Lecturers in Nigeria's state universities have begun a two-week strike over pay and finance.
The strike comes weeks after universities re-opened to start a new academic term.
Announcing the move, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) chairman Professor Chris Piwuna referred to the action as "inevitable" due to what he described as government failures.
The government also urged lecturers to cancel the strike, stressing that constructive engagement is the best approach to resolve the crisis.
The government also clarified that striking lecturers would lose pay under the country's "No Work, No Pay" labour policy.
In a statement, it said that it had laid before the union a comprehensive proposal which addressed such substantive matters as working conditions, the governance of institutions and staff welfare.
The government also stated that it was yet to receive a formal response from ASUU.
Nigerian university lecturers have a long history of industrial action on issues of funding, salaries, and welfare.
ASUU's disagreements with successive regimes date back to the 1980s.
Agreement reached in 1992, 2009 and 2013 has often not been implemented, resulting in successive strikes.
The latest major one in 2022 went on for eight months, set back the academic calendar, and affected millions of students nationwide.
It was only an industrial court that ended the strike and caused the teachers to go back to the classrooms.
The recurring strikes, analysts say, are a reflection of deeper structural issues in Nigeria's tertiary education sector – including chronic underfunding, politicised management and a persistent lack of trust between the government and university unions.
Source: BBC