Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has disclosed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has given a firm directive to the Ministry of Education to ensure that university students remain in school, saying the Federal Government is doing everything humanly possible to prevent further strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Speaking to State House correspondents after meeting with the President at the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Tuesday, the Minister said the President had mandated him to find lasting solutions to all issues that could disrupt academic activities in the nation’s tertiary institutions.
“As I told you, the President has mandated us that he doesn’t want ASUU to go on strike, and we’re doing everything humanly possible to ensure that our students stay in school,” Alausa said. “The last strike they went on for about six days was not really needed. We’re talking to them.
We’ve met literally all their requirements. Now we’ve gone back to the negotiation table. We’re talking—as I spoke to the leadership this morning. We will resolve this.”
And part of my visit today here is also to explain where we are wASUU strike to Mr President and to extract more concessions from Mr President.”
Regarding reports of a four-week ultimatum or an overemphasis on ASUU, the Minister dismissed such claims. “With all due respect to you, that’s not the case,” he said. “The problem in the past was that we had one negotiating committee dealing with universities (ASUU), another one with polytechnics (ASUP), and another with colleges of education (COEASU), and they weren’t talking to one another.
“What we’ve done now is to expand one single committee called the Alhaji Yayale Ahmed Federal Government Negotiating Committee with Tertiary Institutions. They’re dealing with both academic and non-academic unions.”
He added: “As I’m talking to you, they’re talking to the polytechnics, to the colleges of education, as well as ASUU—both academic and non-academic unions. And with all due respect, there is no ultimatum. I still spoke to the president of ASUP yesterday. I’m on a first-line call to them. Everything is calm, and they all understand this is a listening government. We will resolve all their problems, and resolve a significant part of their problems.”
The minister explained that the administration of President Tinubu remains fully committed to transparency, governance, and accountability in the education sector, adding that this commitment is reflected in the reforms being implemented at the Federal Ministry of Education.
“The government of President Bola Tinubu is about deepening the governance and transparency process in our country, and in the past 26 months, you’ve seen that played out,” Alausa said. “We’ve seen the light now; it’s not even at the end of the tunnel. I can continue to tell you what the President has done over and over in terms of the significant, massive progress that we’ve made.”
The Minister said his own drive at the Ministry is to deepen transparency and governance through evidence-based decision-making.
He stressed that data-driven planning now guides government interventions in education.
“With what we launched today—the Federal Tertiary Institution Governance and Transparency Dashboard—we have all our public tertiary institutions: universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education, which receive almost 100 per cent federal government funding. We have to hold them accountable,” he said.
“The Federal Ministry of Education today is actively playing its oversight role over tertiary institutions. We have now mandated them to report data on student enrollment, budgetary allocations for personnel, capital, and recurrent expenditures, as well as TETFund and NELFund interventions, including endowments and grants, both local and international. This is now publicly available information.”
Alausa added that the new transparency portal, launched earlier in the day, would ensure open access to financial and institutional data across tertiary institutions.
“We’re doing this to accomplish several things—improve transparency, governance, and then bring back our tertiary institutions, more so our universities, to where they were 30 or 40 years ago, when several Nigerian universities were competing globally.
“You need all this data. You need people to sit in the comfort of their rooms to go to the university’s website or the Federal Ministry of Education’s website to see this data,” he said.
According to him, the Federal Government started with federal tertiary institutions but plans to extend the transparency initiative to state and private universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education.
“We will enforce the reporting requirement using our regulatory bodies—the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), and National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE),” the Minister noted.
He added that the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) also participated in the launch to strengthen financial discipline.
“We invited the DG of the Bureau of Public Procurement, Dr Adebowale Adeokun, to come and meet with all the heads of our tertiary institutions to clearly lay down the requirements of BPP in ensuring they comply fully, efficiently, and effectively with our public procurement rules. That’s deepening our governance and transparency processes,” Alausa said.
Alausa also praised the President’s commitment to human capital development, describing Tinubu as a leader with “fervent and benevolent love for education.”
He said the administration is also building the economy through reforms such as the removal of fuel subsidies, the elimination of foreign exchange arbitrage, extensive infrastructure projects nationwide, and a new tax bill, all of which have contributed to a GDP growth rate of 4.23 per cent in the last quarter.
“Beyond what our President is doing in expanding and creating opportunities across the country, building the economy, we’ve seen what’s happening with fuel subsidy and foreign exchange reform. Our GDP is growing—the last quarter was at 4.23 per cent. Nigeria is back to governance,” the Minister said.
