Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, on Wednesday, rose from its congress, asking the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, to deal with corruption issues in his office rather than describing the Union as endorsing corruption.
The Union said corruption and corrupt practices have become more dreadful under the Muhammadu Buhari administration as those implementing the policies extort and profit from it.
ASUU lashed out at the Accountant General for describing the opposition of the Union against Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, IPPIS, being planned by the Federal Government as an endorsement of corruption.
ASUU further challenged Idris to name the specific ministries where the IPPIS has saved the Federal Government N273billion and how many persons have been prosecuted to show the government is serious about fighting corruption.
The Chairman, University of Ibadan Chapter, of the union, Prof. Deji Omole , while addressing the Congress of the Union, stated it will never support corrupt practices, but will not allow the federal government to extort her members and make them vulnerable to corruption.
Omole stated that the introduction of Treasury Single Accounts into university system has crippled operations as many departments cannot buy a rim of paper due to paucity of funds.
Despite signing different Memorandum of Action with the Union in 2017 and 2019 to create separate interest yielding accounts for University endowment funds, grants and other funds, the ASUU boss stated that nothing has been done to that effect thereby making universities vulnerable.
“Autonomy of the University is a legal issue and the federal government will not be allowed to trample upon it. The issues here is very clear as the forceful movement of university workers is an act of illegality and ASUU as a responsible union will not fold its arms and allow the law to be broken by a mere pronouncement ,” the union stated.
In a swift response to ASUU’s threat, the Accountant General of the Federation, on Wednesday, in an advertorial, expressed dismay over the union’s threat over the IPPIS .
Describing the ASUU position as deliberate attempt at misinforming its members and the general public , the Accountant General of the Federation said aside the fact that the IPPIS is a policy of government for which the President directed that all MDAs drawing their salary from Consolidated Revenue Funds, CFR, should join the IPPIS by the end of October 2019, the police is aimed at saving cost and wastage in the personnel cost of the government.
” The university community, based on their level of knowledge, experience, academic and research, one would have expected them to be in the forefront of championing any policy that is geared towards accountability and transparency in the government expenditure.
” Instead, ASUU is threatening to go to court for injunction against IPPIS and government as well as use propaganda to misinform their members and the public and also to denigrate this lofty policy of the federal government which has achieved savings of over N273billion from personnel cost between 2017 and 2018,” Idris said.