Nigerian workers have raised alarm over an alleged fresh federal government plot to privatize government colleges, warning the move could cost thousands their jobs.
Nigerian workers sounded the alarm Tuesday over what labor unions are calling a fresh federal plot to hand the country’s 110 Federal Government Colleges to private entrepreneurs through a scheme they described as a disguised public-private partnership.
By 11:43 a.m. Wednesday, the warning had spread beyond the union’s Abuja secretariat on Muhammadu Buhari Way and landed at the Nigeria Labour Congress national headquarters on Labour House Drive, Central Business District.
Leading the charge is ASCSN Secretary-General Joshua Apebo, who told reporters the scheme was not new. “Portfolio-carrying investors always connive with greedy politicians to convert public institutions into their private estates,” he said.
But Apebo was blunt about the union’s confidence. He said this was a pattern they had defeated before and would defeat again, a declaration that drew nods from colleagues seated inside the secretariat’s ground-floor briefing room.
NLC officials confirmed by phone Wednesday morning that affiliate unions were being briefed on the alleged scheme. A formal position paper, they said, was being prepared for submission to the Federal Ministry of Education before the end of this week.
Documents seen by Westtrybe show ASCSN first confronted a similar privatization push between 2005 and 2010, forcing the then education minister to appoint a review committee led by Senator Jonathan Silas Zwingina.
That committee presented its findings in Abuja on March 12, 2009. Its conclusion was blunt: national integration was too important to carry a price tag. Yet the matter has returned.
Apebo disclosed that union intelligence gathered from sources inside the Federal Ministry of Education at the Federal Secretariat Complex on Shehu Shagari Way pointed to fresh consultations between unnamed ministry officials and at least three private education consortiums.
Their identities, he said, remained unconfirmed pending further verification. And he put the number of teachers and non-teaching staff facing potential redundancy at several thousand, drawn from all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
“Once these schools are ceded to private entrepreneurs, they become money-spinners,” Apebo told Westtrybe on Wednesday, his voice steady, his phrasing deliberate, as reporters pressed him for the names of the consortiums involved.
Federal Government Colleges were originally conceived in 1966 by then Prime Minister Sir Tafawa Balewa as tools of national unity, one each sited in Enugu, Warri, and Sokoto to serve children across regional and ethnic lines.
They grew to 110 schools. And they became, over six decades, the most recognizable federal education brand in the country, the kind of institution whose alumni span every ethnic group and geopolitical zone.
Education Minister Dr. Tunji Alausa had not responded to a request for comment sent to his media aide at 10:17 a.m. Wednesday. His office neither denied nor confirmed the allegations by close of business.
The timing sharpens the tension. On March 5, 2026, the Federal Executive Council approved a six-year moratorium on new tertiary institutions, with Alausa citing the need to protect financially struggling private operators.
Critics inside the labor movement now read that policy as proof of a government orientation favoring private education interests over public ones. But no ministry official has said so publicly.
The NLC, whose president is Comrade Joe Ajaero, has over four million members across 43 affiliate unions. At its May Day rally on Friday, May 1, 2026, the Congress demanded “free, liberatory education from cradle to career.”
That demand puts the NLC on a direct collision course with any administration entertaining school privatization. Apebo on Wednesday called on trade unions, religious bodies, traditional rulers, parent-teacher associations, and civil society groups to form a united front.
He said the coalition he envisioned was identical to the one that buried the first privatization attempt roughly 16 years ago. “We are asking every Nigerian of good conscience to stand up now,” he confirmed to Westtrybe by phone.
No date has been set for a formal protest or strike threat. Yet Apebo signaled Wednesday that a 21-day ultimatum to the federal government was being drafted and would be served before the end of July 2026.
The ultimatum, he said, would be triggered if the Federal Ministry of Education failed to publicly and categorically rule out any privatization plan for the country’s Federal Government Colleges.
