The Federal Executive Council FEC has decided to exclude universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions from the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) payment platform.
The exemption approval was granted by the FEC during its Wednesday meeting at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. The Honourable Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, announced the immediate implementation of the decision during a briefing with State House Correspondents following the FEC meeting. According to him, the FEC noted that Vice-Chancellors of Universities shouldn’t have to interrupt their work by travelling to Abuja for the salary processing of their personnel. “Simply, the president and the council are just concerned about the efficiency of management of the universities and so it has nothing to do with integrity or options of platforms. The President cannot understand why Vice-Chancellors should be leaving their duty post and run to Abuja to get staff enlisted on IPPIS when they get recruited. The basic concern is that universities are governed by laws. And those laws give them autonomy in certain respects especially in the management of their finances and the IPPIS has sort of eroded that autonomy granted universities in accordance with their act,”Professor Mamman said.
Speaking in the same vein, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mr. Muhammed Idris, said that tertiary institutions have gotten a big relief with this new development. He noted that university authorities and other tertiary institutions will now be paying their own personnel from their end instead of relying on the IPPIS. “Today, the universities and other tertiary institutions have gotten a very big relief from the integrated personnel payroll and information system. You will recall that the university authorities and the others have been clamouring for the exemption of the universities and other tertiary institutions from this system.
“Today, the council has graciously approved that. What that means is that going forward, the universities as the Honourable Minister of Education has said and other tertiary institutions, the polytechnics and colleges of education will be taken off the IPPIS.