*As Fasina hails exit of varsities from IPPIS
By John Odunjo
For the Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Prof. Sunday Abayomi Fasina, it was honours galore on Thursday, December 14 in appreciation of his laudable strides in moving the university forward.
That day, just as he was being honoured at Oye Ekiti by the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Ekiti State, he was also being celebrated by the Stardom Global Awards in Abuja which conferred on him the VC of the Year 2023 award for his exploits in office.
For the NUJ Correspondents’ Chapel, the honour to the VC was in recognition of his having performed admirably and excellently as the Chief Executive Officer of FUOYE since February 11, 2021 when he assumed office.
Chairman of the Chapel, Raphael Ogbonnaiye, while presenting the award tagged “An Icon of Excellence in Academia”, to the VC, said Prof. Fasina had performed admirably well by raising the bar in managing the University.
Ogbonnaiye, represented by a leader in the chapel, Ayodele Adegbuyi, said that the Professor of Pedology would be the first VC to be so honoured by the Correspondents’ Chapel in recognition of excellence in public service in the academia.
The Chapel chairman said, “We have watched keenly your activities as the VC of this University and we are fascinated by the tremendous achievements you have made. There are a whole lot of silent Revolution going on here since you came on board.
“Though, we are to serve primarily as watchdog and hold public officers responsible and accountable, however, we reasoned that when somebody is doing well, we also acknowledge. We look around and we discover that you deserve it.
“This is an honour we do not afford to just anyone but to who really deserves it. For your information, no VC has received such award in this state. You are the first VC to be awarded,” Ogbonnaiye said.
An excited Prof. Fasina appreciated the journalists for honoring him, promising that the recognition would ignite the passion to do more.
The VC, however, seized the opportunity to appreciate the Federal Government for removing universities from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), describing it as a very good decision of the FG, adding that it would bring effectiveness and efficiency into the running the university system.
“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 subsidize 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 troubles 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 are having the autonomy now and we would manage our system efficiently on our own.
“There is so much bureaucracy in IPPIS which give us so much headache. We have some of our staff members who haven’t 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.
