KEFFI — Barely five months after the celebrated signing of a historic pact aimed at permanently stabilizing Nigeria’s tertiary education sector, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to plunge public universities back into a massive industrial crisis. The union has accused the Federal Government of outrightly breaching the 2025 FG/ASUU Agreement, warning that the state's failure to faithfully execute the document is fueling a fresh wave of campus unrest.

The Dispute Over Full Implementation Claims

The controversy erupted during a packed press conference organized by the Abuja Zone of ASUU at the Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK), on Monday. Speaking on behalf of the union, the Abuja Zonal Coordinator, Adamu Al-Abdullahi, fiercely disputed recent claims by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, who stated that the government had fully honored and implemented all components of the December 2025 pact.

According to ASUU, the reality on the ground across federal and state campuses completely contradicts the minister's public declarations. The union revealed that university lecturers are still actively battling severe salary shortfalls, unpaid professional entitlements, and an unresolved pension crisis.

"It is exactly five months since the fanfare that accompanied the signing of the FG/ASUU Agreement after a protracted negotiation spanning eight years," Al-Abdullahi stated heavily. "However, the claim that the Federal Government has fully implemented the agreement is far from the realities on the ground in federal universities."

Selective Payments and Bureaucratic Failure

A major point of friction is the government’s alleged abandonment of the agreed implementation framework. ASUU revealed that the Federal Government has failed to inaugurate the joint Implementation Monitoring Committee, a critical body tasked with ensuring uniform execution across all institutions and preventing bureaucratic bottlenecks.

In the absence of this regulatory oversight, ASUU alleges that individual university administrators are now operating with zero coordination, unhealthily "picking and choosing" which allowances to pay while ignoring others. Key components currently being applied selectively or withheld entirely include:

  • The Consolidated Academic Tools Allowance

  • Earned Academic Allowance (EAA)

  • The Professorial Allowance

Furthermore, the union strongly faulted several state governors. Despite state representatives actively participating in the eight-year negotiation process, multiple state executives have allegedly turned their backs on the final document, refusing to adjust the welfare templates for state-owned universities.

The Lingering Ghost of the "No Work, No Pay" Policy

Beyond the fresh breaches of the 2025 agreement, ASUU raised alarms over a backlog of unresolved welfare grievances. These include promotion arrears, unpaid third-party deductions, unremitted pension contributions, and the lingering arrears of the 25–35 per cent salary award.

The union also used the medium to fiercely criticize the government’s rigid enforcement of the "No Work, No Pay" policy, which stems from the historic 2022 industrial action. ASUU argued that withholding salaries demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the academic profession, emphasizing that professors continuously conduct research, grade scripts, and provide community services even when classroom teaching is suspended.

"Withholding salaries of university lecturers on account of ‘no work, no pay’ is like reducing scholars to menial workers whose livelihood is anchored in physical appearances at their worksite," Al-Abdullahi declared.

The Proliferation of "Diaspora Professors" and Questionable Appointments

In a surprising twist, the union also sounded the alarm over growing irregularities in the internal governance of public universities. ASUU accused the government and certain governing councils of bypassing standard academic procedures to establish controversial, non-traditional roles such as “Professors of Practice” and “Diaspora Professors.”

The union claimed these appointments are frequently made completely behind the backs of university senates, opening a dangerous backdoor for individuals with questionable academic credentials to infiltrate the system.

"In the process, people with doubtful academic credentials find their way into the university system, and some even rise to become vice chancellors," the zone alleged.

With the public university system still recovering from the scars of past prolonged closures, ASUU’s latest warning serves as a severe wake-up call. The union maintains that unless the Federal Government immediately halts its selective implementation and honors the entirety of the December 2025 template, an institutional shutdown remains entirely inevitable.