FEDERAL university lecturers are experiencing a mix of immediate relief and systemic anxiety, following the recent clearance of their five months’ outstanding allowances by the Federal Government.
While the influx of funds has brought temporary respite to campuses, university unions warn that a cloud of financial uncertainty still hangs over the nation’s tertiary education system.
The breakthrough became evident as institutions began clearing major financial backlogs.
Professor Adelaja Odukoya, former Lagos Zone Coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and current Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos (UNILAG), confirmed to the Nigerian Tribune, on Sunday, that UNILAG has successfully cleared all the outstanding salaries and allowances tied to the recent FG/ASUU agreements.
Odukoya noted that this wave of payments is likely replicating across other federal universities, injecting a rare moment of happiness and relief among campus workers.
Corroborating this development, Dr Niyi Sunmonu, national president of the Congress of University Academics (CONUA), who teaches at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, disclosed that the government has cleared all the components of the accumulated Consolidated Academic Tools Allowance (CATA), a tax-free financial package alongside other procedural allowances.
Interestingly, Sunmonu revealed that while some university managements had previously dipped into their Internally Generated Revenue (IGRs) to fulfill these allowances, they have now successfully refunded their institutional coffers following the Federal Government’s direct cash release.
Despite the initial celebration, union leaders are raising the alarm over the long-term sustainability of these funding updates.
Odukoya warned of a “palpable fear” gripping the academic community regarding the government’s ultimate motives. There is widespread suspicion among lecturers that the government plans to permanently shift the burden of salary and allowance payments directly to the individual institutions.
Under this suspected model, universities would be forced to independently rely on their IGR to cover staff emoluments.
“This is a tall order,” Odukoya remarked, emphasising that Nigerian universities completely lack the internal financial capacity to sustain such heavy recurrent expenditures.
Meanwhile, the recent payouts have done little to heal the deeper structural rifts between the government and academics.
According to the former ASUU zonal leader, massive financial disputes remain entirely unresolved, including the outstanding 25 percent and 35 percent wage award, the huge arrears of promotion allowances, as well as the withheld three and a half months’ salaries from the 2022 industrial action.
Odukoya characterised the penalty, particularly for the three and a half months’ withheld salaries, as “bare-faced cheating and a demonstration of government duplicity and bad faith.”
He argued that the academic work for that specific period was fully completed after the disputes and the affected students have since graduated.
CONUA is singing a similar tune, demanding the immediate release of the three and a half months’ withheld salaries.
However, Sunmonu raised a distinct legal argument, pointing out that CONUA members never actually declared a strike and continued working until the universities were forcefully shut down.
“We have done all the work that the strike did not allow us to do back then,” Sunmonu emphasised. “All our students have graduated. We are not forfeiting the money.”
For the remaining 25–35 percent wage awards and promotion allowance arrears, CONUA noted that the government has promised to formally capture these funds in the 2026 federal budget.
Sunmonu urged the Minister of Education to move with swift bureaucratic precision to finalise the cash-backing process.
This, he noted, is vital to prevent university vice-chancellors from hiding under the guise of non-release to delay local disbursements.
Ultimately, the lecturers view the government’s hostile approach to labour relations as a severe threat to Nigeria’s intellectual infrastructure.
Warning of grim long-term consequences for the country’s development, Odukoya concluded with a stark message for the administration.
“When government wants to unjustly punish its critical labour force and intelligentsia through barefaced cheating, the country is playing with its developmental future,” Odukoya warned. “The country will sooner or later pay for this misadventure in thousandfold.”