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The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), branch of the University of Port Harcourt, has declared an indefinite strike over what it described as incomplete payment of outstanding lecturers’ salaries and liability allowances.
The decision was taken during an emergency conference of the section on Wednesday 16 September, after the expiry of a 48 working hour ultimatum issued to the university management to resolve the grievances.
The section’s secretary, Tarila Amakoromo, made the decision known in a statement released to journalists on Thursday, saying that the university administration had not fulfilled commitments made during a meeting with the union.
According to the union, the emergency conference on September 11 decided to give management until midnight on Tuesday, September 15 to address outstanding pay and benefits issues.
The deadline expired without a resolution, prompting another emergency conference on 16 September, where members decided to take indefinite industrial action.
ASUU has listed incomplete payment of faculty salaries for June, July and August 2026 among its major complaints.
The union also complained about incomplete payment of liability benefits and said members covered by the Consolidated Medical Pay Structure (CONMESS) and the Consolidated Healthcare Pay Structure (CONHESS), including faculty in the School of Health Sciences, had not received the benefits due to them.
A particularly controversial issue, according to the section, is the alleged exclusion of ASUU members from the monthly payment of liability benefits received by members of other unions at the university for more than two years.
Amakoromo said the university administration met with ASUU representatives on September 11 and promised to respond to the union’s demands before the deadline expired.
However, he said the promised action had not materialised.
“Unfortunately, the university administration, despite meeting with the Union on the same day and promising to respond to the Union’s demands before the deadline set by Congress, refused to act as promised,” he said.
The union then declared an indefinite strike after concluding that management had failed to resolve the issue despite the ultimatum.
As part of the industrial action, ASUU members have been ordered to withdraw from both academic and official responsibilities until further notice.
The union said its members must not hold conferences or exams, invigilate exams, attend official duties or attend statutory meetings for the duration of the strike.
To enforce the directive, the branch formed a strike monitoring team to monitor compliance at the university’s main campus and other centers.
The UNIPORT controversy comes within the context of a broader industrial relations crisis in the Nigerian university system.
On September 11, ASUU President Professor Christopher Piwuna warned that the union may reactivate the suspended national strike if the federal and state governments fail to urgently address outstanding issues regarding the well-being of teachers and the implementation of the December 2025 federal government-ASUU agreement.
The national union said the agreement, reached after years of negotiations and industrial disputes, had not been fully implemented by the federal government and several state governments.
ASUU also requested payment of the remaining 3.5 months out of 7.5 months of salary withheld from teachers during the previous administration, as well as the remittance of withholdings from teachers’ earnings, including pension, cooperative and union deductions.
The national leadership stressed that its warning did not amount to an immediate declaration of a nationwide strike, but said it could resume the suspended action without further notice if outstanding issues remained unresolved.
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