ASUU confirms agreement with Nigerian govt, expresses hope

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has expressed hope that the agreements recently reached with the Nigerian government would be honoured.

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The ASUU President, Chris Piwuna, told PREMIUM TIMES in a text that the union would also meet the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, early in January to finalise negotiations and get the government’s commitment to implementing the newly signed agreement.

“We reached an agreement with the government, and we expect this government to show a difference from previous administrations that had no fidelity to their words,” Mr Piwuna, a professor, wrote our reporter in a reply to an earlier enquiry.

Mr Piwuna explained that previous Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) and Memoranda of Action (MoA) by past governments have never been honoured.

He said that members of the union have demonstrated patience throughout the negotiation process.

“They agreed to January 2026 as the commencement date of this agreement,” he said, hoping the government won’t “start the new year by breaking agreements with excuses.”

He added, “We will meet with the minister early in the new year to get his additional commitment to the agreement. The Permanent Secretary at the education ministry informed us of the proposed meeting.”

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The agreement

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that the government and the academic on Wednesday reached an interim agreement that could bring an end to an over a decade-long impasse.

The agreement, first signed in 2009, has been the primary source of conflict between the duo.

The renegotiation of the agreement, which was intended to occur every few years, has not been successful for nearly a decade.

However, this newspaper gathered that the details of the agreement included a 40 per cent salary increase for the academics and the establishment of a National Research Council (NRC) with statutory funding of at least one per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Professors are now to earn a pension equivalent to their annual salary at retirement at the age of 70, according to the agreements reached.

The agreement also captured the government’s commitment to more substantial university autonomy and academic freedom, better funding for universities with allocations for research, libraries, laboratories, equipment, and staff development.

Long walk to agreement

This agreement was finally reached after the sixth renegotiation committee, set up in October, completed the harmonisation of the negotiations.

The committee, known as the Federal Government Tertiary Institutions Expanded Negotiation Committee, was led by the Pro-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Yayale Ahmed.

The committee was set up shortly after ASUU embarked on a two-week warning strike to protest the government’s failure to sign or implement the agreement.

The union accused the government of routinely constituting renegotiation committees only to fail to sign or implement the draft of the said committee.

Meanwhile, the first renegotiation committee set up was in 2017, headed by Wale Babalakin, who resigned in 2020.

Mr Babalakin was succeeded by Munzali Jibril, a professor, whose committee presented a draft agreement to the government in 2021. But it was never signed or implemented.

Instead, the government constituted another committee in 2022 after ASUU embarked on an industrial action to protest the non-conclusion of the agreement.

This time, the committee was headed by Nimi Briggs, an emeritus professor now late. Mr Briggs’ committee also produced a draft that the government didn’t sign or implement.

In 2024, the government reconstituted yet another committee headed by Yayale Ahmed. Mr Ahmed concluded the first draft agreement and submitted it in February, but the government did not sign or implement it, leading to another brief ASUU strike in October.

Afterwards, the government created another committee headed by the ministry’s permanent secretary, Abel Enitan, to look into Mr Ahmed’s committee’s draft. The final committee, also headed by Mr Ahmed, was constituted and inaugurated in October to harmonise the terms of agreements.