Federal universities will no longer need a recruitment waiver from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation before they can fill vacant posts, President Bola Tinubu said at the maiden convocation of the Federal University of Health Sciences, Azare (FUHSA), in Bauchi State. The Federal Ministry of Information published the announcement on Saturday, October 17, 2026, and said hiring will now be handled by the Federal Ministry of Education and each university’s governing council.
For students, the change goes straight to the empty desks in many departments. Under the old arrangement, a university that lost a lecturer to retirement, resignation or a job abroad had to seek clearance from Abuja before it could advertise the post, and that process could leave courses short of teachers for months. Tinubu was represented at the ceremony by the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Sonny Echono.
the Federal Government has removed universities from the requirement to obtain recruitment waivers
Councils, not the civil service, now decide when a department can hire
The new arrangement moves the decision closer to the campus. A governing council that sees a department running below its staffing needs can act with the ministry instead of joining a queue of federal agencies waiting on the Head of Service, a bottleneck university unions have raised repeatedly. The ministry’s account of the speech quotes the President as saying “We are also reforming the way our universities operate.”
Payroll is changing at the same time. The government says it has taken steps to take universities off the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), the central payroll ASUU has opposed since 2019, and accounts of the speech say university staff are being moved to the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS). Both moves were tied to the 2026 agreements with academic and non-teaching unions, whose new allowances took effect from January 1, 2026.
What students could notice first, and what still isn’t clear
Staff numbers are one of the things the National Universities Commission looks at when it accredits a programme, so departments that have struggled to replace lecturers stand to gain the most. Faster hiring can also mean fewer large classes handed to a single lecturer and fewer courses dropped from a semester because nobody is available to teach them. None of this happens overnight, though, since a council still has to advertise, interview and appoint.
The announcement didn’t say whether universities will get extra money in the 2026 or 2027 budget to pay the people they hire, or how quickly the ministry will process council requests. It also applies only to federal universities, so state-owned institutions still follow whatever rules their own governments set. Until the ministry publishes guidelines, treat claims of a mass recruitment drive at any particular school with caution, and rely on vacancy notices posted on the university’s own website.
A first convocation that came with research money and loan figures
FUHSA, founded in 2021, graduated 50 pioneer students from its Department of Human Nutrition and Dietetics at the ceremony. According to the government’s account of the speech, TETFund made an initial ₦8 billion intervention at the university, ₦10 billion has been allocated to the National Research Fund for 2026, and 1,798 FUHSA students, about 43% of its enrolment, received student loans in the 2025/2026 session. That share gives a sense of how far the NELFUND disbursements now reach into newer federal schools, and the 2026/2027 loan application window stays open until December 31.
The hiring change lands days after the government unveiled its 2026 agreements with the tertiary unions, while SSANU’s 14-day strike notice is due to run out around October 19. Giving councils the power to hire won’t settle unpaid arrears, but it removes one of the long-running grievances that has kept university staff and the government apart, and how quickly departments start filling posts will show whether the reform works on the ground.
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