The federal government has denied reaching an agreement with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to avert the industrial action threatened by the lecturers.
The Minister of Education, Mr Tunji Alausa, told journalists in Abuja, on Thursday, that all the claimed agreements by ASUU were just a proposal contained in the draft agreement.
He said: “I read some reports in the media on Thursday indicating that we have a meeting with ASUU. That was not correct. Rather, we had an expanded meeting with relevant stakeholders to review the content of the draft agreement.
“At the end of the day, we set up a committee chaired by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, to make a counter proposal to ASUU detailing what the government can offer.
“The committee is expected to go through the content of ASUU demands, line by line, and make a proposal to ASUU. Afterwards, the proposal will be sent to the Yayale Ahmed led committee for onward presentation to ASUU.
“But it’s important for Nigerians to know that the government has no signed agreement with ASUU. All we had over the years was a draft agreement that was not signed,” he clarified.
Earlier, ASUU stated it would not participate in the eagerly anticipated meeting with the federal government to finalise the 2009 agreement with the union.
The 2009 agreement remains the touchstone of the dispute, signed under the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, which promised comprehensive reforms to Nigeria’s public universities, including sustained revitalisation funding, institutional autonomy, a negotiated salary and conditions package for academics, and a monitoring framework for implementation.
The high-stakes meeting was to make a counter offer to the university teachers in a bid to turn years of stalled renegotiations into concrete and implementable commitments.
Warnings from ASUU branches have emerged nationwide that their patience is exhausted, after a renegotiation process concluded in December 2024 and formally submitted to government in February 2025.
Union leaders insist that the draft must now be signed and implemented to avert another nationwide shutdown of public universities.