Delayed 2025 agreement implementation: Our patience is running out — ASUU
By Barth Ndubuwah
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has decried the continued delay in the implementation of the 2025 FGN-ASUU agreement, months after it was signed and unveiled, warning that the patience of its members is fast running out.
The union expressed deep concern that four months after the Federal Government signed the agreement, it has failed to inaugurate the Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC), which was mandated to shield the accord from bureaucratic bottlenecks and ensure its actualisation.
This was disclosed on Wednesday by the Port Harcourt Zonal Coordinator, Comrade Uzoma Chima, during a press briefing held at the ASUU Secretariat of the University of Port Harcourt in Choba.
According to him, the few universities within the zone that attempted to implement the 2025 FGN-ASUU agreement did so in a distorted and uncoordinated manner.
The Zonal Coordinator noted that this discrepancy became glaring when these institutions arbitrarily selected which allowances to pay among the Consolidated Academic Tool Allowances (CATA), Earned Academic Allowances (EAA), and Professorial Allowances (PA), instead of mainstreaming them into the Consolidated University Academic Salary Scale (CONUASS) as a unified monthly salary package for professors and other academic staff.
Comrade Chima added that despite the fragmented payment of the approved allowances, the disbursement lasted for only three months, with the affected federal universities citing a paucity of funds from the Ministry of Education.
He further revealed that out of the seven universities making up the Port Harcourt Zone, none of the five state-owned universities has implemented the new agreement.
The union also called on both the federal and state governments to respect the terms of the agreement to sustain industrial harmony, warning that ASUU will spare no effort to ensure all its members benefit from the gains of the eight-year-long negotiation.
The ASUU Zonal Coordinator further stated that aside from the 2025 agreement, several other lingering issues require urgent resolution. These include the 25 to 35 percent salary award, promotion arrears, third-party deductions, IPPIS salary shortfalls, and the withheld three-and-a-half months’ salaries resulting from the 2022 ASUU strike.
He emphasized that no nation can progress when the welfare of its academics is neglected.
Comrade Chima equally raised concerns over unpaid benefits for retired lecturers, calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who serves as the Visitor to federal universities, alongside state governors as visitors to state universities, to quickly address these pressing salary and welfare matters.
He concluded by urging the visitors of the affected institutions to immediately tackle the vexatious delays and the pension issues of their colleagues to douse the growing tension threatening the fragile industrial peace on public campuses.