A senior lecturer at the Ebonyi State University Abakaliki, Prof Joseph Afiukwa has commended the Federal Government of Nigeria for removing tertiary institutions from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System for the payment of their staff salaries and emoluments.
Afiukwa, of the Department of Industrial Chemistry, gave the commendation during an interview shortly after the 7th matriculation ceremony of Blessed Martins International Institute of Science and Technology Ohatekwe Amagu Ikwo.
He noted that payment of salaries through IPPIS in Nigeria could only be effective when measures are put in place to check its flaws.
According to him, IPPIS gives room for payment of ghost workers and shortchange of staff as well as underpayment.
He also expressed optimism that the government of President Bola Tinubu would allocate up to 26 per cent of the entire budget to education.
“Recall that IPPIS Secretariat is a Department under the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation responsible for payment of salaries and wages directly to government employee’s bank account with appropriate deductions and remittances of third party payments such as; Federal Inland Revenue Service, State Boards of Internal revenue among others.
“ASUU has fought severally and it appeared to be falling on deaf ears. IPPIS is a system of payment that was adopted from US. It is not indigenous, it is not what we do here as the system has not actually prepared all that it takes so that the flaws in IPPIS will be overcome. Voucher payment is the system in the civil service in the public service whereby a staff signs his salary from a document and the employer knows whom he is paying and knows the worth of each employee.
“But in IPPIS, you can be shortchanged. Whatever you see in your account is what you receive as your salary and you have nobody to hold responsible. It is very possible that in IPPIS, you pay people who are not employed. It paves way for paying ghost workers. In fact, you can be paying your family salary. In IPPIS, professor’s salary can be given to a cleaner while what belongs to a cleaner, if he or she is actually a worker, might be given to the professor. It has happened. And so, I commend the National Assembly for this great feat of removing ASUU from IPPIS because it was killing education,” he said.
