The immediate past president of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, Prof. Sola Akinrinade, has demanded that no university professor in Nigeria should earn less than N2.5 million monthly.
Speaking with The PUNCH on Monday, Akinrinade said lecturers were currently receiving “slave wages, noting that salaries of Nigerian lecturers, particularly professors, were far below their contemporaries on the African continent and among the worst in the world.
He said, “I became a full professor on October 1, 1999. What we earn is a net salary of N584,000, with gross pay around N700,000. “It is one of the lowest-paid in the world. Professors are being paid slave wages,” he said.
“For me, no professor should earn less than N1.5 million a month, and that was before the current devaluation. If someone in 2017 said no professor should earn less than N1 million, you can now calculate what it should be by now, given currency devaluation and economic realities.
“For me, a professor should not earn less than N2.5 million monthly,” he said.
Akinrinade recalled that in 2017, a director at the Federal Ministry of Finance had said no professor should earn less than N1 million monthly.
According to Nigeria’s Consolidated University Academic Salary Structure, graduate assistants earn between N125,000 and N138,020 monthly, assistant lecturers between N150,000 and N171,487, Lecturer II between N186,543 and N209,693, Lecturer I between N239,292 and N281,956, Senior Lecturers between N386,101 and N480,780, Readers between N436,392 and N522,212, and professors between N525,010 and N633,333 before deductions.
Recall that findings by The PUNCH last year affirmed that Nigerian university lecturers are among the worst paid in Africa, as professors earn an average of $366 (about N500,000) monthly, far behind their counterparts in other African countries.
While Nigerian professors earn about $4,400 annually, their counterparts in South Africa earn over $57,471 per year; Kenyan $48,000, Eswatini $41,389, Lesotho $32,455, Gabon $29,907, Sierra Leone $18,000, Zambia $14,949, and Comoros $12,960.
He lamented that poor pay discourages academic productivity and weakens the capacity of Nigerian lecturers to negotiate internationally.
“The Executive Secretary of TETFund once said he was ashamed to admit how much lecturers are paid in Nigeria. The dollar equivalent of the salary of graduate assistants and younger lecturers is about $100. How do you explain that?” he asked.
Akinrinade described the current remuneration of lecturers in Nigeria as “slave wages,” adding that most citizens fail to understand the importance of the agitation for better salaries.
“People are always up in arms against lecturers because they fail to appreciate what academics do or fail to understand what the agitation is about,” he said.
“Within Nigeria itself, in Rivers State, no professor earns less than N1 million a month. If Rivers State can pay, why not the Federal Government or other states? Some would say they don’t have oil money. A current Vice-Chancellor was on sabbatical at one of the universities in Rivers State and went to contest for VC in her own university. She asked that her position be kept in Rivers State in case she didn’t get the VC job. That is how bad things are,” he said.
Akinrinade stressed that poor pay hinders lecturers’ negotiating power abroad.
“You apply for a job even in Botswana, and they ask for your current pay slip. If your salary comes to $300–$400 a month, they think they are doing you a favour. The least paid in their system is about $5,000. We undermine ourselves,” he said.
Recall that a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, also warned that low remuneration erodes lecturers’ commitment, just as Prof. Tunde Adeoye, Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Lagos, urged the Federal Government to urgently review salaries to avert industrial action.
The call for higher pay comes as the Federal Government prepares to implement a proposed 40 per cent salary increase for academic staff.
A formal agreement with the Academic Staff Union of Universities is scheduled for Wednesday at the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Conference Hall, Abuja.
The agreement, effective from January 1, 2026, will include a pension for professors equivalent to their annual salary at retirement age of 70, and funding for research through a National Research Council with at least 1 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product. Other provisions include a better university funding model, dedicated allocations for research, libraries, labs, equipment and staff development, stronger university autonomy, elected academic leadership (limited to professors), and protection against victimisation for staff involved in the struggle.
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