What Nigerian Students Can Do During an ASUU Strike to Stay Productive

The opportunity most students miss inside every ASUU strike

ASUU strikes are genuinely disruptive. Months of delay can stretch into a full academic year and create real financial pressure. None of that is easy to live through.

But the students who consistently come out of strike periods stronger than they went in treated the time as a resource rather than a loss. The time does not stop — the question is what fills it.

Earn money and build financial stability during the period

A strike is one of the best times to start or grow a campus business — you have time, your campus network is still accessible, and resumption will eventually bring buyers and clients back. Students who sell items, offer services, or build freelance income during strikes often earn more than those who simply waited.

If you have been thinking about selling on campus but never had the time, start building your seller profile on CampusPlug now. You can list items and collect early reviews before lectures resume, so you are already visible when student traffic returns to campus.

• Sell textbooks, electronics, and hostel items — a strike gives you time to list properly and respond to buyers without rushing
• Offer tutoring — secondary school students near your home need subject help; charge per session or weekly
• Freelance online — writing, design, data entry, and social media work can all start with a phone and decent data
• Campus food or laundry service — students living around your campus still need food and clean clothes during a strike

Build skills that will matter after resumption

This is the category that creates the widest gap between students at resumption. A student who used six strike months to complete a Google certificate, finish two freelance projects, and read ahead in their toughest courses returns with a measurable advantage.

You do not need expensive courses. Coursera offers financial aid that grants free access to most paid certificates. Google's free certificate programmes are recognised by Nigerian employers. YouTube has professional-quality tutorials for every skill from web development to video editing.

• Google Career Certificates — Digital Marketing, Data Analytics, Project Management; free with Coursera financial aid
• Microsoft Learn — free cloud, data, and developer certifications directly from Microsoft
• Udemy — regular discounts bring courses to ₦2,000–₦4,000; one-time purchase, lifetime access
• YouTube — complete professional tutorials for Photoshop, Excel, Python, and more; free with data

Keep your academics alive

When lectures stop, most students stop studying entirely. Then resumption arrives and the backlog is overwhelming. You do not need to study intensely every day. But two to three chapters per week in your hardest courses costs very little time and pays back enormously when your lecturer picks up exactly where they left off.

• Get previous-year lecture notes from students ahead of you — content is consistent across years in most departments
• Work through past question papers — identifying exam patterns takes an afternoon and saves weeks of unfocused revision
• Stay connected to your department group chat — resumption information and study materials often come through informally before official announcements