ASUU set for fresh showdown with Federal government

There is palpable tension in Nigerian universities, with the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, boycotting the ongoing Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS, seminar in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

Lecturers are bent on downing tools again, barely a few months after calling off a protracted industrial action, if the government insists on getting them to join the new payment platform.

The Federal Government had directed all its Ministries, Departments and Parastatals, MDS, to join the computerised payment platform to reduce corruption and human error in the payment of salaries.

As part of measures to bring universities into the programme, the government distributed IPPIS forms to lecturers all over the country through the National Universities Commission, NUC.

It also organised seminars in the six geo-political zones of the country to sensitise management, union leaders and other stakeholders in government-owned universities, on the new payment platform.

The seminar for the South-South zone was said to have kicked off on Monday in Port Harcourt, but members of the union would not turn up for the programme.

A similar programme which is going on simultaneously in other geo-political zones of the country is also said to have been boycotted by members of the union.