By Jemimah Wellington, JKNewsMedia Correspondent
UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES across Nigeria witnessed a wave of protests on Tuesday as members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) staged demonstrations to express their grievances against the Federal Government’s handling of long-standing issues affecting lecturers.
At the University of Jos (UNIJOS), union members assembled before the press to reject outright the recently introduced Tertiary Institution Staff Support Fund (TISSF) loan scheme.
The branch chairperson, Joseph Molwus, described the initiative as a “poison chalice” that would worsen the financial distress of academic staff rather than alleviate it.
He argued that lecturers required the payment of withheld entitlements, not loans.
“How can the government ask us to borrow money to pay for healthcare, school fees and basic needs when it is still owing us withheld salaries, allowances, and arrears?” he asked.
In Lagos, ASUU members of the University of Lagos chapter marched within the campus, displaying placards demanding the payment of arrears, improved welfare, and the immediate renegotiation of the 2009 FG-ASUU agreement.
Their position echoed those of their counterparts in Benin and Gusau, where the protests carried a clear warning of another possible nationwide strike should the government fail to act.
At the Federal University Gusau in Zamfara State, the union’s chairperson, Abdulrahman Adamu, criticised what he called the government’s neglect of Nigerian universities.
He noted that funding had been left largely to TETFUND, while the Federal Government continued to withhold salaries and allowances.
He revealed that lecturers were still being owed three and a half months’ salaries from the 2020 strike, in addition to unpaid promotion arrears and wage awards spanning between twenty-five to thirty-five months.
In Edo State, University of Benin lecturers joined the nationwide demonstrations, demanding immediate government action to prevent disruption to academic activities.
Their counterparts in Jigawa State also took to the streets.
At the Federal University Dutse, the union chairperson, Isma’il Ahmad, accused the government of failing to honour the 2009 agreement and lamented that lecturers’ current salaries were insufficient to sustain their livelihoods.
The nationwide protest carried a consistent message: lecturers rejected the government’s loan initiative and called instead for the release of funds to offset unpaid salaries, earned academic allowances, revitalisation funds, promotion arrears, wage awards, and remittances of third-party deductions.
The union further criticised the government’s refusal to finalise the renegotiation of the 2009 FG-ASUU agreement, despite several years of meetings and committee reports.
ASUU also recalled President Bola Tinubu’s 2022 campaign promise that university strikes would not occur under his watch.
The lecturers said they had hoped his administration would address these issues but expressed disappointment that unresolved matters continued to threaten industrial harmony.
The union urged the president to engage directly with its leadership and renew his pledge to revitalise the education sector.
While ASUU reaffirmed its commitment to dialogue, its leaders warned that patience was waning.
They said the government’s repeated promises without visible action risked pushing the universities into another prolonged shutdown of academic activities.
