Nigeria’s university non-academic workers are gearing up for a nationwide protest on October 9 over the Federal Government’s persistent failure to honour long-standing agreements. The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) accused the government of playing politics with workers’ welfare, despite repeated ultimatums.
The Joint Action Committee (JAC) said branches across the country will hold campus marches and press briefings to demand the payment of two months’ withheld salaries, unpaid allowances, and renegotiation of the 2009 agreement.
Union leaders lamented that even after multiple meetings with the Ministry of Education, “little progress” was made. Many accuse the Tinubu administration of continuing the same pattern of delay and insincerity that crippled universities during past strikes. “Government keeps setting up committees that end up as talk shops,” one unionist said. The planned protest underscores the growing frustration among university workers who say the government’s “reform agenda” has so far yielded nothing but rising hardship and broken promises.
