FG spends N5bn annually to service IPPIS – ASUU

The Calabar Zonal Coordinator of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Uyo, Mr Aniekan Brown, says Nigeria spends approximately N5bn annually to service the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

Mr. Brown disclosed this at a media briefing in Uyo adding that the database of the IPPIS was not domiciled in Nigeria. “Let me shock Nigerians that the database of the IPPIS is not in this country. Those running the IPPIS are private company in the United States of Americans and by the laws of the United States any data that touches down on the soil of the US after 14 days can be declassified.

“And we are saying that Nigerians who are workers of the Federal Government should mortgage those details to be bound abroad and if anything happens there then nothing goes on here? An average of N5bn is being wasted every year to service IPPIS. If you look at the last budget, it ranges from N3bn to N10bn, so, you can average that at N5bn. Now how much could that amount do for a faculty of Computer Engineering today. Check the budgetary allocations and how much goes into servicing the IPPIS platform, then you will know how much Nigeria is wasting,” Brown said

Mr. Brown further said, “Nigeria is paying a whole lot to service that but in this country we have several departments of Computer science and computer Engineering. We have those who could develop software. My take is if government has invested let’s say one billion naira on the collection of the department of Computer science or Computer Engineering to generate the software and then the patency to export that to the rest of the world could have been better for us but this neo-colonial arrangement of getting to think that anything that come abroad is better whereas this one does not suit the realities of our operations here the unions take is that Nigeria should beat a retreat.”

Mr. Aniekan Brown stressed that ASUU produced an alternative template, the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), which according to him is fraud and corruption-proof.