Nigeria stands once again on the threshold of a paralyzing shutdown of its public universities. For millions of students and parents, the mere prospect of a new ASUU strike carries an air of painful familiarity lost months, abandoned research, disrupted careers, and yet another hit to a higher education system already on its knees.
This time, however, the urgency is louder, and the stakes graver. The Academic Staff Union of Universities insists that its patience has run out. For 15 years since the 2009 FGN–ASUU Agreement lecturers have watched the value of their salaries and entitlements collapse under the weight of inflation, currency devaluation, and chronic government neglect.
The issues tabled before the government have hardly changed: revitalisation of universities, earned academic allowances, and a comprehensive salary review.
What has changed is that the system has weakened even further, and the consequences are now national in scale.
Successive administrations made lofty promises but retreated when it mattered most. Agreements were either cherry-picked or shelved outright, breeding the toxic cycle of distrust that still governs negotiations today.
Even President Bola Tinubu, who boldly pledged during his campaign that university lecturers would never embark on another strike under his watch, now faces the same reckoning. ASUU says the government has failed to utilise the one-month window it granted after a warning strike and has threatened an indefinite shutdown beginning Friday.
The message is unmistakable: the Federal Government lacks the urgency required to salvage a sector collapsing in plain sight.
To be a Nigerian academic today is to live a contradiction. Lecturers expected to produce world-class research, publish internationally, and supervise scholars across disciplines are some of the poorest paid in the world. A Nigerian professor earns between N500,000 and N700,000 monthly — less than what many artisans now charge in an economy battered by cost-of-living pressures.
Meanwhile, a professor in South Africa earns the equivalent of over N7 million monthly. This is not merely a disparity; it signals a broken value system.
When lecturers can no longer afford transport to work, when housing becomes a luxury, when laboratories turn into empty shells and libraries cannot afford basic subscriptions, the country should be alarmed.
Yet the government celebrates the Nigerian Education Loan Fund as proof of commitment to students. But what becomes of a loan scheme when classrooms are under lock and key? What becomes of higher education when the institutions issuing the degrees are gasping for breath?
Worse still, while existing universities rot, new ones continue to be announced with political fanfare — more bills passed, more convocation grounds commissioned, and more TETFund allocations stretched impossibly thin. Nigeria cannot keep building new structures while the foundation crumbles. If funds cannot sustain existing universities, creating additional liabilities is both irresponsible and unsustainable.
The numbers paint a damning picture. Nigeria allocates less than 7 per cent of its federal budget to education — one of the lowest in Africa. South Africa spends roughly 19 per cent of its budget on education; Ghana dedicates nearly 20 per cent. Even countries with far smaller economies prioritise their universities as engines of development.
The contrast with Nigeria’s past is even more painful. In the First Republic, the Western Region under Chief Obafemi Awolowo dedicated between 28 and 41 per cent of its budget to education. That vision produced generations of professionals and thinkers who shaped the country. Today, a nation with a far larger population and greater needs spends a meagre fraction.
Is it any surprise then that Nigeria ranks 191 out of 208 countries on the World Top 20 Global Education Index? Or that the country records one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the world — an estimated 20 million?
When government repeatedly treats education as expendable, it cannot expect excellence in return.
Every ASUU strike is not just an academic event; it is a social crisis. For young women, prolonged idleness exposes them to exploitation, early marriage, or unwanted pregnancies. Young men drift into fraud, drugs, or menial jobs as campuses remain shut. Many students never return to school. Those who do often graduate late, disadvantaged in a competitive job market.
Parents too suffer the silent pain of re-budgeting their lives every time the calendar collapses.
Meanwhile, the brightest Nigerian lecturers are snapped up by universities in Rwanda, Ghana, Kenya, Canada, and the Middle East. Some now drive taxis, sell goods, or farm just to survive. Their intellectual capital — the same asset that should anchor Nigeria’s development — is being wasted or exported.
A nation that abandons its scholars abandons its future.
The argument that government lacks resources is no longer convincing. The same administration that can approve billions for hajj subsidies, procure luxury SUVs for lawmakers, maintain a presidential fleet worth billions, and fund questionable constituency projects should not plead poverty when universities are deteriorating.
Education is not charity; it is infrastructure intellectual infrastructure. Nations that prioritise it are rewarded with innovation, productivity, global competitiveness, and social stability.