By Jelilah Bilal

At a time when public debate often reduces university strikes to inconvenience and disruption, Yunus Dauda’s ASUU, Militancy and the Politics of Negotiation arrives as a timely intellectual intervention. Rather than treating academic union militancy as mere confrontation, the author repositions it as a structured language of negotiation between labour and authority, grounded in struggles for dignity, institutional balance and democratic participation.

Drawing from employment relations theory, union documentation and institutional experience, the text producer reframes recurring conflicts between the Academic Staff Union of Universities and successive Nigerian governments as manifestations of deeper structural tensions within the country’s higher education system.

The book emerges within a national atmosphere fatigued by repeated university closures and prolonged industrial actions. Public commentary frequently portrays strikes as irrational disruptions driven by union obstinacy, while official narratives emphasise fiscal limitations and administrative complexity. Against this familiar polarity, the author complicates prevailing assumptions by situating militancy within the broader history of labour relations and democratic engagement. Conflict, in this account, becomes neither accidental nor episodic but historically embedded within governance arrangements that shape Nigerian universities.

Central to the argument advanced by the text producer is the proposition that democracy depends upon sustained dialogue between authority and those subject to it. Militancy, within this framework, is not rebellion but communication. It represents an organised attempt by workers to assert voice where institutional channels fail to provide meaningful participation. The author advances the view that industrial action emerges when negotiation structures lose credibility, transforming strikes into cumulative responses to unresolved grievances rather than spontaneous acts of disruption.

One of the intellectual strengths of ASUU, Militancy and the Politics of Negotiation lies in its grounding in employment relations scholarship. The author carefully explains militancy as a behavioural response shaped by organisational injustice, influence deprivation and welfare dissatisfaction. By anchoring analysis within recognised theoretical traditions, the text producer moves discussion away from emotional reaction toward systematic explanation. Militancy is therefore analysed not as temperament but as outcome, produced by identifiable institutional conditions.

Particularly, persuasive is the discussion of power parity between employer and employee.

The author argues that genuine negotiation becomes possible only where both parties recognise a relative balance of influence. Where authority becomes overwhelming, dialogue collapses into unilateral decision making. Militancy thus functions as a corrective mechanism intended to restore equilibrium within labour relations. This interpretation reframes strikes as attempts to compel engagement rather than efforts to destabilise educational institutions.

The book offers a detailed examination of how grievances evolve into organised resistance. Unresolved complaints, ineffective grievance mechanisms and exclusion from decision making processes are identified by the text producer as recurring triggers of union mobilisation.

Dissatisfaction rarely erupts suddenly; rather, it accumulates gradually within institutional environments lacking credible channels for expression. Collective pressure becomes, in such contexts, a rational organisational strategy.