The Congress of University Academics has called on the Federal Government to urgently review the salaries of lecturers, saying the current pay no longer matches the high cost of living in Nigeria.
Speaking in Abuja on Saturday, the President of CONUA, Professor Niyi Sunmonu, said the recent release of N50 billion for Earned Academic Allowances by the government was good, but the real issue remained the need for better salaries.
“What is important to us is much more than any academic allowance; it is actually the improvement of our salaries to be commensurate with the inflationary pressures in the country,” Sunmonu said.
He explained that in 2009, there was a proposal for professors to earn a minimum salary of N1.2 million. However, he said their former union rejected the proposal, claiming it was not properly negotiated.
“By such an attitude, we believe we were effectively negotiating ourselves into poverty, hence our protest,” he added.
Sunmonu also raised concerns about how CONUA was left out of the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement. According to him, the last time CONUA was officially invited to a meeting was on December 20, 2024. Since then, no invitation had been sent to them.
“Only recently, on April 5, 2025, we read that Alhaji Yayale Ahmed and his committee had submitted their report. Of course, we have protested publicly in the newspapers, and we have also written directly to the Minister of Education, stating that any attempt to conclude negotiations without our input would endanger the peace currently enjoyed in the universities,” he said.
He stressed that no union could better represent CONUA’s interests except CONUA itself.
“They cannot shave our heads behind our backs,” he said firmly.
While thanking the government for the N50 billion allowance release, Sunmonu urged that the money should be shared fairly among all university unions to maintain peace and fairness across the system.
