By Lawan Musa D ( Baba Lawan)
08065078960
August 28, 2025
For decades, Nigeria has grappled with the paradox of great human potential but weak institutions. At the center of this paradox lies education. A nation cannot prosper without a functional, vibrant, and respected university system. Yet in Nigeria, universities are more often remembered for strikes, underfunding, and dilapidated infrastructure than for research excellence or innovation. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has, since its birth, fought to change this trajectory. But successive governments, including the present one, have treated ASUU as an adversary rather than a partner.
It is time for the Federal Government to reconsider its stance on ASUU. Beyond the politics of unionism, this is a question of Nigeria’s survival. A country that abandons its lecturers, neglects its students, and allows its universities to decay is a country that has chosen to mortgage its own future.
ASUU: A History of Struggle and Sacrifice
ASUU was established in 1978, succeeding the Nigerian Association of University Teachers (NAUT), which had represented academics in five universities since the 1960s. The union emerged at a time when Nigeria was experiencing an oil boom, yet the education sector was increasingly neglected. ASUU quickly distinguished itself as a union not just for staff welfare but also for the defense of academic freedom, autonomy, and national development.
During the 1980s, under the structural adjustment program (SAP) and successive military regimes, universities fell into crisis. Funding was slashed, salaries eroded by inflation, and infrastructure collapsed. ASUU became the loudest voice against these policies, demanding better funding and improved conditions. For its activism, the union was banned twice—in 1988 and 1992—by military governments that accused it of radicalism. Its leaders were harassed, detained, or dismissed. Yet ASUU refused to be silenced.
This resilience has become its legacy: a union that has consistently spoken truth to power, even under dictatorship. While other unions often collapsed under repression, ASUU endured. It remains one of the few national institutions that has held successive governments accountable on the question of education.
The Strike Culture: Weapon of Necessity or National Tragedy?
It is impossible to discuss ASUU without mentioning strikes. From the 1990s to the present, prolonged industrial actions have become a defining feature of Nigeria’s academic calendar. Some of the most disruptive include the 1999, 2003, 2010, and the 2022 strikes—the last of which shut down universities for eight consecutive months, the longest in Nigerian history.
Critics accuse ASUU of holding students hostage, of crippling the system it claims to protect. There is truth in this criticism: strikes cause enormous damage. Students lose valuable time, academic calendars are distorted, research is abandoned, and the credibility of Nigerian degrees suffers. Parents grow weary, and many who can afford it send their children abroad or to private universities.
Yet to blame ASUU alone is to miss the larger picture. Strikes are not an indulgence; they are a response to government failure. Most strikes occur because agreements signed during negotiations are left unimplemented. ASUU insists that it resorts to strikes only when dialogue collapses. Indeed, history shows that without strikes, many of the little progress made—improved salaries in the 1990s, modest increases in university funding in the 2000s, the revitalization funds promised in the 2010s—would never have been achieved.
Thus, the tragedy is not that ASUU strikes. The tragedy is that Nigeria’s leaders repeatedly push ASUU to the wall, forcing strikes to become the only language the government understands.
The Human Cost: Families, Students, and Society
The crisis between ASUU and the government is not abstract. It has real human consequences.
For lecturers, unpaid salaries and withheld benefits mean daily struggles. Many are forced into petty trading, farming, or private tutoring just to survive. Families suffer when children are pulled out of private schools, when medical bills go unpaid, or when basic dignity is lost. It is a cruel irony that those tasked with educating the nation’s future leaders cannot afford to properly educate their own children.
For students, the cost is even more devastating. Years are wasted as academic calendars are endlessly disrupted. A degree that should take four years stretches into six or seven. Young graduates enter the labor market late, already disadvantaged in a competitive world. Worse, the quality of their education is compromised. Imagine a medical student whose training is repeatedly interrupted, or an engineering student who graduates without ever touching modern equipment. This is the reality of Nigerian universities.
For society, the ripple effects are enormous. Employers question the credibility of Nigerian degrees. Talented students migrate abroad, and many never return. Lecturers themselves leave in droves, joining the ranks of Nigerian academics who now teach in South Africa, Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This brain drain drains Nigeria’s intellectual lifeblood.
Lessons from Other Nations
The crisis is not inevitable. Other countries that once faced similar challenges have transformed their education sectors by making deliberate investments.
South Korea in the 1960s was as poor as Nigeria, yet today it is a global industrial power. The difference? South Korea invested heavily in education, treating teachers as national assets. Malaysia, too, recognized that without quality universities, development was impossible. It now boasts world-class institutions that attract international students—including some from Nigeria.
Nigeria, by contrast, has chosen neglect. Despite being Africa’s largest economy, it allocates less than 8 percent of its budget to education, far below the UNESCO recommendation of 15–20 percent. The result is a starved system that survives on the resilience of lecturers and the sacrifices of students
Why the Government Must Reconsider
The Federal Government’s current posture toward ASUU—marked by delayed salaries, refusal to honor agreements, and threats of proscription—is dangerous and counterproductive. It deepens mistrust, pushes talented lecturers out of the system, and worsens the decay of universities.
To reconsider means to see ASUU not as an enemy but as a partner in national development. This requires consistency, sincerity, and vision. Signing agreements without implementation is political deceit. Starving universities of funds while expecting them to compete globally is hypocrisy. Punishing lecturers for demanding their rights is injustice.
A rethink also demands a moral reflection. Educators are the builders of society. To treat them with contempt is to treat knowledge itself with contempt. And a nation that despises knowledge condemns itself to perpetual underdevelopment
The Way Forward
The path forward is neither mysterious nor impossible. Several steps are clear and urgent:
1. Honor Agreements: Implement past agreements with ASUU in good faith. This is the foundation of trust.
2. Sustainable Funding: Establish a National Education Endowment Fund, drawing contributions from government, the private sector, and international partners, to provide stable financing for universities.
3. Improve Welfare: Revise lecturers’ salaries and allowances to reflect inflation and global standards, reducing the lure of brain drain.
4. Invest in Infrastructure: Modern libraries, laboratories, and ICT facilities must be built to bring Nigerian universities into the 21st century.
5. Dialogue, Not Dictates: Institutionalize a permanent negotiation mechanism that prevents strikes by addressing grievances before they escalate.
Conclusion
ASUU’s history is a history of resilience and sacrifice. Its strikes, while painful, are reminders of the government’s failure to treat education as a priority. Its legacy is one of defending academic integrity against neglect and repression.
The Federal Government must now decide: will it continue to dismiss ASUU as a nuisance, or will it embrace the union as a partner in building the Nigeria of tomorrow? The choice is stark. Neglecting lecturers and starving universities is a path to collapse. Reconsidering policies, honoring commitments, and investing in education is the path to renewal.
If Nigeria truly seeks progress, then education must return to the center of national policy. The government must act—not tomorrow, not in the next administration, but now. To delay further is to gamble with the nation’s destiny. And history will not be kind to leaders who abandoned the very institutions that should have secured Nigeria’s future.
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Opinion