinite strike over the Federal Government’s insistence on implementing the IPPIS, which the government said all its employees must adopt for their salaries to be paid.

Besides opposing the IPPIS,  union also accused the Federal Government of not abiding by agreements both sides signed a few years ago.

Two weeks ago, there were  indications that the strike  would soon end as the Federal Government said that it might consider adopting the University Transparency Account System , which ASUU developed as an alternative to the IPPIS.

But the hope that  students of public universities would soon resume dimmed on Sunday as the government and ASUU tackled each other on the  payment system.

Berating ASUU, the Minister of State for Education, Nwajiuba, said,  “We have a situation that is quite confusing because a lot of the issues are muddled up so you don’t know which one they (ASUU)  want to address and which one they don’t want to address.”

He said  government would not  integrate ASUU’s payment system with the IPPIS until it is tested.

The minister stated, “If  we are going to start adopting platforms from different groups,  it will defeat the entire purpose for which we want to have a unified way of knowing how much we  owe or due to pay at any time so that we can budget for it and plan for it. They (ASUU)  said no, they had  a system that they would  like to develop, government said, ‘go ahead develop any system, it is not a problem.’

According to him, government told the union that  ASUU’s payment system must tally with the IPPIS.

He stated that the government  directed the lecturers to  register  on the IPPIS, while developing their system so that they could collect  their salaries.