The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has called on the Federal Government to finalise all agreements entered with university teachers or risk an industrial crisis.
The Union decried what it described as the flip-flop disposition of successive governments towards collective bargaining, which has created an atmosphere of distrust and has taken extra efforts and energy on the part of the current Federal Government to dispel.
In a statement entitled ‘Act Now To Avert The Looming Crisis’ and signed by ASUU President, Prof. Chris Piwuna, the union said, “Nothing illustrates this antipathy better than the frustrated attempts to conclude the renegotiation of the 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement, despite submission of a draft agreement by the Alhaji Yayale Ahmed committee to government since December 2024, eight clear months ago.
“Every major dispute ASUU has had with governments since 2012, when the 2009 Agreement was due for renegotiation, emanated from failure to respect the provisions of the signed document on conditions of service, funding, university autonomy and academic freedom, and
other matters, including the review of the laws governing the National Universities Commission (NUC) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
“The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, was recently quoted to have declared that”not again ever in this country will ASUU or tertiary
Institutions, trade unions, teachers, lecturers go on strike”.
“He predicated his declaration (optimism) on the government’s strategy of “dialogue, maintaining a good relationship with union heads (leaders) and meeting the demands of the unions”. While ASUU share its optimism about dialogue and maintaining relationships, the government needs to go beyond words and act on our outstanding agreements. Feelers across campuses indicate that lecturers in Nigerian public universities are, to put it mildly, not happy. They teach students on empty stomachs. They conduct research in libraries and laboratories bereft of essential electronic and physical journals, books, chemicals and reagents.
“They engage with communities and agencies in rickety cars while encumbered by utility bills, children’s fees, house rents, family upkeep and a legion of other unmet responsibilities. Yet elite Nigerians are quick to blame the universities for ‘producing unemployable graduates’ and failure to initiate innovative research for addressing the country’s problems, our members feel forgotten, shamed and demoralised by past and present governments.
“ASUU has ceaselessly warned owners (government and visitors) of public universities – the Federal and State Governments – of the
Consequences of breeding a disempowered, dissatisfied, and disorientated intellectual workforce”.
The union frowned at situations where agents of government at the State and Federal levels have characteristically thrown the underlying principles of the agreement overboard and resorted to platitudes and tokenism.
