The Federal Government on Thursday said it has never signed any agreement with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, who said this while speaking with newsmen in Abuja, stated that what government has with the union was a draft agreement that was yet to be signed.
He, however, said President Bola Tinubu has weighed in on the lingering face-off between government and the union with a directive to the education ministry to ensure resolution of all issues in the dispute once and for all.
According to him, contrary to the impression among Nigerians, what past governments have had with ASUU were draft agreements which were never signed by the parties.
Alausa, who spoke shortly after hosting Miss Nafisa Abdullah Aminu, a 17-year-old Yobe State student who recently won the world title in English Language Skills at the 2025 TeenEagle Global Finals in London, also denied having any scheduled meeting with the leadership of ASUU on Thursday as reported in a section of the media.
ASUU President, Professor Chris Piwuna, also confirmed to Nigerian Tribune that no invitation to attend a meeting with government was extended to the union.
“The union did not receive any formal invitation for a meeting,” he said.
Alausa, however, explained that contrary to reports, the government’s focus was not a direct meeting with ASUU but rather an internal government session to review the union’s proposal and prepare a sustainable offer.
“Today, I don’t know where the story came from that we were meeting ASUU. We did not plan to meet ASUU today. What we did was meet on the government side, at the highest level, to carefully review their proposals line by line,” he said.
Alausa stressed that President Bola Tinubu had given his team a clear mandate to resolve the lingering 2009 FGN-ASUU agreement issues “once and for all.”
“When the President came in, he told Nigerians he would put this country on a path of sustainability, not just for today, but 10 years, 30 years, even into eternity. He has directed us to solve this ASUU problem permanently, not superficially,” the minister declared.
The minister also revealed that a seven-member technical team has been set up to fine-tune the government’s counter-proposal before it is presented to the Yayale Ahmed-led renegotiation committee for onward engagement with ASUU.
According to him, the team would be chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and will include the Solicitor-General of the Federation, Permanent Secretaries of Justice and Labour, the Chairman of the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission, the Executive Secretaries of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), as well as the Director-General of the Budget Office, with the Director of University Education as the Secretary of the Committee.
“We want this to be constitutional and sustainable. Previous agreements with ASUU were never truly signed by government. They were drafts, not binding agreements. This time, every clause must be actionable, implementable, and within government’s capacity to fund,” he said.
He stressed that the era of making “bogus agreements” with the union was over. “We will not create an agreement that government cannot implement. Nigerians must be assured that this government will keep its children in school. ASUU are good people. All our unions are good people. But we must reach an agreement that is honest, truthful, and sustainable,” he stated.
The minister reassured Nigerians of President Tinubu’s commitment to end the crisis in tertiary education in the country.
