The Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) office has accused university administrators of providing a payroll list containing dead staff for salary payment, Nigerian Tribune reports.
The government was reacting to accusations by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that IPPIS paid dead staff and generally cut its members’ salaries by as much as 50 per cent.
In a statement issued on Monday by Director of Information, Press and Public Relations, Henshaw Oguike, IPPIS explained why staff of tertiary institutions were paid less than what individual universities were paying them.
“On the alleged payment to dead university staff. It means the institutions deliberately forwarded to IPPIS the list containing dead ASUU members as being part of their personnel to get more personnel fund.
“It is the responsibility of the institutions or agencies to inform the IPPIS office about death, resignation or exit from service before due date. We sent payroll analysis to the tertiary institution bursars for review of any omission or names to be excluded,” the statement said.
IPPIS noted that prior to migration to IPPIS, institutions were not deducting correct rates of taxes and other deductions like PAYE, NHF deductions and contributing pension from their staff.
“The request by the tertiary institution unions to formalise tax evasion through IPPIS is not only untenable, but unpatriotic request to violate extant laws on tax,” it added.
The office described the complaints as “cheap propaganda by ASUU to denigrate IPPIS for obvious reasons.”
It also explained that payment of allowances was based on the salary structure as approved by Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (SIWC).
“Any other salaries and allowances approved by any other agency in Nigeria which are not formalised by these two agencies will amount to illegal payment.”
It added that IPPIS had forwarded pay slips for February, March and April 2020 to the mail boxes of bursars of the tertiary institutions to enable them generate such pay slips and distribute to their staff while the institutions have been advised to furnish IPPIS with active emails of their staff to enable IPPIS forward individual pay slips to their various emails in addition to bulk release of pay slips to the various institutions.
