ASUU Strike, UTAS Platform and Nigerian Students
By Zeenat O. Sambo
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has extended the 1 month warning strike to additional two months making a total of three months.
With the latest development, a whole quarter of a year, the lecturers would not work but would receive their monthly salaries and allowances while demoralized Nigerian students will remain idle and away from academic activities.
It is sad and irrational that at this point of economic meltdown, insecurity and educational challenges, students are at the receiving end of the fight between ASUU and the federal government.
We often blame political leaders for being self-centredness, lecturers too who are now becoming activists than scholars are not different with their nonchalant attitudes in regards to the plights of Nigerian students, especially the youths who are leaders of tomorrow.
What is even more disturbing is needless controversy over payment platforms to be used for the lecturers.
The ASUU has demanded that the federal government should adopt the Universities Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) payment platform in place of the popular Integrated Personnel and Payments Information System (IPPIS).
IPPIS is a federal government-controlled platform which is being used by the federal government for its workers including those in the military, security and intelligence services. The platform combines and harmonizes the payments of federal employees’ salaries and wages directly into their bank accounts with the appropriate deductions and remittances of third-party payments.
The director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa recently disclosed that UTAS) failed three integrity tests.
According to him, the tests were meant to qualify UTAS — which was brought forward by ASUU to IPPIS.
ASUU has been on strike since February 14, and part of the reasons for the industrial action is that the federal government has refused to accept UTAS as a payment platform to replace the IPPIS.
Speaking on the matter, Inuwa said ASUU is currently reviewing the system.
NITDA boss said building a complex system like UTAS that involves employees’ personal data, and also payment system, must be subjected to best practice tests before approving.
He added that NITDA conducted a user acceptance test, a vulnerability test to check for possibility of hacking, and a stress test to prevent the system from crashing.
“We did all these three tests with them and the system couldn’t pass. We wrote the reports and submitted it back to the honourable minister, which he forwarded to all relevant institutions, including ASUU. As we speak now, ASUU is working, trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system and we will review it again. But that is just one half of the story,” he said.
Reacting to the development, ASUU president, Emmanuel Osodeke, denied alleged failure of the integrity test on UTAS. He said integrity test was carried out by NITDA on August 10, 2021 in NUC where relevant government agencies and all the end-users in the university system were present.
“At the end of the exercise, all, without exception, expressed satisfaction with UTAS as a suitable solution for salary payment in our universities. This was attested to by the report coming from NITDA then to the effect that UTAS scored 85 per cent in User Acceptance Test (UAT),” he said.
According to him, in a curious twist of submission, the NITDA technical team, after conducting a comprehensive functionality test came out to say that out of 687 test cases, 529 cases were satisfactory, 156 cases queried and 2 cases cautioned.
He added that taking this report on its face value, the percentage score was 77 per cent.
I was a bit curious by the simplistic argument of ASUU President, an academic professor who insisted that 77 per cent in any known fair evaluation system cannot be categorized as failure. Really?
Technology advancement, especially that has to do with lives, finances by be 100% accurate. Can a perfect car for instance with Air Conditions, Electronic gadgets including Television, computers can operate with a small to operate the union?
Well, that is by the side. The fact is that over 700 MDAs have registration on IPPIS platform, including research institutions who do go on sabbatical, study and leaves do obtain with their allowances paid in due process. Not to forget that the National Executive Councils is as well part of the payment roll.
Even as it is known that not academics agree with the adoption of the UTAS payment platform to replace IPPIS, the precarious brawl between ASUU and FG has negatively affected students who are the leaders of tomorrow.
With the recent huge national debt, it is doubtful if the federal government could approve enormous amount of money ASUU demand in honor of their last in 2020 FGN/ASUU Memorandum of Action (MoA).
I pray and hope the government and ASUU will come up with a common ground to end this strike and enable the students return to school, because as much as the students are tired, the parents too will continue bear the monetary consequence of the battle of the two elephants.
Zeenat O. Sambo, Citec Estate, Jabi Abuja [email protected]
