Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) and the Autonomy of Public Universities in Nigeria : Which Way Forward

Abstract

This paper undertook to study the implementation of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) and how it intersects with the autonomy of Nigerian public university system. The historical research method of analysis was used in carrying out the study. At the end, the study discovered that the gains recorded with IPPIS in the federal civil service is the driver for the service-wide adoption of the policy, including an attempt to implement it on federal public universities in Nigeria but that such blanket implementation will: take away university’s autonomy in staff payroll matters, negatively affect the flexibility and peculiarities of the university system, disrupt the power to hire non-permanent staff, reduce university worker’s stamina to engage government in crisis periods, disrupt the payment of promotion arrears for professors and that the system still has numerous human and material challenges confronting it due to government’s unpreparedness. The study then recommended that, in order to preserve and protect the cherished university autonomy and promote industrial peace in the education subsector, government should exclude the universities from the policy and accept, test and deploy in its place, the Universities Transparency and