The Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Prof. Abayomi Fasina, has called on the government to increase the pay of academics in the country, saying a professor, for example, should not earn less than N1m a month.
The FUOYE VC, who spoke at Oye Ekiti on Sunday while receiving a commendation award from the Correspondents’ Chapel of Nigeria Union of Journalists, Ekiti State Council, also hailed the Federal Government’s decision to exempt public universities from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System.
Fasina said removing varsities from the IPPIS would allow for greater autonomy and a more effective running of the tertiary institutions’ affairs.
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.”