A former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Festus Iyayi, is dead, union officials said.
Witnesses
said Mr. Iyayi, 66, died along the the Lokoja-Abuja highway in an
accident involving the the convoy of Kogi state Governor, Idris Wada.
The
late university teacher was among ASUU leaders who met with President
Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja last week to deliberate on how to end the
four-month strike by lecturers.
Mr. Iyayi is believed to be
travelling to Kano for Wednesday’s National Executive Committee meeting
where a vote is likely to be taken on whether the ongoing strike should
be called off.
One of the pilot cars in the governor’s convoy
reportedly rammed into the vehicle in which Mr. Iyayi and other
activists were travelling, killing him instantly, witnesses said.
But
the Special Adviser to the Governor, Jacob Edi, said it was untrue that
it was the governor’s pilot vehicle that hit Mr. Iyayi’s car.
“There
was a collision on a narrow road and it is too early to say who rammed
into who,” Mr. Edi told PREMIUM TIMES. ”The ASUU car was dodging a
trailer and an accident occurred. It is not fair to politicise this
incident.”
Mr. Edi said as soon as the accident happened, the
governor directed that the ambulance in the convoy be used to convey the
victims to the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja.
Some of the victims, he said, were also taken to the Government House Clinic.
The Kogi governor’s spokesperson said the governor later visited the hospitals to sympathize with the victims of the accident.
He
dismissed suggestions that the accident happened because of
overspeeding by his boss’ convoy, saying Mr. Wada’s convoy travels at 80
km per hour.
This is the second time Mr. Wada’s convoy would be involved in deadly accident in less than a year.
On
December 28, 2012, the governor’s motorcade was involved in a crash
that the auto crash that broke Mr. Wada’s leg, killed his security aide
and injured two other state officials.
Below is Mr. Iyayi’s brief biography as published by Wikipedia.
Iyayi
was born in Edo state, Nigeria. His family lived on little means but
instilled in him strong moral lessons about life. Iyayi started his
education at Annuciation Catholic College in the old Bendel state
popularly known as ACC finishing in 1966. In 1967 he went to Government
College Ughelli, graduating in 1968. In that same year he was a zonal
winner in a Kennedy Essay Competition organised by the United States
Embassy in Nigeria.
He left the shores of Nigeria to pursue his
higher education, obtaining a M.Sc in Industrial Economics from the Kiev
Institute of Economics, in the former USSR and then his Ph.D from the
University of Bradford, England. In 1980, he went back to Benin and
became a lecturer in the Department of Business Administration at the
University of Benin.
As a member of staff of the University, he
became interested in radical social issues, and a few years after his
employment, he became the president of the local branch of the Academic
Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a radical union known for its
upfront style on academic and social welfare. He rose to the position of
president of the national organization in 1986, but in 1988, the union
was briefly banned and Iyayi was detained. In that same year, he won the
Commonwealth Prize for Literature for his book “Heroes”. He was later
removed from his faculty position. Today, Iyayi is a member of different
Nigerian literary organizations and works in the private sector as a
consultant.
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