The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has declared that it has given the Federal Government ample time to address the demands of its members. According to the union, lecturers in public universities have made numerous sacrifices and deserve their rightful entitlements.
ASUU President, Christopher Piwuna, stated this on Wednesday while appearing as a guest on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief. He emphasized that the union has consistently shown restraint and pursued dialogue in an effort to resolve the crisis in Nigeria’s tertiary education sector.
“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,” Piwuna 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.”
He explained that the union had engaged the administration of President Bola Tinubu since it assumed office but lamented what he described as the government’s extremely slow response. “When this government came into power two and a half years or so ago, we had engaged them. This is the second Minister of Education since the advent of this administration; we engaged Prof. Tahir Mamman; we have engaged the current minister, Dr. Tunji Alausa, over these issues,” he said.
According to him, the sluggish nature of government machinery has remained a recurring obstacle. “And it appears as if the machines of the government work extremely slowly, and we have had that over and over again,” Piwuna noted. “And we say to ourselves, ‘Why can’t you make it more efficient, why can’t you make the government more responsive to these issues?’”
ASUU Warns Government Over Unresolved Demands and Possible Strike Action
Despite these challenges, he stressed that ASUU has made every effort to keep the universities open. “But we think that we have demonstrated enough patience; we’ve kept the schools open. And let me just make this point: the government has tried to keep the schools open,” the ASUU president added.
The remarks followed Tuesday’s nationwide protest by ASUU members to draw attention to what they described as the Federal Government’s persistent neglect of their long-standing demands. The union had earlier, on August 21, 2025, warned of a possible nationwide strike, accusing the government of failing to honour agreements on the revitalisation and proper funding of public universities.
ASUU listed unresolved issues to include the renegotiation of the 2009 ASUU-FGN agreement, outstanding salary arrears, withheld promotions, and the welfare of retired lecturers. The union noted that despite writing several letters to the government in search of an amicable resolution, the authorities have consistently failed to respond.
It further accused the government of pushing the union toward industrial action. “It is clear that ASUU may have no other option than to embark on an action to press the FGN to listen” to its demands and take the necessary steps, the union said.
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