ASUU Begins Nationwide Protest, Demands Action On Withheld Salaries

Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Abuja Zone, has urged the federal government to urgently release lecturers’ three and a half months’ withheld salaries and address other unresolved issues threatening the nation’s university system.

The union’s zonal coordinator, Professor Al-Amin Abdullahi, made the call at a press conference in Abuja yesterday, ahead of today’s nationwide protest by the lecturers.

He warned that the government’s persistent neglect of agreements and welfare concerns had pushed the tertiary education sector to the brink of collapse.

Abdullahi noted that while ASUU has refrained from striking since the Tinubu administration came on board, opting instead for dialogue, the government has failed to act on key agreements, including the renegotiated 2009 FGN-ASUU pact concluded in December 2024.

“Almost seventeen years after the FGN/ASUU 2009 Agreement was signed, its provisions have only been partially implemented. The conditions of service of academic staff, funding for our universities, and autonomy continue to be eroded,” he said.

He lamented that the February 2025 renegotiation report submitted to government remains unattended, accusing the administration of showing no readiness to sign or implement it.

ASUU also decried decades of underfunding of universities, which it said has resulted in overcrowded lecture halls, dilapidated hostels, and poorly equipped laboratories. The union stressed that Nigeria cannot develop beyond the quality of its university system and urged government to meet the UNESCO benchmark on education financing.

It further linked the current economic crisis—marked by insecurity, inflation, fuel price hikes, and a soaring exchange rate of over N1,500 to the dollar—to worsening living standards and the erosion of academics’ welfare. Abdullahi added that the renegotiated salary scale had already been rendered useless by inflation.

Among its immediate demands, ASUU listed the unconditional release of withheld salaries, payment of promotion arrears, release of third-party deductions to unions and cooperatives, settlement of one-year arrears of the 25/35 percent salary award, and adoption of UTAS (TITAS) as the preferred university payment platform.

Declaring that patience had run out, Abdullahi announced that the union would stage protests simultaneously across all university campuses today, Tuesday, August 26, 2025, to express its displeasure with government’s “deliberate neglect.”

Just days earlier, ASUU had also rejected the federal government’s plan to include it as a guarantor in the Tertiary Institutions Staff Support Fund (TISSF), describing the move as “a ploy to conscript ASUU into liabilities it knows nothing about.”

“The crisis is not just ASUU’s problem; it is Nigeria’s problem. Until this country builds a functional university system that assures quality education, effective research, and innovation, ASUU will not relent,” Abdullahi added.