Our Correspondent
A fresh row has erupted between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over the long-disputed 2021 agreement, with the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, insisting that no binding pact was ever signed.
Addressing journalists in Abuja on Thursday, Alausa maintained that the documents often cited by ASUU as enforceable agreements were merely draft proposals presented during negotiations with the government.
“The 2021 agreement was not executed by the government,” Alausa declared. “ASUU might have an impression that they have an agreement with government, but the truth is that there was no signed agreement.”
He explained that the current administration under President Bola Tinubu was determined to end the cycle of disputes with university lecturers by establishing what he described as a “clean, actionable, and sustainable” agreement.
According to him, one major flaw of past negotiations was the absence of the Ministry of Justice, which, he argued, made previous agreements constitutionally weak and difficult to implement. The new approach, he said, will involve the Solicitor General of the Federation and other top officials to ensure enforceability.
Alausa disclosed that a seven-member high-level technical team had been set up to review the government’s counter-proposals to ASUU’s demands. The team is chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and includes representatives from the Ministry of Justice, Labour and Productivity, the National Universities Commission, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, the National Salaries and Wages Commission, and the Budget Office.
Once completed, the government’s proposal will be presented to the Yayale Ahmed Committee for further engagement with ASUU.
The minister stressed that President Tinubu had directed officials to conclude negotiations with finality:
“We are going to do this thing once and for all. We want every agreement to be constitutional, implementable, and sustainable.”
ASUU Fires Back
But ASUU swiftly dismissed the minister’s remarks, accusing government officials of poor record-keeping and a lack of institutional memory.
ASUU President, Prof Chris Piwuna, told The PUNCH that the union had always negotiated in good faith, only to be frustrated by repeated denials and shifting positions from successive administrations.
“The government is very poor at keeping records. Sometimes you wonder if there is a proper handover from one officer to another,” Piwuna said.
The latest clash rekindles a long-running industrial dispute that has defined relations between government and public university lecturers for decades. At the heart of ASUU’s demands are improved salaries and welfare, better funding for universities, institutional autonomy, and a review of laws governing key education bodies such as the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
Although the Tinubu administration earlier this year released N50 billion to offset earned academic allowances owed to lecturers and non-academic staff, the union insists that such payments are only partial and do not address its core demands.
Observers note that ASUU has had successive nationwide strikes since 1999, often paralysing public universities for months and leaving students stranded. Analysts fear that unless the current talks yield tangible results, Nigeria’s public university system could again be plunged into another round of disruption.