After controversies over the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS)the Union of Academic Staff of Universities (ASUU) has accused the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) of peddling lies.
ASUU President Emmanuel Osodeke noted this in a statement issued after the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting on Sunday.
He warned NITDA Director General Kashifu Inuwa to refrain from making comments that could jeopardize the ongoing joint testing of UTAS between the NITDA technical team and the union.
The union also threatened to demand that NITDA’s initial technical report on UTAS, where it scored 85 percent on the user acceptance test (UAT), be made public if (NITDA) continues to insist that UTAS failed the integrity tests.
About the results of the UTAS
As one of the contentious issues necessitating ASUU’s ongoing strike, UTAS has sparked further conflict between the union and the Nigerian government over a recent revelation that it failed ‘integrity tests’.
The head of NITDA had said UTAS failed three integrity tests – user acceptance test, vulnerability test and stress test, which were performed by your agency.
He said: “We did all three of these tests with them and the system failed. We wrote the reports and sent them to the honorable minister, who sent them to all the relevant institutions, including the ASUU. As we speak now, ASUU is up and running, trying to fix all the issues we highlighted with the system and we will review it again. But that’s only half the story.”
But ASUU has insisted that UTAS scored between 85 and 77 percent, which are “high-class ratings in any known rating system.”
Mr. Osodeke, explaining further in the statement, stated that NITDA conducted the first integrity test on August 10, 2021, at NUC, where the relevant government agencies and all university system end users were present. He said that all accepted UTAS as a suitable solution for payment of salaries in Nigerian universities.
“However, in a curious twist of presentation, the NITDA technical team, after performing a comprehensive functionality test, said that out of 687 test cases, 529 cases were successful, 156 cases queried, and 2 cases warned.
“Taking this report at face value, the percentage score is 77%. The question that arises from this is, can 77% in any known fair evaluation system be categorized as failure?
Speaking further, he said that NITDA “in its desperation to justify its false claims, tossed out issues like the data center and hosting of the UTAS software that are clearly outside the rubrics of ASUU’s responsibilities in deploying UTAS.”
background
Several ASUU meetings, the main result was in the last meeting where ASUU agreed to present the government proposal to its members.
After several meetings, the main result was the last meeting in which ASUU agreed to present the government’s proposal to its members.
PREMIUM TIMES learned that the two biggest demands that could end the strike were the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement between the federal government and ASUU on the working conditions of Nigerian academics and the deployment of UTAS to replace the Integrated Information System of Personal Payroll (IPPIS) imposed on universities by the government.
Other demands include payment of academic assignments earned; university revitalization fund; distortions in the payment of wages; financing of state universities, and the publication of white papers on visiting panels sent to universities.