FG Must Merge UTAS, IPPIS To Avoid Another Strike — OOU VC

The outgoing Vice Chancellor of the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago- Iwoye, Ogun State, Prof. Ganiu Olatunde, has asked the Federal Government to merge the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) and Integrated Payroll and Personnel information system (IPPIS) to have a faultless payment platform for lecturers.

Olatunde insisted that the only way to peacefully resolve the lingering crisis between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the government over the preferable platform for payment of lecturers’ salaries is for the government to remove the contentious features of IPPIS and replace them with the best features of UTAS.

The VC made the call yesterday during an interview with journalists in his office to mark the end of his fiveyear tenure. ASUU had rejected the IPPIS, a payment platform created by the government to pay workers, insisting on the UTAS as its preferred payment option.

But Olatunde, a former zonal coordinator of the Ibadan zone of ASUU, said government and ASUU must agree to merge UTAS and IPPIS to avoid another shutdown of public universities. He said: “Strike is a setback for us in this country; we are praying and hoping that we will have a way of resolving our issues without going on strike.

“Must we have the IPPIS? Why can’t we look at those things in UTAS and put them in the IPPIS such that it can give a faultless platform?”