ASUU blames NITDA for Sabotaging FG’s efforts to end 50days old Strike
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has accused the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)’s for sabotaging federal government’s effort to put an end to the lingering strike.
ASUU declared NITDA’s stance as unprotroctic which will prolong the 50days ASUU strike.
The university union indicted NITDA of lying that the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) failed the agency’s integrity tests.
“Ironically, NITDA, in conjunction with its parent ministry (the Ministry of Communications), is seriously sabotaging the government’s efforts at resolving the impasse,” the Bauchi zonal coordinator of ASUU, Prof. Lawan Abubakar, revealed. “This is obviously capable of prolonging the current strike, thereby bringing untold hardship on Nigerian university students and the university system.”
Addressing a press conference at the ASUU Secretariat, University of Jos, Plateau, the union criticised NITDA’s claim that UTAS failed the integrity test despite scoring 97.4 per cent and 99.3 per cent based on all the agency’s test metrics.
“One out of the seven demands the union is impressing on the Federal Government to address is the deployment of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) to replace the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) for personnel payments & management in the University System,” added the ASUU representative.
The ASUU’s zonal coordinator further mentioned that UTAS was developed to address the peculiarities of the university system the IPPIS failed to resolve.
He added that following the successful development of UTAS by ASUU, the government directed NITDA to conduct integrity tests on the software.
According to Abubakar, NITDA scored UTAS’ software 97.4 per cent and 99.3 per cent on two occasions.
