Unpaid lecturers’ salaries and recurring strikes are undermining the federal authorities’s training targets, stopping Nigeria from reaching excessive growth scores.
Below President Bola Tinubu, major faculty lecturers within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja had been pressured to go on strike for over three months over unpaid salaries and arrears.
In Abia State, beneath Governor Alex Otti, lecturers declared an indefinite strike on April 24 over unpaid salaries and unresolved grievances with the state authorities.
Among the many points raised had been the exclusion of lecturers from the minimal wage and the lecturers’ wage construction within the March 2025 wage, continued retirements of the Abia State Common Primary Schooling Board (ASUBEB) employees regardless of approval of 65 years/40 years of service extension, non-payment of arrears to fundamental faculty lecturers, and haphazard promotions.
Equally, in Taraba State, lecturers had been subjected to backlogs of unpaid salaries spanning over 4 months. No fewer than 20 governors didn’t pay the minimal wage of N70,000 to employees, together with lecturers.
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The Educational Employees Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) just lately introduced an indefinite strike over the non-payment of salaries to its members in federal polytechnics.
Different points raised included non-implementation and cost of a 25 % and 35 % wage will increase, and non-implementation and cost of a 40 % peculiar allowance.
The choice got here on the heels of what ASUP described as ‘protracted and unjustifiable delays’ within the cost of month-to-month salaries for eight consecutive months, leaving 1000’s of lecturers in monetary misery.
Strike menace
The Educational Employees Union of Universities has (ASUU) expressed frustration over the extended stalemate in its renegotiation with the federal authorities on key points affecting college lecturers and the training sector.
Chris Piwuna, ASUU president, defined the union had run out of endurance with the federal government’s failure to take concrete motion, regardless of years of guarantees and discussions.
Piwuna cited the 2009 settlement with the federal government, which outlines essential issues resembling situations of service, college autonomy, tutorial freedom, sustainable funding, and earned tutorial allowances.
What stakeholders are saying
Jessica Osuere, chief govt officer at RubiesHub Academic Companies, is anxious that the federal government doesn’t appear to have regard for training and educators.
“It appears the nation is in perpetual battle with its educators. When polytechnic lecturers down instruments, ASUU threatens strike, and state-employed lecturers go months unpaid, we should ask ourselves, ‘What sort of training transformation is feasible in a local weather that persistently devalues educators?’
“The federal authorities’s promise of transformative training anchored on entry, high quality, and fairness, amongst others, is basically undermined by the persistent maltreatment of educators,” she stated.
Osuere emphasised that Nigeria can not obtain training transformation by rhetoric alone, noting that high quality training requires intentional funding within the welfare, dignity, and growth of educators in any respect ranges.
“Strikes and wage arrears usually are not simply administrative challenges; they’re signs of a deeper malaise, an entire disconnect between coverage declarations and precise political will.
“An training system during which professionals are pressured to protest for his or her fundamental rights sends a transparent message to younger those that data shouldn’t be actually valued, and people who impart it are expendable. That’s why ‘faculty na rip-off’ has turn into a well-liked saying amongst our teeming youths,” she famous.
She reiterated that the disconnect between coverage and follow has made a number of training reforms fail outrightly.
“You can’t encourage excellence in college students when their lecturers are demoralised, overworked, and unpaid,” she stated.
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Stanley Boroh, a senior lecturer on the Federal College Otuoke, stated the ASUU strike is lengthy overdue, noting that it’s the solely language the federal government appears to know.
He emphasised that no critical nation jokes with its training workforce. He stated that the best way ahead is to deal with lecturers properly and pay educators residing wages.
“We’ve got a authorities that doesn’t care about our academic system and the rationale isn’t far-fetched: their kids don’t go to highschool in Nigeria,” he stated.
Misplacement of priorities
Nevertheless, Friday Erhabor, a mother or father, although frowned on the tertiary training funding, emphasised that the persistent ASUU strike is a misplacement of precedence.
“Whereas it’s anticipated for the governments to fund training, the varied establishments ought to be artistic with their internally generated income to enrich governments’ funds.
“ASUU shouldn’t be issuing threats. Even for the fund launched to universities, accountability can be a problem,” he stated.
