Protest: Lecturers have demonstrated enough patience, says ASUU President
IN a bid to finally close the chapter on the lingering 2009 Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) agreement, a high-stakes meeting is expected in Abuja this week where the Federal Government is expected to make a counteroffer to the university teachers in a bid to translate years of stalled renegotiations into concrete and implementable commitments with the union.
Informed sources hinted that the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, would join the Minister of Labour, representatives of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC) and the Solicitor-General to meet ASUU leaders in Abuja to examine how to finally implement the renegotiated 2009 FGN–ASUU agreement and related reports produced in the most recent round of negotiations.
According to the officials, the meeting will be tasked with delivering a clear timetable for signature and phased implementation. The urgency of the move, according to the sources, comes amid warnings from ASUU branches nationwide that their patience is exhausted after a renegotiation process concluded in December 2024 and formally submitted to the government in February 2025.
The ASUU leaders insisted that the draft must now be signed and implemented to avert another nationwide shutdown of public universities. The Zonal Coordinator of ASUU Abuja Zone, Prof. Al-Amin Abdullahi, had during a media briefing in Abuja stressed that the union had kept its part of the bargain and expected the government to demonstrate seriousness by adopting the report without delay.
The 2009 agreement, according to him, 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.
The intervention, credited directly to Alausa, was received across campuses as a restoration of trust and a demonstration that government could finally match promises with delivery.
MEANWHILE, ASUU said it had given the Federal Government enough time to meet the demands of its members. President of the union, Christopher Piwuna, said lecturers in public universities had made sacrifices and deserved their entitlements.
“We’ve been on this for such a long time, and we have, in our view, always demonstrated patience, understanding, and have adopted dialogue to try to address these issues,” he said.
“Since democracy started in 1999 to now, people are quick to say that ASUU has been on strike and schools have been closed, and you wonder what the government thinks about these actions,” Piwuna said, yesterday, when he appeared as a guest on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.
He said the union had engaged the administration of President Bola Tinubu, but decried the response of the government, which he said, was extremely slow.
