ASUU-GOVERNMENT FACE-OFF

The university crisis is a consequence of official indifference, argues

MAJORITY OJI

There are times when public officials should learn to speak with restraint and, indeed, with a measure of shame. The recent statement by the Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, and the Minister of State for Education, Professor Suwaiba Sai’d Ahmad, regarding the warning strike declared by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) betrays not only a lack of historical awareness but also a profound poverty of reasoning.

For over a decade, ASUU has shown uncommon patience, bending backward time and again to accommodate the federal government’s slow, inconsistent, and often inefficient responses to the issues that have long bedeviled Nigeria’s university system. The union has endured broken promises, endless committees, and countless postponements, yet the government’s reaction to legitimate agitation remains hasty, punitive, and devoid of reflection.

The renewed invocation of the infamous “no work, no pay” policy reveals, once more, the shallow reasoning that too often drives official decisions. Instead of thoughtful dialogue or sincere reassessment of the recurring impasse, the government seems determined to employ coercion as a substitute for conscience. This posture is not a mark of leadership but of failure, a tragic admission that reason has been abandoned for brute expediency.

Since the signing of the 2009 ASUU-FGN Agreement, which sought to address critical issues such as university autonomy, improved funding, and fair remuneration for academic staff, the government has consistently failed to honor its commitments. What has followed is a depressing cycle of negotiations, strikes, and half-hearted interventions.

In 2017, the federal government inaugurated the Wale Babalakin Committee to revisit the 2009 Agreement. Babalakin resigned in 2021, frustrated by bureaucratic inertia. That same year, the Munzali Jibrin Committee was inaugurated, and though it produced a comprehensive draft agreement, the government refused to sign it. In 2022, the Nimi Briggs Renegotiation Committee emerged, painstakingly revising the terms, yet its work also ended in futility — another unsigned document gathering dust on official shelves.

In October 2024, another committee, chaired by Yayale Ahmed, was inaugurated to again renegotiate the same 2009 Agreement. By February 2025, the committee submitted its draft. Then in August 2025, the Ministry of Education, rather than acting on the report, inaugurated yet another internal committee led by the Permanent Secretary to “review” the Yayale Ahmed draft. And by October 7, 2025, the government announced the creation of the Federal Government Tertiary Institutions Expanded Negotiation Committee (FGTIENC) as ASUU mobilizes for strike, once again under the chairmanship of Yayale Ahmed, perpetuating the same endless merry-go-round.

Throughout this prolonged charade, ASUU has remained at the negotiation table, advocating consistently for the dignity of the Nigerian academic, for sustainable funding of universities, and for the full implementation of the 2009 Agreement, a document born out of mutual consent but orphaned by government neglect.

Yet, rather than honoring its word, the government continues to act as an overlord rather than a partner in progress. This arrogance; this institutionalized disdain for intellectuals, reflects not strength but weakness; not governance, but the collapse of governance. To threaten scholars with “no work, no pay” after years of unfulfilled promises is to choose the path of the street rather than that of the statesman; the conduct, indeed, “only befitting for an area boy,” not for a government that claims to value education.

Nigeria’s university crisis is not a creation of ASUU’s stubbornness but a direct consequence of official indifference. If the government must speak, it should do so with humility, and with the shame that comes from years of broken promises, wasted committees, and abandoned agreements.

Prof Oji writes from Delta State University, Abraka