The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to reactivate its suspended nationwide strike if the Federal Government and state governments fail to resolve outstanding issues affecting university lecturers urgently.
The union said it could resume the strike “without any further notice”, citing the incomplete implementation of the December 2025 agreement, payment of the remaining 3.5 months of withheld salaries and non-remittance of billions of naira deducted from lecturers’ earnings.
ASUU President, Christopher Piwuna, disclosed this in a statement issued in the early hours of Friday following an emergency meeting of the union’s National Executive Council at the University of Abuja.
According to the union, the December 2025 agreement was reached after more than eight years of negotiations and struggles but has yet to be fully implemented by the Federal Government and several state governments.
ASUU warned that unless immediate and concrete steps were taken to address issues affecting the welfare of university lecturers, it would not accept responsibility for any industrial action that might follow.
The union, however, commended the Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, as well as the governments of Bauchi, Ekiti, Ogun, Benue, Yobe, Adamawa, Kebbi, Katsina and Borno for commencing implementation of the agreement.
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It added that Kano, Edo, Plateau, Taraba, Gombe and Bayelsa states had pledged to begin implementation in September or October, while urging other state governments to act before their universities were plunged into an “industrial crisis of monumental proportions.”
On withheld salaries, ASUU acknowledged that the Tinubu administration had paid four of the 7.5 months withheld during the previous administration but demanded the immediate payment of the outstanding 3.5 months.
The union also alleged that pension contributions, cooperative deductions and union check-off dues running into billions of naira had remained unremitted for several months.
ASUU said the combination of unpaid salaries, unremitted deductions and the incomplete implementation of the agreement was threatening industrial peace across the nation’s public universities.
It described the “non- or haphazard implementation” of the 2025 FGN-ASUU Agreement by the Federal and state governments as a recipe for an industrial crisis in the university system.
The union therefore urged the authorities to act swiftly, warning that it may activate its suspended nationwide strike without further notice if the outstanding issues are not speedily addressed.
