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The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has ended its two-week warning strike, which was declared last week across public universities nationwide.
The union’s president, Prof. Chris Piwuna, made this announcement on Wednesday during a press conference in Abuja, explaining that the decision to suspend the strike was made after productive discussions with the Federal Government and key interventions from the National Assembly.
Piwuna recalled that ASUU had declared the warning strike on October 13, 2025, due to what he described as the government’s failure to respond to repeated appeals to address the long-standing renegotiation of the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement and other welfare-related issues concerning university lecturers.
He said, “When we gathered here about 10 days ago to painfully declare a warning strike, it was a decision that left us with no other choice. The government had ignored our repeated overtures to address issues critical to the survival of Nigeria’s public universities.”
The ASUU president disclosed that after the strike began, the Federal Government re-engaged with the union through a team led by Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, which met with ASUU representatives on October 16 and 18 to discuss the government’s response to the draft renegotiated agreement.
According to him, although those meetings did not fully resolve all the issues, the union recognised that meaningful progress had been made compared to the situation before the strike.
He said, “We have not achieved all our objectives, but we are certainly not where we were before the strike began. This shows that had the government responded earlier, there would have been no need for the action.”
Piwuna also commended the interventions of the Senate Committees on Tertiary Education and TETFund, and Labour, as well as the Deputy Senate President, Senator Barau Jibrin, whose mediation, he said, had restored hope for a lasting resolution.
He noted that the National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU, after holding an emergency meeting from October 21–22, 2025, reviewed the situation and concluded that the warning strike had fulfilled part of its objective, especially by compelling the government to return to the negotiation table.
“While noting that more work remains to be done, NEC resolved to suspend the warning strike to allow for a conducive atmosphere for further engagement,” Piwuna announced.
He explained that the decision was taken out of respect for students, parents, the media, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and other well-meaning Nigerians who had shown solidarity and intervened in the dispute.
However, ASUU warned that if the government failed to resolve the pending issues within the one-month period, the union would have no choice but to resume strike action without further notice.
“The struggle continues,” Piwuna declared, urging patriotic Nigerians to press the government to fulfil its promises in order to ensure industrial harmony and stability in the academic calendar.
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