Prof. Abayomi Fasina, the vice chancellor of Federal University, Oye Ekiti, has urged the government to raise the salary of academics in the nation, stating that a professor, for instance, need to make at least N1 million a month.
The FUOYE VC praised the Federal Government’s decision to exempt public universities from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System during his speech at Oye Ekiti on Sunday.
He made this announcement while accepting a commendation award from the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Ekiti State Council.
According to Fasina, the tertiary institutions’ operations would be managed more effectively and with more autonomy if varsities were removed from the IPPIS.
Speaking on the benefits of exit from IPPIS, the VC said, “The advantage is that we are now independent to decide on proper management of the system. We can always also take from our IGR to supplement what we are given by the government.
“Another advantage is that we want the government to increase our salary and with this development, we can subsidise such increment with our IGR. We are currently poorly paid as lecturers in Nigerian universities. For example, a professor should not earn less than a million naira.
“This development will save us a lot of trouble of running to Abuja to get approval for so many things we can easily handle on our own. Such things as recruitment and others. We have the autonomy now and we can manage our system efficiently on our own.
“There is so much bureaucracy in IPPIS which gives us so much headache. We have some of our staff members who have not collected their salary for many months now because of that bureaucracy. We have a situation where a former VC who went on sabbatical was denied his salaries on return for several months due to the bottlenecks of IPPIS.
”He said by the singular act of exiting universities from IPPIS, “President Bola Tinubu has demonstrated his genuine intention and commitment to turning around the fortunes of the education sector. The exemption would birth a new university system.”
