ASUU: Broken Promises and the Slow Death of Nigerian Education
The story of Nigeria’s university lecturers is one of quiet endurance and deepening despair. It is not simply about strikes or salary negotiations; it is about human beings who have devoted their lives to shaping the next generation, only to be made to feel small in the very country they helped build.
I know this story intimately. My late mother, Cecilia Kato, was a lecturer of English and African Literature at the University of Abuja. I remember her marking scripts by candlelight, stretching her salary to feed her family, aiding indigent students, and carrying herself with dignity in a system that gave her very little. Life was never easy for lecturers, but there was still pride. Growing up, it wasn’t till the Obasanjo years that many lecturers within the staff quarters of the University of Abuja could finally afford second-hand cars after decades of work following hard won battles with the government. That modest progress has since vanished.
Today, even full professors struggle to stay afloat. My Professor from University of Jos, a man dedicated to excellence and committed to the welfare of students, told me that his net monthly pay, after decades of service, is less than five hundred thousand naira (340 dollars). “Imagine the cost of electricity, fuel, food, and rent,” he said, “and you can guess how tough things are.” He spoke of colleagues who sleep in their offices during the week to save on transportation and of professors who now ride in tricycles with their students. “Some students even offer to pay their lecturers’ fares,” he added. “Is that not humiliating?”
That humiliation has become a shared reality. The people who keep Nigeria’s universities alive are surviving through debt and personal sacrifice. Many lecturers rely on loans from cooperatives and salary advances to meet basic needs. “We are constantly borrowing against the next salary,” my professor said. “Many cannot afford to attend conferences or pay for journals to update their knowledge.” When scholars can no longer afford to learn, the entire academic system begins to decay.
Low morale now defines university life. “When people are undervalued and demotivated, they cannot give their best,” he said. The result, he explained, is the steady brain drain hollowing out Nigeria’s universities. “We have heard vice chancellors complain about departments losing their best minds. Universities can no longer attract or retain talent because of poor pay.” My professor admitted that students, too, suffer the consequences. “Psychologically, a financially pressed lecturer cannot be in the right frame of mind to give his best. Students are shortchanged.”
He also pointed to another layer of pain. “The strikes even affect our children,” he said. “Most of us can’t afford private schools. When universities shut down, our children’s education stops too. We feel the pain of the strikes twice.”
That double pain, professional and personal, has become the signature of Nigerian academia. Visit any public university and the evidence is visible: broken roofs, cracked walls, outdated laboratories, libraries frozen in time. When I asked where the government had failed the most, he replied, “In all the areas you mentioned. Buildings, laboratories, hostels, research funding, staff welfare; all of them. There is insignificant support for research. Most lecturers fund their research from their meagre salaries, more to meet promotion requirements than to create impact. What impact can come from research limited by lack of funds?”
He described Nigeria’s universities as “glorified ivory towers,” institutions that bear the name of academia but lack the substance. “We cannot truly deliver on our mandate under this deliberate underfunding,” he said.
Beyond underfunding lies the deeper problem of government insincerity. “If I could speak directly to policymakers,” he said, “I would first ask why they have chosen not to give education the priority it deserves. They know the value of quality education; after all, they send their children abroad. Why can’t they replicate that standard here? Why are we watching our institutions collapse?”
His words mirror what Nigerians have seen for decades. Each administration promises to reform education and honor agreements with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), yet once strikes end, the promises fade. “Each time we call off a strike,” he said, “we do so in good faith, believing the government will honor its word. But they never fully do. We are left to start again.”
ASUU’s demands have been clear and remarkably consistent. The union seeks a revitalization fund to rebuild decaying infrastructure, earned academic allowances to compensate for excess workloads, and genuine university autonomy so institutions can make academic and financial decisions without political interference. It has also developed the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), a home-grown payroll system that would replace the government’s flawed IPPIS platform and the newer GIFMIS platform to ensure transparency.
The union further calls for research funding and a comprehensive review of working conditions, arguing that lecturers cannot teach effectively while living below the poverty line. “People think ASUU is fighting for money,” my professor told me. “We are fighting for the survival of the university system. When the system works, students learn better, and the country grows stronger. No nation can develop faster than the quality of its education.”
He is right. Meeting ASUU’s demands would not just improve lecturers’ welfare; it would restore the soul of Nigeria’s education system. Better pay would retain skilled lecturers who guide the next generation, revitalized infrastructure would provide safe, functional classrooms, research funding would drive local innovation, and true autonomy would protect academia from the grip of politics. These are not luxuries; they are the foundations of national progress.
For too long, government has treated ASUU as an irritant instead of a partner in development. Lecturers are not agitators to be managed but nation builders whose work sustains every other profession. Education should not depend on strikes to gain attention or on protests to compel fairness. Agreements should be implemented as a matter of national integrity.
As I think of my mother, my University of Jos professor, and others like them who taught through blackouts, salary delays, and unkept promises, I am filled with both admiration and grief. My mother believed in education as the path to a better Nigeria. She believed knowledge could heal a nation. Many of her generation held that faith, but every passing year makes it harder to sustain.
It should not take heroic resilience to be a teacher. A society that starves its thinkers has already chosen ignorance.
Until the government listens, not with platitudes but with genuine action, the classrooms will remain places of struggle rather than inspiration. The professors will continue to fight for survival instead of ideas. The students will inherit frustration instead of hope. And in the end, it is not ASUU that loses, nor even the lecturers. It is Nigeria itself, dimming the very light that could have guided its way forward.
Ndi Kato is a political analyst, writer, and advocate for women’s inclusion in governance. She is the founder of the Dinidari Foundation and has served as a presidential campaign spokesperson; the first woman and youngest person to hold that role in Nigeria. Her columns focus on governance, gender, and social development, bringing sharp insight and accountability to national discourse.
