by Kayode Komolafe
Iyayi’s voice was loud against this retrogressive trend of our social life. He fought assiduously against it. He was never tired of making sacrifices to reverse the trend.
In response to the sad news of the death of Professor Festus Iyayi, two sources of anger and distress should be distinguished. First is the justifiable public outrage generated because he was killed by a convoy of Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State, in another chilling demonstration of official recklessness. Secondly, Iyayi became a casualty of the struggle to rescue university education from collapse.
He was on the road to Kano to attend an ASUU meeting on the resolution of the dispute. The distress caused by this fact should be distinguished from the anger against the killer convoy of the governor. Iyayi died in pursuit of the goal of making university education a tool of national development. He fell bearing the cross of education.
In an important tribute to the memory of Iyayi, another scholar of repute, Professor Ukwu Ukwu, has called for the immortalisation of Iyayi by setting up a Foundation for “ the improvement and development of tertiary education in Nigeria”. Ukwu asked the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which Iyayi once creditably led, to take a lead in the creation of such a Foundation. It is also part of Ukwu’s proposition that a centre for the management and development of education should be established in Iyayi’s memory at the University of Benin from where he operated as an academic. Doubtless, this is a thoughtful and tangible proposition.
However, a greater immortalisation should ultimately come the way of Iyayi, albeit in an intangible manner. That is consummating the struggle to make funding of quality tertiary education a priority of government. In the last quarter of a century, campuses have witnessed several months of strike arising from the dispute between ASUU and successive administrations on what to do with university education.
The Nigerian ruling class seems not to know exactly what policy step to take in the circumstance. So, ASUU has been bearing the cross of university education for decades. In the process, the organisation has offended the sensibilities of those who are not enamoured to its radical solutions to the problem. ASUU has received not a few knocks because of its methods even by those who might sympathise with its goal.
ASUU’s head has been bloodied in its many battles, but it has remained unbowed. In the process, Iyayi has become a fallen hero of the struggle. Yet, ASUU should not despair in the course of this dispute. Even when the current strike is called off, the central question of this dispute will still remain this: how should university education be funded? When that question is eventually answered in favour of students from poor homes especially, Iyayi’s name would become immortal.
Iyayi was prominent in the league of academics that have played leading roles in making ASUU to be steadfast in the struggle. Even the harshest critics of ASUU should at least concede something to the organisation: its members across generations have simply refused to live a lie. Living a lie is trait of the Nigerian public sphere. Actors in the public space pretend that the reality does not exist; in fact the reality is denied by action and in words daily. One of such ugly realities is that government poorly funds tertiary education. A nation that aspires to be of the 20 largest economies does not see any compelling reason to make quality university education a priority of policy. Policy makers are content with making disparaging remarks about university teachers while the wounds already inflicted on public education festers.
The condition of the university education is such that parents hardly encourage their children to seek admission into the same university they attended just barely three decades ago. It has become an abomination for products of public education to have their own children in the same schools they attended. Nigerian universities are not even among those on top of the ranking of African universities. Policy makers and the public alike seem not to be embarrassed by such stories.
Iyayi’s voice was loud against this retrogressive trend of our social life. He fought assiduously against it. He was never tired of making sacrifices to reverse the trend. In the debate, it is not readily admitted that the poor funding of university education as a matter of policy is ideologically rooted. This policy has been sustained because the ideological character of the Nigerian state has not changed all these years regardless of the apparel of the ruler. Activists of ASUU surely have a choice to pretend to be unaware of the depreciating quality of education available on the campuses.
They could be drawing their meager salaries and ignore the rot. If they had preferred that option all could have been quiet on the campuses. The system would, of course, pay for it enormously in the quality of the products. Meanwhile, those who could afford it would send their children abroad for quality education. It has been argued that if most of those in government and their allies in the private sector have their daughters and sons in the Nigerian university system campuses would not be shut for so long. This is the hidden class element in the crisis rocking public education in Nigeria. It is not often played up in the debate. But it is at the root of the problem. It is another expression of the selfishness that defines this society.
Iyayi and his colleagues supported strike actions primarily to draw attention to the decay in university education and indeed tertiary education for that matter. For those who are quick to point to the “excesses” of ASUU, it should be remembered that once upon a time, ASUU merely issued well reasoned and militantly expressed communiqués which were published as newspaper adverts. In those days, ASUU’s statements would make sweeping surveys of what was wrong with the system with practical solutions suggested. But the university teachers were routinely ignored. Successive administrations have declared agreements reached with ASUU after months of negotiations as “imperfect obligations”, “unrealistic” or “unworkable”. It is significant that the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan has had cause to order an assessment of the needs of the university. Such responses came only because ASUU has been drawing attention to the deterioration for years now.
Iyayi was a prominent figure in these efforts and he paid the price for it. He was consistent as he lived by his conviction. Of course, as a Marxist socialist he approached the crisis in the education sector from a class perspective. For him, education should not just be another commodity that would be a luxury to the children of the poor. He was convinced that you could not seriously be talking of development when access to quality education was not democratised. As a polyvalent intellectual and a hugely humane person, Iyayi approached the crisis-ridden education sector as one of the theatres of struggle in which he operated. He put his brilliant intellectual resources squarely at the service of the working class.
As preparations are afoot for his funeral next week, our condolences go to his widow, Grace, and the children.
May his dreams come true.
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Read this article in the Thisday Newspapers
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.