Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has told the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, that the union is not corrupt as he alleged in  a statement credited to him in the media reports published on Wednesday.
The union asked Idris to deal with alleged corruption issues in his office, rather than describing ASUU as endorsing corruption.
Chairman University of Ibadan chapter of ASUU, Prof Deji Omole, said when he address a congress of the union in UI on Wednesday that corruption and corrupt practices have allegedly become more dreadful under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, as those implementing the policies extort and profit from it.
The Accountant General had described the opposition of the ASUU against Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS) being planned by the Federal Government as an endorsement of corruption.
ASUU challenged the Accountant General to name the specific ministries where the IPPIS has saved FG N273billion and how many persons have been prosecuted to show the government is serious about fighting corruption.
Omole stated that ASUU would never support corrupt practices but would not allow the Federal Government to extort her members and make them vulnerable to corruption.
He said the introduction of Treasury Single Accounts (TSA) into university system has crippled operations as many departments could not buy a rim of paper, due to paucity of funds.
Omole noted that all these have been happening despite  the fact that the Federal Government had signed different Memoranda of Action (MoA) with the union in 2017 and 2019 to create separate interest yielding accounts for university endowment funds, grants and other funds.
According to him, nothing has been done to that effect, thereby making universities vulnerable,a adding that “Autonomy of the university is a legal issue and the Federal Government will not be allowed to trample upon it.
“The issues here are very clear as the forceful movement of university workers is an act of illegality and ASUU as a responsible union will not fold its arms and allow the law to broken by a mere pronouncement.”