By Elvira Jordan
The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has warned that it may reactivate its suspended nationwide strike without further notice if the Federal Government fails to urgently address outstanding issues affecting lecturers and public universities.
ASUU President, Professor Christopher Piwuna, disclosed this in a statement issued after an emergency meeting of the union’s National Executive Council on Thursday.
The union said the threat was triggered by what it described as the government’s failure to fully implement the December 2025 agreement reached after years of negotiations over university funding and lecturers’ conditions of service.
ASUU said the “haphazard implementation” of the agreement, outstanding salaries and unremitted deductions could trigger another industrial crisis in the nation’s public universities.
According to Piwuna, the union remains concerned about the withholding of lecturers’ outstanding salaries, non-remittance of third-party deductions, alleged violations of university laws and threats to university autonomy.
He said that, apart from recent efforts by the Federal Ministry of Education to pay outstanding salaries to lecturers in federal universities of agriculture, there had been no sustained effort to resolve the union’s concerns.
ASUU is also demanding payment of the remaining three-and-a-half months’ salaries withheld from lecturers during the 2022 industrial dispute.
The union said four months out of the seven-and-a-half months withheld by the former Muhammadu Buhari administration had been paid by the current government.
It further alleged that deductions for pension contributions, cooperative societies and union check-off dues had not been properly remitted for several months, with the outstanding funds running into billions of naira.
ASUU warned that it could call out its members if the issue of third-party deductions was not resolved.
The union also raised concerns over the implementation of the December 2025 agreement in state-owned universities.
However, it commended Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, for adopting the agreement and apologising over delays attributed to bureaucratic bottlenecks.
