Nine months after the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities signed a renegotiated agreement that both sides described as the end of decades of industrial conflict, the union is once again threatening to shut down public universities, warning that its suspended strike could be reactivated without further notice.
The warning followed the resolution of an emergency National Executive Council meeting held on 5 September 2026 at the Festus Iyayi National Secretariat Complex, University of Abuja. In a statement issued in Abuja on Friday, 11 September, and signed by the union’s president, Professor Christopher Piwuna, ASUU said the Federal Government and several state governments had failed to fully implement the December 2025 agreement, and pointed to the continued withholding of three and a half months’ salaries and the non-remittance of billions of naira deducted from lecturers’ pay.
The grievance is striking because of how recently the deal was celebrated. The 2025 FGN-ASUU Agreement was signed on 23 December 2025 and took effect on 1 January 2026, closing a renegotiation of the 2009 agreement that had dragged on for more than a decade. At the unveiling ceremony in January, the Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa, declared that the pact signalled “the death of strikes” in the country’s public universities and described it as a durable foundation for industrial harmony. The optimism has now given way to a dispute over whether the agreement is being honoured in practice.
The financial provisions of the deal were substantial. It provided for a 40 per cent upward review of academic staff remuneration, which the government said took effect from January 2026. It introduced a Consolidated Academic Tools Allowance covering journal publications, conferences, internet, learned society membership and books, a new Professorial Cadre Allowance of N1.74 million a year for professors and N840,000 for readers, and allowances for postgraduate supervision, teaching practice, examination and moderation. It also allowed professors to retire at 70 on a pension equivalent to their final annual salary, and committed both parties to a National Research Council Bill proposing at least one per cent of Gross Domestic Product for research and innovation, with a structured review of the whole agreement every three years.
According to the union, implementation has been uneven, particularly in state-owned universities. Piwuna commended Abia State governor, Dr Alex Otti, for adopting the deal and apologising for bureaucratic delays, and listed Bauchi, Ekiti, Ogun, Benue, Yobe, Adamawa, Kebbi, Katsina and Borno among states where implementation had begun. Kano, Edo, Plateau, Taraba, Gombe and Bayelsa were said to have pledged to start in September or October. States that continue to delay, the union warned, risk industrial crises in their institutions.
The most contentious issue predates the new agreement. It concerns salaries withheld from lecturers over the 2022 strike, an eight-month industrial action that ran from 14 February to 17 October 2022. The then President, Muhammadu Buhari, invoked the “no work, no pay” rule during that period. In October 2023, President Bola Tinubu approved a partial waiver releasing four months of the withheld pay, describing it at the time as an exceptional and final concession. ASUU says the balance of three and a half months remains unpaid, and Piwuna noted that its value had been eroded by more than 50 per cent by inflation and naira depreciation since 2022. The union is also demanding the remittance of pension contributions, cooperative deductions and check-off dues running into billions of naira, which it said had gone unremitted for months, an issue it linked to its longstanding opposition to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.
The dispute has already moved beyond warnings at the state level. At Nasarawa State University, Keffi, ASUU has been on strike since 10 August 2026. The branch chairman, Dr Zubairu Abdulmumini-Loko, listed arrears the university is said to owe: N1.64 billion in five months of the Consolidated Academic Tools Allowance, N2.084 billion in Earned Academic Allowance for the 2018/19 to 2020/21 sessions, N2.857 billion in 25 and 35 per cent salary increments, N578.935 million in the N35,000 wage award, N533.88 million tied to the N70,000 minimum wage, and N239.108 million in 2025 promotion arrears.
The union also raised governance concerns. It opposed the two-year tenure extension granted by Osun State governor, Ademola Adeleke, to the vice-chancellor of the state university, Professor Clement Adebooye, framing it as an erosion of university autonomy. ASUU further tied the crisis to the broader economic climate, backing the Nigeria Labour Congress president, Joe Ajaero, in calling for a review of the national minimum wage and for it to be indexed to inflation.
The economic backdrop gives that argument weight. Headline inflation eased for a second consecutive month in July 2026 to 15.43 per cent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, down from 15.91 per cent in June and 24.94 per cent a year earlier. Food inflation, however, moved the other way, rising to 20.31 per cent year on year from 17.52 per cent, with monthly food inflation accelerating to 5.56 per cent. For salary earners whose withheld pay was fixed in 2022 naira, the combination of high food prices and a currency that has weakened to about N1,320 to the dollar at the official window explains why the union insists that delayed payment is, in effect, reduced payment.
What happens next is procedural. ASUU’s National Executive Council has resolved that the suspended strike can be reactivated at short notice, but has not yet converted that resolution into formal strike notices. The Federal Ministry of Education had not issued a public response to the 11 September statement at the time of writing. Whether governments act before the union takes that further step, and whether the academic calendar survives another round of a dispute both sides have repeatedly said they want closed, will become clearer in the coming weeks.