Lecturers under the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at Imo State University (IMSU) have embarked on an indefinite strike today, halting academic activities across the institution, including ongoing examinations.
A video circulating online captured the moment students were asked to leave an examination hall as the strike took hold. One student, describing what happened, said: “We were all inside the examination hall before they came and sent us out.”
The disruption leaves students mid-session, uncertain when classes and exams will resume.
A Dispute That Has Been Building Since February
This strike is not a sudden decision. It is the outcome of months of unresolved tension between ASUU and the Imo State Government over the 2025 Federal Government-ASUU Agreement (a deal covering lecturers’ salaries, allowances, and university funding, reached between the union and the Federal Government).
ASUU’s branch at IMSU submitted the agreement to the university administration as far back as February 2026, in line with a directive from the union’s national leadership. The National Universities Commission (NUC), the federal body that regulates Nigerian universities, had also formally communicated the agreement to Governor Hope Uzodinma, as visitor to the university, and to IMSU’s Vice-Chancellor.
Despite this, implementation never began. On June 30, 2026, ASUU’s Owerri Zonal Coordinator, Dennis Aribodor, said the union had exhausted every other option for engagement. He gave Governor Uzodinma and Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo, whose state owns Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), a 14-day ultimatum to implement the agreement or face an indefinite strike at both institutions.
At the time, ASUU officials laid out just how underfunded the two universities were. IMSU’s ASUU Chairman, Stephen Oguji, said the university needed about ₦1 billion to properly address the welfare needs of both academic and non-academic staff, while COOU’s chairman said his university needed roughly ₦300 million monthly just to pay academic staff salaries.
IMSU is no stranger to this kind of disruption. The university has faced repeated indefinite strikes in recent years, including one in September 2024 over years of unresolved welfare issues, ranging from unpaid academic allowances dating back to 2009 to stalled staff promotions. Students have previously described one such strike lasting nine months.
Why These Strikes Keep Happening — and Who Bears the Cost
Weak financial autonomy for state universities. ASUU officials have said IMSU’s finances are tightly controlled by the state government through a single account, leaving the university with little independent capacity to fund staff welfare or meet agreement terms on its own.
Underfunding relative to need. The gap between what the university receives monthly and what it needs to pay staff competitively runs into hundreds of millions of naira, according to ASUU’s own figures.
Slow-moving state compliance. While several other state-owned universities, in states like Bauchi, Benue, Ekiti, Ogun, Osun, and Sokoto, had already implemented the 2025 agreement months ago, Imo and Anambra lagged behind despite repeated formal notices.
Repeated pattern with no lasting fix. Because previous strikes at IMSU have often ended with promises rather than full implementation, the underlying issues tend to resurface, leading to another round of industrial action.
The effects fall hardest on students and the wider academic system.
For students, strikes like this one disrupt ongoing exams and academic calendars, sometimes stretching a four-year programme well beyond its expected length. Final-year students risk the most, particularly when a strike interrupts exams they need to graduate.
For the university and its lecturers, a state-owned institution repeatedly hit by strikes over funding may struggle to retain qualified academic staff. ASUU officials have already pointed to a wider exodus of lecturers from South-East universities toward federal institutions, private universities, or opportunities abroad, driven by poor pay and welfare conditions.
For Nigeria’s education system more broadly, prolonged and repeated strikes damage the credibility of degrees from affected institutions, complicating things for graduates seeking postgraduate admission or job opportunities that require verified, uninterrupted academic records.
What Could Break the Cycle
Greater financial autonomy for IMSU. Allowing the university more independent control over its finances, rather than routing all expenditure through a single state-controlled account, could speed up its ability to meet staff welfare obligations.
A clear, binding implementation timeline. The state government publishing a specific, monitored schedule for implementing the 2025 agreement would give both ASUU and students a way to track progress rather than relying on repeated ultimatums.
Protecting students mid-exam. University management could build formal contingency plans that protect students already sitting exams when a strike is declared, rather than leaving them stranded mid-session.
Stronger oversight from the NUC. Since the regulator already formally notified the state government of the agreement, it could take a more active enforcement role when state-owned universities fail to comply within a reasonable timeframe.
Our Honest Assessment
What’s frustrating about this strike is how predictable it was. ASUU gave the state government a clear, dated ultimatum back in June, and nothing meaningfully changed before students found themselves being walked out of an exam hall mid-strike. That’s not really a story about lecturers being unreasonable. It’s a story about a warning that went unheeded until real people, in this case, students, paid the price for it.
I don’t think ASUU strikes should be anyone’s first response to funding disputes, but when a state government sits on a national agreement for six months despite formal notices from the regulator itself, it’s hard to see what other leverage the union had left. The bigger failure here belongs to a system that keeps letting these disputes reach the point of shutting down exams before anyone takes them seriously.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
