The Academic Staff Union of Universities has described the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System introduced by the Federal Government as a foreign platform that should be discarded immediately.

The Chairman of ASUU, University of Port Harcourt branch, Dr Austen Sado, also said it was unthinkable that the personnel data of Nigeria’s workforce was already in the hands of another country.

Speaking in an interview Sado explained that rather than embrace the IPPIS, the Federal Government should consider using the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, which he described as an indigenous platform.

He pointed out that the union had been waiting for the Federal Government to invite it for a demonstration of the proposed payroll platform, adding that the government was not showing any interest in the UTAS.

Sado disagreed with the claim that the IPPIS was introduced into the university system with a view to fighting corruption.

He said, “The IPPIS is not hosted in Nigeria; it’s a foreign platform; so, for you to now harvest the data of your entire workforce and keep it in a foreign country is quite questionable; we don’t understand what the objectives are and it portends great danger for this nation.

“It’s unthinkable that a government will harvest the data and the personnel information of the entire workforce in a country and hand it over to another country. Honestly speaking, it’s unimaginable and we do not know what the objectives are.

“Unfortunately, people do not understand what it means to have the data of your workforce hosted by a foreign country. The IPPIS is a foreign creation; it is domiciled overseas; it’s not a Nigerian product.

“We are in an era of cyber warfare; so, if the entire data of your workforce is in the hands of a foreigner, imagine even if it is for the purposes of being generous and the platform crashes, what are you to do about it? It can be sabotaged.