The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has called off its strike in response to the late payment of June 2025 salary to its members.
Dr Sylvanus Ugoh, chairman of the ASUU branch at the University of Abuja, verified this in an interview on Tuesday.
Dr Ugoh stated that the union suspended preparations to withdraw services after salaries began to reflect in members’ accounts prior to the branch’s 11:59pm deadline.
“The June 2025 salary of our members started to drop before the end of the 11:59 pm Monday 7th July, 2025 ultimatum given by ASUU UniAbuja. Therefore, the Branch did not activate the withdrawal of service as earlier resolved by Congress,” Ugoh stated.
The decision provides a temporary reprieve from what may have resulted in a full-fledged nationwide academic closure.
Earlier, ASUU’s national leadership said that branches had been told to begin withdrawing services if university teachers’ June wages were not paid on time.
This approach was based on a National Executive Council (NEC) determination to implement a “No Pay, No Work” policy in response to recurrent salary payment delays, which ASUU blamed on the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
On Monday, ASUU President Professor Chris Piwuna described the situation as the result of the government’s “lackadaisical attitude”, noting that despite repeated interactions with appropriate officials, lecturers continued to face unnecessary delays in collecting their wages.
“We want to work, but we cannot because they have not allowed us to work. It’s a deliberate act. The issue does not lie with the payment platform. The issue is that those in charge of releasing funds are simply not doing their jobs,” the ASUU president had said.
Piwuna added that the suffering created by the transition from the IPPIS to the GIFMIS platform had exacerbated lecturers’ plight and that any university whose members had not been paid by July 7 was expected to go on strike immediately.
