Polytechnic lecturers, acting under the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Polytechnics, have demanded the Federal Government to address the inconsistency of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), which according to them, has led to omissions, shortfalls and non-remittance of check-off dues from salaries of its members.

SSANIP said polytechnic lecturers had endured the shortcomings of the IPPIS for over three months and the time was ripe to demand the intervention of the Federal Government.

The National President of the association, Adebanjo Ogunsipe, stated this in a statement issued in Abuja and obtained by our correspondent, noting that the IPPIS platform had proved to be a “disaster in the tertiary education system” within the last quarter.

He said,

Since the polytechnics came on board in February 2020, it has been a continuous tale of woe without any hope of improvement in the near future as reflected by the payment of April salaries early in the week. We kept quiet for this long, hoping there would be improvement. But it appears the IPPIS office lacks the capacity to deal with the volume of work.

Otherwise, how can one explain a situation where almost half of our members are yet to receive their April salaries almost three days after disbursement. It is with great hope that the union welcomed the IPPIS as a tool for correcting the perceived problems of ghost workers and bloated overhead costs by some chief executives. But our experience in the last three months has proved us wrong.

The IPPIS has turned into a weapon inflicting untold hardship on our members. It has been the case of outright omissions and non-payment of salaries, high and killing tax regime, shortfalls in salary, compulsory enrollment in the National Housing Fund and non-deductions of third party remittances.

To cap it all, the blatant non-remittance of the union check-off dues and deductions made three months after have crippled the union’s activities in our chapters.

SSANIP said it would link up with other unions to address the various lapses and would never stop to redress the shortcomings.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.