Of old, our ancestors in their days, delighted in wisdom, knowledge and truth and they made songs about such virtues. Sometimes at night, they told audiences such didactic stories, especially children, who would sing and dance in wild abandon under the fatherly eye of a bright full moon. I am not a good story teller, so I beg you from the beginning to excuse my poor narration. What I have to say is bare and clear but at the same time it is very true and it is all about the Nigerian Government (FGN) and the union of Nigerian university teachers (ASUU).
The story goes like this: There was severe famine in the land. So severe was the famine that there was no food, no grains, no yam, no cassava, no potatoes, no Garri and both children and adults were dying every day because of malnourishment and kwashiorkor. Now, there was this cunning mother, a widow she was, with more than seven young children. Every day, her children wound prance about in the day time playing games. In the evenings however, her children would return home jaded, hungry and famished. The clever mother had no food. But she had this strong habit of deception. Every evening, she would put big stones in a huge pot, add water to the brim and allow the pot to boil endlessly under a hot fire made of wood. Her poor children, on seeing the pot boiling and steaming would cavort about in the devout hope that their mother was actually cooking food and with the expectation that the food on fire shall soon be served to them as their evening meal. The children would play around the fire side until sleep would take them away. They would wake up the following morning to continue the same routine, day after day, our cunning mother continued with her tricks and deceit giving her children so much hope and promise.
Apparently, this is a telling story of deceit and façade, but it also corresponds to my theory of the three Ds namely: the Deceit, the Delay and the Dictatorship, all which have become a permanent feature of the face-off between the Nigerian Government and ASUU. Let me pluck the fruit of my story.
I will begin with the first D, Deceit. When ASUU commenced a warning strike on October 13,2025, the Minister of Education resorted to the Government’s well -known cheap tactic of deceit, ruse and sham. In a statement issued on Sunday 12th October,2025 and signed by Boriowo Folashade, Director of Press and Public Relations at the Federal Ministry of Education, he stated that the government has presented a comprehensive offer to ASUU addressing key issues raised by the union…The offer covers lecturer’s welfare, working conditions and institutional governance,’. The statement added that ‘President Bola Ahmed has approved an enhanced teaching allowance to reflect the value of academic work and motivate university staff’. Now, one is not just horrified by such cant and falsehood but also by the outright, bare-faced, scurrilous pretense and falsehood aimed at making ASUU the enemy of public education. ASUU is very willing to accept any good and tangible offer from the FGN. If the offer is true, genuine and satisfactory why would ASUU reject it? Is ASUU insane to reject such magnanimity coming from the President himself?
Why would ASUU appear so intransigent and unfeeling? Undoubtedly, that’s the kind of feeling the FGN, through its Education Minister, wants to create. But we should realize that this statement, from the Education Minister, is the grossest falsehood.
Our forefathers say that until the Lion shall write its own story the tale of the hunt shall continue to glorify only the hunter.
So, here is the ASUU story. On September 28, 2025, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) issued a notice of a fourteen-day warning strike action to the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN). In the same document, ASUU gave the FGN fourteen days ultimatum within which to address the core eight issues in contention namely: (1) Conclusion of the re-negotiated 2009 FGN-ASUU Agreement (2) Release of withheld three and half months salaries (3) Sustainable funding of public universities (4) Revitalization of public universities (5) Cessation of the victimization of ASUU members in LASU, Kogi State University and FUTO (6) Payment of outstanding 25-35 % salary arrears (7) Payment of promotion arrears (8) Release of withheld third party deductions.
Now, to the second D, which is Delay. In a letter dated 30th September 2025, the FGN, through the Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Education, made an appeal to ASUU to the effect that the union should withdraw the notice of a fourteen -day warning strike action. More forward-looking was the fact that the letter also acknowledged ASUU for its patience and understanding for all these many years. In other words, the letter raised the hopes of ASUU as a union, the same way the cunning mother in the proverbs was able to raise the hopes of her hungry children. Again, before the 30th September,2025 letter, the FGN had raised the hopes of ASUU by demanding for a three weeks period of time to enable the Nigerian Government attend to the issues raised by ASUU. There was so much hope and optimism in that document. And ASUU granted the Government this request. Moreover, before the 14 day notice of a warning strike, ASUU had on August 26, called on all its members across Nigerian public universities in the country to hold peaceful rallies and protest marches in their branches. Needless to state that all these efforts were meant to serve as a reminder to the FGN to honor its promises. In all its engagements and correspondences with the present regime since it assumed power in 2023, ASUU had demanded for dialogue, the union had explored all other avenues of negotiation. More than that, ASUU also called on traditional and religious leaders, parents, students and other stakeholders in the education sector to press the FGN to honor promises and agreements.
All these efforts met with silence. But again, all these efforts are symptomatic of the fact that ASUU does want a strike action. As it usual with ASUU, a Strike action is the last, the very last option of the union. Any careful observer would have noticed also that dialogue between ASUU and the FGN has failed before October, 13 2025. Public rallies and peaceful protests have also felled on deaf ears. It became appallingly obvious that the only language the Government shall understand is a STRIKE Action. After all, struggles are required to survive under a regime founded on the structures of deceit, pretense and dictatorship.
Again, like the cunning mother’s cooking pot of stones on the fire in the proverbs, there followed the constitution or re-constitution of committees and expanded committees. But of what use are these committees anyway? They seem meaningless because their recommendations and suggestions are outrightly jettisoned or never implemented at all.
Perhaps, a brief look at the history of FGN-ASUU Agreement would be insightful. It may also reveal the hypocrisy and insincerity of both past and present Nigerian governments. The first negotiated Agreement with the Federal Government took place in 1981 under the civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. The second was in 1992 under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and the ASUU led by Dr. Attahiru Jega, highlights of which were university autonomy, academic freedom and most importantly, a separate salary scale for Nigerian university teachers. Of greater importance is the fact that it was the 1992 agreement that introduced the Education Tax Fund which was later transformed to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in 2011, an organ of Government which has brought massive infrastructural development to both Federal and State universities as well as Polytechnics and Colleges of Education. Is it not the height of irony that it was a military junta that signed an Agreement which has brought about rapid infrastructural development in Nigeria’s public tertiary institutions?
Fast forward to 2021 when Munzali Jibrin’s committee produced a draft that was never signed. Then there was the 2017 Wale Babalakin committee, the 2022 Nimi Briggs renegotiated committee, the 2024 Yayale Ahmed committee whose responsibility was to renegotiate the 2009 Agreement and which submitted its report to the present Government in February 2025. The most recent committee is the one of October 7, 2025 initiated by the FGN with the name Federal Government Tertiary Institutions Expanded Negotiation Committee (FGTIENC).
We may concede that there have been series of Agreements but the FGN has always thrown their recommendations into the trash can. For now, it is the 2009 agreement that is at the heart of the face-off between FGN and ASUU. It is this same agreement that was re-negotiated and submitted by Alhaji Yayale Ahmed to the present APC Government early this year. All these examples show that, Nigerian Governments, both past and present, have made a habit of treating intellectuals and tertiary education with utter contempt and disdain. In all its dealings with ASUU, it could be perceived that Committees are inaugurated just to give the general impression that the Government is responding to the problems in the tertiary education sector. It could be perceived also that the FGN and the cunning mother in the proverbs have many things in common namely: deceit, pretense and delay. Each time ASUU embarks on a strike action the Nigerian public, through the Education Minister, is served with this same dish of lies and untruths.
Finally, the last D, Dictatorship. It is desperately important that we historicize this very tactic. In the year 1988, ASUU embarked on a strike action under the military regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. The strike was met with the full force of the military dictator wielding guns and military boots. As is usual with military regimes, the 1988 strike led to the proscription of ASUU on August 7, 1988. The military junta working in concert with Prof. Jibril Aminu, the Minister of Education, banned ASUU, seized the properties of the union. Afterwards, the same FGN directed all universities to immediately pay the Elongated University Salary Scale (EUSS), which was one of the key demands of ASUU as a union at that time. The EUSS was not only paid, the payment was backdated to January of that same year. As a result of the ban, ASUU quickly formed a new union with the name University Lecturer’s Association (ULA). But more than proscription, ASUU leaders especially Dr. Attahiru Jega and the immediate past president Dr. Festus Iyayi (late) were detained and tortured and their passports were seized. Same treatment was meted out to Dr. F. Dimowo (late) and Mr. E. Amade, chairman and secretary respectively of ASUU University of Benin.
So, what is clear for now is that threats of ‘No Work, No Pay’, threats of proscription, intimidation or harassment of ASUU members, is not something new. ASUU members are already used to all these tactics. Recall that under the Buhari regime, ASUU embarked on a strike for eight months, perhaps the longest strike in the Union’s history. The FGN in an attempt to break the strike formed two academic unions namely: National Association of Medical and Dental Academics (NAMDA) and Congress of Nigerian Universities Academics (CONUA) on October 5, 2022. Where are those two academic unions today?
ASUU cannot be cowed by these threats because its members are resolute, consistent, courageous, fearless and sincere. And if the military junta of IBB could not tame ASUU, it is certain that the democratic dictatorship of the present regime shall surely fail. As things stand now, it is left for us to contemplate the proverbial wisdom of our ancestors: If the hunter is not deterred by the frightening paws of a tiger, then the feeble scratching of a chicken shall simply fail.
***Jeff Doki is a Writer and Public Affairs Analyst
ENDS***
