Growing disparities in lecturers’ salaries and delays in implementing key provisions of the 2025 federal government-Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) agreement are raising renewed concerns about the stability of Nigeria’s university education system.
According to recent updates from ASUU zonal leadership regarding compliance and implementation of the Consolidated Academic and Tools Allowance (CATA) and related arrears, 10 state universities have so far complied, although the union did not publish an official national register that comprehensively lists the institutions.
The federal government-ASUU agreement includes a 40 percent upward review of lecturers’ salaries, improved conditions of service, and the introduction of a new professorial cadre allowance for full-time professors and readers.
However, the increment has yet to be implemented in full across public universities, both federal and state.
Keinde Idou, ASUU chairman at the University of Lagos, told BusinessDay that probably one or two of the public universities have been paid part of the agreement, but that none of the universities have been paid comprehensively, including UNILAG.
‘The 2025 FG-ASUU agreement is in four parts: the CONUASS, CATA, EAA, and the professorial allowance. The only thing the federal government has been releasing in cash is the CONUASS.
‘No university has been complying with the agreement fully because the federal government has not released the money; it’s just a promise; they push it to the university to pay,’ he said.
Idou, however, explained that the federal government has paid the CONUASS from January to June, but has refused to release the funds for July to date; it has pushed the payment to the universities to settle with their IGR.
Speaking about the possible consequences of the amputated salary payment, he said that it is better imagined than said.
‘I don’t want to go beyond the mandate that the NEC has given because only our president can speak about that,’ he said.
Similarly, Stanley Alaubi, a senior lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt, disclosed that the problem is rooted in the fact that the federal government is yet to release funds to the various institutions.
‘The federal government has not financially backed up the agreement for now but expects the universities to use their internally generated revenue and afterwards they would be refunded when the budget for the payment is released,’ he said.
Alaubi emphasised that many universities claim their IGR cannot cover the increased salary as they do not have the financial muscle, hence the disparities noticed across the various public universities.
Kayode Soremekun, former vice-chancellor of the Federal University of Oye Ekiti, said that there is always a time lag between when the governments respond to their part of the agreements with ASUU, but insisted that the normalcy should not be allowed to linger for too long.
Soremekun emphasised that it is in the interest of the various state governments to keep faith with the agreement in a timely way.
‘The longer the delay, the more onerous will be the outstanding obligations which will continue to pile up,’ he said.
Meanwhile, he expressed concerns that lecturers are not paid their dues in some states even after the huge transfers from President Tinubu’s administration have made huge funds available to them in the wake of the fuel subsidy removal.
The former university don said the implication of the amputated salary and deal delays is that it will lead to talented academics moving from state universities to federal universities.
‘Such a situation will definitely worsen the profile of the state universities. This is because, by the latest rankings of Nigerian universities across the world, federal universities are up there when comparisons are made with their counterparts in the states,’ he noted.
Nubi Achebo, director of academic planning at Nigerian University of Technology and Management (NUTM), said the disparity in payment scale will make state-owned universities less attractive to prospective lecturers, which is already happening.
‘When federal universities pay CONUASS, CATA, and other allowances from Jan 2026, but a state university in the same geopolitical zone doesn’t, you’re asking lecturers to do the same job for markedly different pay.
‘If state A pays the 40 percent increase and state B doesn’t, and state B also has arrears, rational choice pushes talent toward federal institutions or even outside academia. We’ve seen this before with brain drain, and the 2025 agreement explicitly cited ‘curb brain drain’ as an objective. Double standards undermine that,’ he said.
A study shows that aside from Rivers State University (RSU), Lagos State University (LASU) and Nasarawa State University, where academic staff are paid significantly more than their counterparts in federal universities, other state institutions pay extremely low salaries and allowances.
The average monthly salaries of state university lecturers range from N120,000 to N150,000 for graduate assistants; N150,000 to N180,000 for assistant lecturers; N200,000 to N240,000 for lecturer II; N250,000 to N280,000 for lecturer I; N300,000-N360,000 for senior lecturers; N380,000 to N550,000 for associate professors/readers; and N580,000-N700,000 for professors.
While on paper, the average federal university lecturer earns from roughly N180,000-N500,000 a month to N250,000-N700,000 a month, depending on rank and step.
Recall that BusinessDay reported that ASUU has issued a two-week ultimatum to 20 universities to address outstanding issues or risk industrial action, raising fresh concerns over a possible disruption to academic activities in public tertiary institutions.