The Federal Government has sacked some contract lecturers across higher institutions over alleged fraud committed in their employment.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that contract lecturers at Bayero University, Kano State, and the Federal University, Wukari, Taraba State, have been disengaged.
According to the spokesman of the Federal Ministry of Education, Ben Goong, the sack of the lecturers was necessary in order to cut the huge personnel costs that burdened universities.
He said: “In October and November 2019, universities engaged so many staff; they were fraudulent about staff engagement, and a university that has 5,000 staff will say they have 7,000 staff and you have this huge personnel cost that was pushed to the universities. Virtually, most universities are guilty of this.”
Reacting to the sack of the lecturers, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) National President, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi, condemned the federal government for carrying out such a move.
He said that the “forced enrolment of university lecturers” in the Integrated Payment and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) platform resulted in the sack of the lecturers.
Ogunyemi warned that such moves undermined the university autonomy to recruit competent local and foreign scholars, as was the global practice.
He told The PUNCH: “What we also suspected has now been confirmed; they forcefully moved our members to the IPPIS and consequently, contract staff have been sacked. And the disengagement of the contract staff is a disservice to the Nigerian university system as we have it today.
“The disengagement has started in Federal University, Wukari, and the BUK, Kano. By doing that, IPPIS is creating a problem by appropriating the powers of the council in terms of employment, promotion, and disengagement of the people in the system.”
