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late Professor Festus Iyayi
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The news hit the nation like an electric shock. The news of the death of the activist-lecturer, writer, unionist, civil rights campaigner and humanist, Professor Festus Iyayi. The man was not sick. He didn’t die in his sleep. He was violently plucked from us by speed demons on the road! The man, who authored ‘Violence,’ one of his acclaimed fictional works, was violently killed on the Lokoja road by the convoy of Gov. Idris Wada of Kogi State.
Pray, who will stop these convoys of death? Who will stop these men of power from terrorising ordinary citizens with their crazy sirens and convoys? Who will stop this abuse of power by those we purportedly elected to govern us? Everyday and everywhere, they torture us with their sirens and convoys, obeying neither speed limits nor respecting the rights of other road users.
In civilised countries, the only sirens you hear are those of fire service, ambulances and the police on critical assignments. But here, all kinds of sirens harass the citizens. The most notorious are those of elected governors, ministers, National Assembly leadership, and all kinds of persons and organisations. Long convoys and blaring sirens have become a status symbol in this country. This nonsense must stop! This insanity has to end! Can’t our lawmakers enact a law, limiting or banning the use of sirens and convoys?
In South Africa, Ghana and some other African countries, no crazy sirens and convoys intimidate the citizens. Power is used to serve the people. Here, it is an instrument of oppression.
Of course, I am angry as I write this piece. Not just because I was acquainted with the late professor. Truly, this was one avoidable death. Iyayi would have been alive if the crazy driver in Gov. Wada’s convoy had not seen the governor and his entourage as more important than Iyayi and other road users, just like other VIP drivers believe. Surely, Iyayi would not be dead if the Lokoja Expressway had not become more of a death trap, guzzling the blood of the innocents. Iyayi would still be with us if the Lokoja Expressway had not become a scam project, awarded and re-awarded yearly.
Iyayi was our brother, our comrade. He was the comrade against injustice, oppression, corruption and maladministration. Till he breathed his last, he remained true to his conscience, to his constituency and to God.
Not surprising, since his death, there have been an outpouring of condolences, reminiscences, tributes, etc. on the life and time of the former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, one of which came from Comrade DENJA YAQUB of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, published below.
Tribute to a consumate fighter
Precisely twenty five days after we lost one of our most unswerving leaders, Baba Omojola, whose entombment proceedings are still ongoing, death has again taken one of our best through a ghastly motor accident primarily caused by the irresponsible culture of impunity often displayed by the convoys of public office holders, who feel the capacity to “fly” on the road magnifies their obscure power of gripping other road users to acknowledge their weight, even when it clearly further exhibits how much contempt they have for people and lives.
Born in Ugbegun, Edo State, 66 years ago in 1947, Festus started his education at the Annunciation Catholic College in his village and later, Government College, Ugheli, Delta State. He soon after read Industrial Economics at the Kiev Institute of Economics in the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, ending with a doctorate at the University of Bradford in England. He thereafter returned to Nigeria and since 1980, until his death, he was a lecturer in the department of Business Administration at the University of Benin. He also did his last sabbaticals with the Nigeria Labour Congress where he added values to the work of Africa’s largest trade union federation.
An award winner from early stage of his education, Prof. Iyayi got his first award, as an essayist in 1968 when he won the John Kennedy Essay Competition organised by the Embassy of the United States of America in Nigeria. He was then in his final year at Government College, Ughelli.
A writer of high repute, his book, Heroes, did not only enjoy popular reading across the globe, it won him the esteemed Commonwealth Writers prize in 1988. He had also authored other thought- provoking novels, such as Violence in 1979, Contract in 1982 and Awaiting Court Martial in 1996. These books are compelling depiction of the decadence of the Nigerian society, a society that has continuously increased in her slide to banal reputations with leaders, who continue to flaunt stolen public wealth in the face of the impecunious millions that form over ninety per cent of the citizenry.
To these millions, who bear the brunt of the imperious presence of profligate ruling elite that is exceptional in its contempt for good governance, Festus committed the entirety of his productive life.
Festus was a conscientious organiser, who had been involved in the development of ideologically focused organisations of the Marxist flank as well as mass organisations committed to the desired change for a country that is so endowed with all that is needed to lead in development.
Festus did not only organise and lead intellectuals; he was deeply involved in organising peasants in remote areas of his native Edo State. He was a leading light in the socialist movement in Nigeria from the Socialist Congress of Nigeria (SCON) to the Socialist Party of Nigeria. He was part of the ideological substratum of the radical student movement in the 80s when students spoke with one patriotic voice under united, strong and vibrant auspices. A dexterous leader he was.
At the level of human rights and pro-democracy struggles, he succeeded Dr. Beko Ransome – Kuti, as President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR. He was actively involved in the Campaign for Democracy. And as a writer, he was part of the Association of Nigerian Authors, encouraged by the commitment of personalities like Ken Saro-Wiwa.
The most open attestation of his activism was his leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU. He was elected president of ASUU in 1986 at a time when the imperial structures of international finance capital used the opportunity provided by the anti-people regime of General Ibrahim Babangida to unleash all sorts of neo-liberal policies that have today left nearly all components of our collective socio-economic and political existence in shambles.
ASUU, under Professor Iyayi’s leadership, was a leading voice against the manipulations of that regime, most especially the economic sting, called Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP. He led ASUU to team up with Nigeria Labour Congress, National Association of Nigerian Students and several others to challenge the introduction of SAP and other draconian policies that were clearly intended to hand over our country to the whims of neo liberal institutions whose policies were sketched to subsume the entire Nigerian populace and our collective resources in second slavery, the fulcrum of the new capitalist economic order.
He fought for quality education and the right of every Nigerian to have education regardless of class barriers. He saw scholarship, as a major tool that can ensure the development of any country and to achieve this, only education that is people-driven in access, content and essence is required.
He put all of his energy, resources and intellect in this struggle and, indeed, lost his life in the cause of the struggle, as he was killed on his way to a meeting scheduled to advance the cause of the struggle for qualitative education in Nigeria.
He had suffered so much state attacks in the cause of his involvement in the struggles of our people, the most ferocious and traumatic being the state sponsored evacuation of his family from his official residence as a lecturer at the University of Benin, following his removal as staff of the university along with Prof. Itse Sagay, Dr. Osagie Obayuwana both of the law faculty at the time as well as Tunde Fatunde of the Faculty of Arts.
This was at the twilight of the orchestrated obliteration of quality education in Nigeria, which was carried out by the Babangida regime on behalf of neo liberal institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund, IMF, who abhorred resistance to their grit to seize our economy.
The systemic attack on education started with the annihilation of the culture of critical intellectualism when the regime, in open declaration of its disdain for quality education, claimed there were lecturers that were teaching what they were not paid to teach. Consequently, people like Festus, who in the perception of the regime fell in this category, were hunted and hounded out of the system. In fact, Dr. Patrick Wilmot, then a lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University was thrown across the border, deported to the United Kingdom, and forcefully extricated from his Nigerian wife in a manner only presumed possible in war times. The students’ movement was not left out and today, the result is clearly evident in the catastrophic recession in our education system. Intellectualism has not only been destroyed, teaching and learning infrastructures in the system have totally collapsed.
The demand for proper funding for the effective revitalisation of these structures that will ensure quality education are the main issues in contention, leading to the current strike by university lecturers. Festus was committed to the struggle to actualise these demands until he was cut down in an accident that could have been avoided if the governor’s convoy had learnt a lesson from their previous accident.
Prof. Iyayi was a colossus in the movement and his death is indeed a major smack that would not elapse so easily but the challenge of regenerating his fighting spirit, dexterity and courage will ensure the continuity of all struggles he was involved in until victory.
source: the Sun Newspapers
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