The Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) has warned that creating a separate salary payment platform for the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) will create chaos in the federal civil service. However, it accepted to accommodate peculiarities allowances in the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information Payment System (IPPIS).

Okolieaboh Sylva, the acting accountant general of the federation, disclosed this during a meeting with ASUU, labour minister Chris Ngige and the leadership of the House of Representatives on Thursday in Abuja.

Mr Sylva said if there were peculiarities allowances in ASUU’s pay, what needed to be done was to incorporate them into the platform and that the OAGF was willing to do that.

“Let us sit down and know what these issues are and address them inside IPPIS. We can correct whatever mistake we make now,” said the acting AGF.

Mr Sylva expressed reservations about ASUU’s insistence on incorporating the UTAS payment platform for its members.

“If we accept what ASUU is saying, it will create room for everyone to be asking for their own payment platform; the military is on IPPIS and health workers. ASUU should sit down with us and see the progress we have made,” he stated.

Mr Sylva further said that the incorporation of ASUU’s demand on the IPPIS platform could be done without President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval, explaining that there was nothing complicated about the issue once ASUU agreed to the offer.

“In the spirit of reconciliation, if ASUU knows what can be done, we are willing to adopt it to resolve this issue. It doesn’t make sense not to accept. Let ASUU come to us. We are willing to accept,” stressed the acting accountant general. “If we are going to adopt UTAS, that shows we are going to build the salaries of other civil servants to UTAS.”

Mr Ngige said the Buhari regime would not offer ASUU what it does not have, noting that the union leadership met with the president on January 9 to convince the government to adopt its UTAS platform for lecturers’ salaries.

“I told Mr President to let us give it a trial (sic), and I took it upon myself. I went to NITDA and other agencies, and we looked at the system,” the minister said.

Mr Ngige claimed that the three platforms brought by ASUU failed NITDA’s integrity test and that he could not recommend adopting any of them, no matter the pressure.

ASUU president Emmanuel Osodeke said it was unfortunate that the regime failed to understand how the university system operates.

(NAN)