The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Federal Government of frustrating the smooth operations of the newly introduced Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) that replaced the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), which was once controversial.

The union alleged that government is using all known tactics to ensure the new system does not work in favour of university workers, especially lecturers, as a punishment for rejecting IPPIS.

The national president of the union, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, stated this over weekend in an exclusive interview with Nigerian Tribune when he was asked for update on the N50 billion recently released by the Federal Government to settle some arrears of earned allowances of the university workers.

Osodeke noted that not only had ASUU members and their non-academic colleagues yet to receive the allowances two weeks after the government made the public announcement of the release of the money, but that some of them were also yet to be paid April salaries.

?Many of us lecturers have not received our April salaries as we speak, and the issue is nothing other than to blackmail our members for rejecting IPPIS and to bring us back to the platform,? he said.

He disclosed that workers who are still on the IPPIS platform have already been paid their April salaries since the first week of May while those who migrated to the new platform have yet to be paid till date.

?The government?s action is a deliberate attempt to blackmail us for leaving IPPIS platform. Government will claim that we would have been paid all this money if we had remained under IPPIS platform.

?But we are only being patient, as we will make the issue out of the situation by next month if it remains unaddressed,? he said. (Nigerian Tribune)

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