More Nigerians and groups, including the Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, on Monday described the death of a former ASUU President, Dr. Festus Iyayi, as shocking.
Poet laureate and teacher at the University of New Orleans, United States, Prof. Niyi Osundare, noted particularly that Iyayi’s death was a big loss to Nigeria and humanity.
Iyayi, a lecturer at the University of Benin, died on Tuesday along the Lokoja-Abuja Road in an accident involving the convoy of Kogi State Governor, Idris Wada.
The academic was on his way to Kano to attend a meeting where ASUU members were to decide whether to call off the ongoing strike or not.
Osundare, a professor of English, noted that Iyayi was one of Nigeria’s best creative, dependable, energetic and forthright persons.
He said, “Iyayi served the ASUU tirelessly and loyally, becoming its president in 1986, by popular acclamation. I worked with Iyayi, and saw him at close quarters. Fearless but fair, courageous but compassionate, demanding but decent, Iyayi was a great leader and an even greater follower, the kind who pressed on when others were seized by trepidation and despair. There is a painful logic in the fact that he met his death while on a vital errand for our beloved ASUU.
“Iyayi was a Balogun of the barricades in our struggle against military dictatorship and our battle for human rights. He gave so generously, so valuably of himself and his inexhaustible physical and mental resources. Like the great Nelson Mandela, he could have said, without any fear of contradiction, that the struggle was his life.
“All these virtues informed every line he wrote, from creative works to occasional interventions in the media. Art for human sake; clear illumination of the past; sensitive appreciation of the present; intelligent apprehension and anticipation of the future: Iyayi was a writer with the answerable vision. He chose his heroes very carefully, very judiciously. He ridiculed tyrants out of their despotic inclinations, challenged the unaccountably wealthy to show the source of their loot; urged the pauperised and the marginalised to interrogate the grounds for their plight instead of merely collapsing under its weight. Iyayi’s blood boiled at the sight of injustice. Whenever he raised his voice, it was to denounce the monsters that make progress impossible by laying us low.”
Meanwhile, AVCNU, which met in Akure, Ondo State last week, in a communiqué on Monday, said the death was devastating and shocking.
The association further urged the Iyayi family and the entire academic to bear the loss with fortitude.
The group also blamed the declining standard of education in the country on poor funding.
It added, “Teaching/learning and research take place in resource-poor contexts therefore making it near impossible for Nigerian universities to measure up in an increasingly competitive global knowledge economy.”
