Kaduna University Workers Begin Seven-Day Strike Despite Court Order
Three unions representing non-teaching staff at Kaduna State University began a seven-day warning strike at midnight on November 10, withdrawing administrative and technical labour even after Nigeria's National Industrial Court issued an interim order barring the action.
The Joint Action Committee of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the National Association of Academic Technologists directed members to stop work through midnight on November 17. Staff assigned to essential services were exempted.
The unions' November 9 notice said a seven-day ultimatum to Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani expired on November 8 without a response, an invitation to negotiate or concrete action. The committee said its congress approved the warning strike and that the three unions' national leaderships backed the decision.
Their demands are not a single bonus or a narrow campus complaint. They include full implementation of the 2026 federal agreement covering non-teaching university staff; payment of related arrears; a 25 percent salary increase; promotion arrears; group life insurance; and wage adjustments required by the 2024 National Minimum Wage Act. The unions are also demanding respect for university autonomy.
Vanguard reported that the withdrawal of services shut the university's non-academic operations. The available reporting does not establish that teaching staff joined the stoppage, and the union notice expressly preserves essential services.
The strike proceeded under an unresolved legal cloud. On November 5, Justice E. D. Subilim of the National Industrial Court's Abuja division ordered the three unions, their officers and agents not to begin or support industrial action pending a hearing on the university's motion. Kaduna State University, its governing council and its vice-chancellor filed the case, numbered NICN/ABJ/329/2026. The next hearing is scheduled for November 18, one day after the warning strike is due to end.
That injunction does not decide whether the workers are owed the pay and protections they claim. It temporarily removes their principal source of collective leverage while the underlying dispute remains before the court. The unions' decision to proceed therefore turns a pay dispute into a larger test of whether public employers can postpone negotiated obligations and then use emergency litigation to keep services running.
The state government has previously pointed to negotiations and spending intended to ease tensions at the university. In August it created a committee to examine demands from both teaching and non-teaching unions. It also announced a one-off 300 million naira payment for earned academic allowances and a 50 million naira monthly mechanism for older arrears. In September, the government approved a separate salary agreement for academic staff to take effect in October.
Those steps did not settle the non-teaching workers' claims. The three unions say their own agreement, insurance, promotion and wage-adjustment demands remain outstanding. As of publication, no public response to their November 9 strike notice had been located from the Kaduna State Government or the university management; their allegation that authorities ignored the ultimatum remains attributed to the unions.
The conflict follows a familiar pattern across public education: administrators describe delayed implementation as a budget and process problem, while workers experience the same delay as a direct cut to wages and security. When an injunction arrives before the disputed benefits do, it protects institutional continuity but leaves the cost of that continuity with staff.
The strike is also part of a wider African labour confrontation over public pay and the erosion of essential services. Sudanese teachers have extended industrial action over wages and deteriorating schools, while Ghanaian judicial workers recently suspended a nationwide strike only after the government revised its salary and allowance offer. Those disputes differ in law and scale, but all turn on the same question: whether public workers are expected to absorb fiscal crisis indefinitely while governments postpone binding commitments.
Kaduna's warning strike is limited to seven days, but the timetable leaves little space for avoidance. The unions plan to return to the court the day after the stoppage is scheduled to end. Unless the government produces a credible implementation schedule and the parties reopen collective bargaining, the injunction may pause the confrontation without resolving it.
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