Thursday 02 April, 2026

The government signed ASUU's salary agreement. It has had four months to implement it.

In December 2025, the Federal Government and ASUU reached an agreement. Forty percent increase in allowances. Improved salary structure. Earned Academic Allowances mainstreamed into monthly pay. Implementation from January 2026.

March was the deadline for full implementation. March is over.

ASUU President Christopher Piwuna confirmed the position this week. The Earned Academic Allowances that were supposed to become part of monthly salary have not arrived. Lecturers on sabbatical and visiting appointments at several federal universities are not receiving full payment. Some institutions haven't settled January and February salaries at all. The government cited the slow passage of the 2026 national budget as one reason for the delay. The budget was still being debated while the agreement's implementation window was already open.

ASUU issued a four-day ultimatum on 27 March. That deadline passed too. The union's national president says the union will "respond in line with established procedures." Nigerians who have followed this cycle for fifteen years know what those procedures produce.

The UNILAG chapter went on a local strike in March over unpaid Consolidated Academic Teaching Allowances. Taraba State University resumed indefinite strike in February over the same category of failures. The national strike hasn't been called yet. The conditions for calling it are all present.

Here's the arithmetic. The Senate approved $6 billion in external borrowing on 1 April, roughly four hours after receiving the request. INEC reviewed a court order it had held for three weeks and acted within twenty-four hours of a political development. The salary agreement ASUU signed in December is four months old and still unimplemented.

The government is not incapable of moving quickly. It moves quickly for some things. The lecturers' agreement is not one of those things. The students whose semesters evaporate when ASUU strikes are not the people for whom the machinery moves fast.

ASUU's last major strike, in 2022, lasted eight months. Students lost an academic year. Some of them never recovered it. The December 2025 agreement was supposed to be the end of that cycle. It may be the start of another one. The implementation is the proof. And right now, the implementation isn't there.

The close here isn't in dispute. The government signed. The government hasn't paid. The next step belongs to ASUU. And the person who pays either way is the student who enrolled believing an agreement had been reached.