FG, ASUU meet today over planned lecturers strike

The urgency of the move comes amid warnings from ASUU branches nationwide that their patience is exhausted, after a renegotiation process concluded in December 2024 and formally submitted to government in February 2025.

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Union leaders insist that the draft must now be signed and implemented to avert another nationwide shutdown of public universities.

Recall at a briefing in Abuja, the Zonal Coordinator of ASUU, Abuja Zone, Prof. Al-Amin Abdullahi, stressed that the union had kept its part of the bargain and expected government to demonstrate seriousness by adopting the report without delay.

The 2009 agreement remains the touchstone of the dispute, signed under the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, which promised comprehensive reforms to Nigeria’s public universities, including sustained revitalisation funding, institutional autonomy, a negotiated salary and conditions package for academics, and a monitoring framework for implementation.

Its partial or non-implementation across successive administrations has led to recurring strikes.

Analysts estimate that since 1999, cumulative industrial action by ASUU and other unions has cost the system the equivalent of nearly five years of lost academic time, a disruption that has eroded confidence in the country’s higher education sector.

But stakeholders and government insiders argue that what differentiates the current process is the approach of Education Minister, Tunji Alausa, who has combined immediate remedial action with longer-term structural reforms.

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Earlier this year, the Tinubu administration released N50 billion to settle earned academic allowances, EAA, owed university lecturers and staff, a debt that had festered for almost two decades and repeatedly fuelled strike actions.“The move, credited directly to Alausa’s intervention, was received across campuses as a restoration of trust and a demonstration that government could finally match promises with delivery.