ASUU Unpaid 2022 Salaries: Union Decries Non-Payment, Demands Education Review
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has called for a comprehensive review of Nigeria’s education system, while decrying the continued non-payment of lecturers’ outstanding withheld salaries stemming from the 2022 nationwide strike.
The union’s National President, Prof. Chris Piwuna, made the call on Friday during a press conference in Jos, Plateau State. He was flanked by several union officials, including the Bauchi Zonal Coordinator, Prof. Timothy Namo; branch chairmen of ASUU from the University of Jos and Plateau State University, Profs Jurbe Molwus and Dr Vincent Choji respectively; the union’s Legal Committee chairman; and other members present at the event.
Addressing journalists, Piwuna read from a press text titled “Nigerian Universities and Nigeria Today: Our Worries, Our Propositions,” in which the union laid out its grievances against the Federal Government over unresolved welfare and structural issues affecting the country’s tertiary education system. Speaking specifically on the 2022 withheld salaries, Piwuna accused the Federal Government of abandoning its responsibility to pay the outstanding balance of lecturers’ salaries withheld during the eight-month strike that year, when the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari invoked a “no work, no pay” policy against striking academic staff.
Piwuna announced that ASUU’s National Executive Council (NEC) had resolved to grant some affected state and federal universities permission to embark on varying degrees of industrial action to press home their demands. Among the institutions listed for possible action are Plateau State University, Bokkos; Nasarawa State University, Keffi; Gombe State University; Abia State University; and Kaduna State University. This comes just days after the Gombe State University chapter of ASUU withdrew its members from teaching and other academic and administrative duties from August 13, activating what the union describes as “Active Non-Compliance,” a resolution reached at a pre-NEC meeting held in Benin in 2025.
The ASUU president also condemned what he described as the harassment of union members by university management in several institutions, singling out Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), Imo State University (IMSU), and, more recently, Abia State University (ABSU). He warned that such actions would not be tolerated by the union’s leadership, stressing that NEC would not consider calling off any ongoing industrial action in affected institutions until the harassment stopped and outstanding demands were addressed.
The 2022 withheld salaries have remained a persistent point of contention between ASUU and the Federal Government for years. Although the Tinubu administration approved the release of about four months out of roughly eight months’ worth of withheld salaries in October 2023, lecturers say they are still being owed approximately three and a half months’ salary from that period. The union has previously described the continued withholding of these funds, along with unremitted third-party deductions such as pension and cooperative contributions, as a form of “weaponisation of poverty” and a breach of labour laws.
Beyond the salary dispute, ASUU has continued to raise concerns over broader unresolved issues affecting the university system, including unpaid Earned Academic Allowance arrears, promotion arrears, unpaid wage awards, and the slow implementation of the 2025 FGN-ASUU agreement. The union has repeatedly warned that the Federal Government’s failure to fully honour its commitments risks triggering fresh industrial unrest across Nigerian universities, further threatening the stability of the country’s already strained tertiary education sector.
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