UNILAG is shut today. Lecturers got the raise. The allowances never arrived.

This morning, UNILAG's gates closed.

ASUU's UNILAG chapter announced an indefinite strike effective today, March 11, after the university management paid what the union is calling "amputated" salaries in January and February 2026. Students who show up this morning will find a closed campus and no clear timeline for reopening.

Here's what happened. In 2025, the federal government signed a new academic salary deal with ASUU: a 40% raise, structured under the new CONUASS framework. The deal also included two specific allowances: the Earned Academic Allowance (EAA), which covers postgraduate supervision and excess workload, and the Conference Attendance and Training Allowance (CATA). Both were agreed. Both were part of the package.

UNILAG management paid the raise. Then cut the allowances. Akoka campus lecturers lost EAA in January. Idi-Araba campus lost both EAA and CATA. February was the same. ASUU's communiqué, signed by branch chair Idou Kehinde and secretary Adesina Arikawe, described the management's action as "wicked, unfeeling and satanic."

That's the language of people who've been here before.

ASUU isn't wrong to be angry. The pattern here is the same one that's shut Nigerian universities repeatedly since the 1980s. Government signs agreement. Government partially implements. ASUU strikes. Negotiations begin. Agreement signed. Repeat. The 2025 deal was supposed to break that cycle. The fact that UNILAG management implemented the structure but not the substance suggests the cycle hasn't broken, just changed shape.

The students absorbing this are not in the negotiations. They planned their semester around a calendar that no longer exists. They registered for courses, arranged accommodation, made plans. None of that is counted in the communiqué or the press releases.

ASUU's national NEC had pre-authorised this action in a resolution from May 2025, meaning the UNILAG chapter had standing to move immediately without waiting for national leadership approval. They moved immediately.

The strike is indefinite. It ends when the January and February allowances are paid in full. There is no other condition.

The government made a promise in 2025. UNILAG management made a different decision in 2026. The students are paying for the gap between those two things, sitting outside a closed gate with no date to write in their calendars.