The Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) has drawn a hard line in ongoing renegotiations with the federal government, demanding full parity in allowances with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The union’s position, articulated by its general secretary, Mr. Peters Adeyemi, on Sunday on the sidelines of the 114th Session of the International Labour Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, throws a spotlight on a long-simmering grievance within Nigeria’s university system: the perceived hierarchy of worth assigned to workers based on their academic or non-academic designation.
Speaking with characteristic directness, Adeyemi left little room for ambiguity. His argument was not rooted in abstractions but in the everyday arithmetic of survival that every Nigerian worker understands intimately.
“We are demanding that whatever is given to ASUU should also be given to us because we face the same economic realities,” he told journalists gathered at the sidelines of the global labour conference.
The trigger for NASU’s hardened stance is the Federal Government’s recent approval of a 40 percent increase in allowances for ASUU members, a concession that the union views as a benchmark, not a ceiling. When government negotiators returned to the table with a 30 percent offer for NASU members, the union did not hesitate.
They said no.
“The government offered us 30 percent, and we said no,” Adeyemi stated plainly. “Though they are our senior colleagues, we all go to the same market and buy the same fuel.”
It is a sentiment as simple as it is powerful and one that cuts to the heart of a debate that has quietly divided Nigeria’s university workforce for years.
The dispute raises a broader, uncomfortable question about how the contributions of non-academic staff are valued within Nigeria’s federal tertiary education system.
While lecturers and professors occupy the visible, celebrated face of university life, it is the army of administrative officers, registry staff, technical personnel, library workers, and security operatives that the constituency NASU represents who keep institutions running daily.
Adeyemi was forceful on this point.
“NASU members perform critical roles in universities and should not be treated differently in the allocation of welfare benefits and negotiated entitlements,” he said, adding that landlords and service providers make no such distinctions when collecting rents and utility charges.
“The cost of living affects all workers equally. We cannot accept a situation where one group receives significantly better allowances than another,” he said.
His words carry the weight of a workforce that has long operated in the shadow of the more publicly prominent ASUU, a union whose strike actions have historically dominated national headlines and government attention. NASU’s demand is, in essence, a demand for visibility.
Despite the firm tone of NASU’s demands, Adeyemi indicated that the renegotiation process had made tangible progress. He described discussions at the university sector level as being in their final stages, a development that offers some cautious optimism for a resolution.
“We are almost reaching the end of the renegotiation process for universities. Once we conclude that, the other sectors may not be as difficult,” he said.
The outcome of the university negotiations carries significant implications beyond the university system itself. NASU also represents workers in polytechnics and colleges of education, and Adeyemi confirmed that resolutions at the university level would set the tone and framework for those subsequent discussions.
However, reaching an agreement at the negotiating table and seeing it translated into reality are two very different things in Nigeria’s public sector labour history. Adeyemi did not shy away from this uncomfortable truth.
He accused the federal government of foot-dragging in the implementation of agreements already reached with unions, a pattern he described as a recurring and avoidable source of crisis in the education sector.
“When agreements are freely entered into, they should be implemented. Failure to do so only creates avoidable crises in the education sector,” he warned.
It is a pointed caution, one that echoes the grievances that have repeatedly pushed Nigerian universities to the brink of, and often into, prolonged industrial action. The specter of another strike with its devastating toll on academic calendars and students’ futures looms implicitly over every unresolved bargaining session.
Adeyemi’s message to government negotiators was ultimately a call for sincerity. He urged government representatives to approach the collective bargaining process in the spirit in which it is intended as a mechanism for reaching genuine, durable, and enforceable agreements.
“Sincere collective bargaining remains essential to industrial harmony,” he said.
NASU, he stressed, remained committed to dialogue. But commitment to dialogue, he made clear, does not mean acceptance of inequity.
“Workers expect fair treatment and equitable compensation in line with prevailing economic realities,” he said.
As the Geneva conference closed its curtains and delegates dispersed, Adeyemi’s words lingered as both a warning and a plea. Nigeria’s non-academic university workers are watching the renegotiation process closely, and their patience, stretched by inflation, currency depreciation, and years of deferred expectations, has limits.
Whether the Federal Government will move to close the 10 percentage-point gap between what it has offered NASU and what it has already granted ASUU remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: NASU has drawn its line, and it intends to hold it.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Nigeria’s non-academic university workers, represented by NASU, are demanding the same 40% allowance increase granted to ASUU, having flatly rejected the government’s offer of 30%.
Their argument is straightforward: economic hardship makes no distinction between academic and non-academic staff, and neither should government policy.
With negotiations nearing conclusion, the federal government faces a clear choice: close the gap and honour the principle of equitable treatment, or risk yet another round of industrial crisis in an education sector that can ill afford it.
