President Bola Tinubu has hailed the prolonged absence of academic strikes as a definitive victory, labelling the stable university calendar an "answered prayer" for Nigerian households.Speaking at the State House in Abuja on Tuesday during a high-profile meeting with the leadership of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), the President pointed to the enduring academic peace since he assumed office as a tangible, measurable milestone of his administration’s governance framework.
Addressing the visiting clerics directly, President Tinubu highlighted the relief this stability has brought to millions of families across the federation, emphasizing that educational timelines are finally being respected.
“None of your children in university today—and I would say they are all your children because you are reverend fathers—can say a four-year course is not four years,” the President stated. “ASUU is not on strike. They are not bringing agony to your homes. Is that not an answer to our prayers? To me, that’s an answer.”
Acknowledging the economic friction of his tenure, President Tinubu admitted that Nigerians have endured severe economic hardship, attributing the strain to deep-seated liabilities inherited from previous administrations.
However, he firmly pointed out that aggressive fiscal policies have successfully averted bankruptcy, setting the country on an inevitable path toward national prosperity.
“I always say, because of my background and profession, that I inherited the assets and liabilities of my predecessor, and I’ve been running with it,” Tinubu stated.
“But this government has stabilised, and there is prosperity on the horizon. The quality of life is improving.”
Pivoting to the country’s fragile security landscape, the President reassured the delegation that current intelligence restructures and armed forces expansions will definitively neutralize terrorism and banditry.
Invoking a sense of national resilience, he urged a collective reliance on Nigeria’s shared identity to weather the storm.
“The security situation is what it is,” the President noted. “We don’t have another country but here. This Nigeria. And we revert to our national anthem—in its complexity, diversity, we shall thrive, rejoice, and be good to all of us.”
These assertions stand against a dark historical backdrop of systemic failure within Nigeria’s tertiary education sector.
For over two decades, persistent industrial disputes systematically crippled academic institutions. Between 1999 and 2022, consecutive ASUU strikes collectively robbed Nigerian students of over five full calendar years of academic development.
The painful apex of this systemic dysfunction occurred during the union’s historic, eight-month shutdown in 2022—the longest continuous strike action in the nation’s history.
