Festus Iyayi: A Working Class Icon,By John Odah

Comrade Festus Iyayi, a committed socialist activist, an advocate of a fair and just social system, former president of ASUU and an acclaimed revolutionary-cum social justice literary author was killed in a car crash on Monday, November 11, 2013. Surely, there is very little we can do about man’s mortality. However, to reduce the pain of his death and the manner he died, we must return to history to situate Iyayi in terms of what he really lived for. At the end of the day, what one lived for is what really matters and what will definitely continue to count from generation to generation. This is what makes Iyayi an outstanding personality in life and in death.
Comrade Iyayi symbolised many things to a range of people, particularly to many of us in the progressive movement. This is essentially so because of the multiple roles he played in the course of his very active and engaging social and working life. As we mourn his painful and tragic exit, and with tears still flowing, it is perhaps only proper to celebrate the giant that he is by reflecting on the dynamics that made him a remarkably fulfilled personality.
The occasion was at the Mini Theatre of the Cultural Centre, Calabar, where the Bafyau leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had called together the leading lights of the progressive movement in the country to discuss NLC leadership’s plan to float a labour party. The National Workshop on “Labour and the Political Transition Programme,” which held from 2nd-4th April, 1989, had slated, among others, the following to speak: Mokwugo Okoye, Ikenna Nzimiro, Dapo Fatogun, S.G. Ikoku, Bala Usman, T.U. Nwala, Edwin Madunagu, Toye Olorode, Alao Aka-Bashorun, Ola Oni, Eskor Toyo, Bola Ige, Maitam Sule, Ahmed Jalingo, Festus Iyayi and Claude Ake. Comrades in the national leadership of NLC acted as chairpersons of the various sessions; the only exception was the one chaired by Wahab Goodluck.
Over the two days during which ten papers were presented, the most controversial session was the presentation on: “The Working Class and the Struggle for Democracy and Human Rights.” Both Festus Iyayi and Claude Ake spoke on the topic.
Iyayi, in his presentation, argued for the establishment of a broad united democratic front to fight for social rights. He also called for the creation of a vanguard Marxist-Leninist party, as distinct from a social democratic workers’ party. He contended that social democracy cannot lead workers to victory but that it can only lead to accommodation and compromise workers’ cause.
Iyayi also said pointedly that the NLC leadership had compromised and had been pushed to the path of collaboration with government. He cited NIPSS Kuru, for instance, as a place where working class leaders are indoctrinated and incorporated into the ruling class. He advocated for continuous ideological fights within the labour movement. This he said must not be compromised, as fire and water can never mix.
To say that the NLC leadership was unhappy with his blunt criticism is to put it mildly. One of the General Secretaries, the late Armstrong Ogbonna, (also one of the NIPSS alumni) almost came to fisticuffs with Iyayi at the end of the session. A senior NLC leader, one of the then deputy presidents, during the vote of thanks, tried his best to do a detailed demolition of Iyayi’s points of view.
Of course, it was not only the labour leaders who had issues with Iyayi’s presentation. T.U. Nwala, a former ASUU big wig, wanted him to clarify the nature of ideological struggle that should go on in the NLC, without breaking the organisation, considering the need to maintain NLC as a united body.
Another comrade from another left tendency took on Iyayi too. He said that in one breath, Iyayi said that what was required immediately was a broad democratic front and that ultimately, we required a workers’ party and that in another breath, Iyayi called for immediate formation of a workers’ party which must be a thorough going Marxist-Leninist party. He contended that when an analogy of this is made with a ship in which the steel is made of Marxism-Leninism, the crew Marxism-Leninism, the captain Marxism-Leninism, everything Marxism-Leninism, what that can only translate to is that such a party must be a communist party. The comrade argued that this later formulation was obviously contradictory and needed to be reconciled, a task he asked Iyayi to do.
I joined the NLC as a staff in April 1987. This Calabar gathering of ranking labour and progressive and left elements provided a historic platform which many tendencies within the political left fought for their vision of the way the Nigerian revolution should take. Iyayi’s vigorous articulation and defence of a Marxist-Leninist line made a number of top leaders of the trade unions to be wary of him, even as he was until his untimely death, one of the most committed and beloved comrades among the working people of this country.
The NLC leadership after that workshop secured a mandate of the National Executive Council (NEC) by a unanimous decision to “sponsor and support the formation of a labour party when the ban on politics was lifted.” The Congress leadership, convinced that since the General Ibrahim Babangida regime said it would not hand over power to progressives, sought after the Calabar gathering to distance the new labour party from most of the progressive elements gathered at the pre-NEC workshop – as a way to reduce the influence of “extremists.” This was as well in fulfilment of the strategy of a so-called “politics of registration” as articulated by one of the labour kingpins. It was in following this strategy that the then president of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Salihu Lukman, was prevented from attending the inaugural meeting of the Labour Party at Imoudu Hall of the old NLC Secretariat in Yaba, Lagos.
Of course, despite coming 6th among political associations seeking for registration as political parties, the Babangida regime denied it and the other political associations registration and went on to decree two parties – the SDP and NRC; the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
After about eleven years (in August 2000), when the NLC sought to kickstart its political project again following the election of the Oshiomhole leadership of Congress, it was to Comrade Iyayi that we turned to do a keynote address on the theme: “Building Civil Society Networks and Coalitions for the Advancement of Democracy in Nigeria: Problems and Challenges.”
Forty top leaders of NLC and leading civil society organisations participated in the forum tagged: “Coordinating Committee Preparatory Workshop for a Civil Society Network, in Defence of Democracy in Nigeria,” between August 22-23, 2000 in Abuja, organised by the NLC. The following year, the Congress convened a conference of trade unionists, pro-democracy and progressive organisations and individuals to debate “the future of democracy in the country and how it could be secured and sustained.” Iyayi again played a very active part in it.
As he chronicled in the section on “Brief history of the current NLP,” in the report on the Labour Party we subsequently commissioned him to write, there was follow-up meeting in Jos, attended by many delegates from over twenty civil society organisations, in addition to the NLC. At the Jos meeting, it was agreed that a political party of the working class should be established, rather than just a political platform. This process was chaired by a former president of NLC, Comrade Ali Chiroma.
In a pattern which was almost a replay of the 1989 experience, the process of establishing a working class party was subsequently again taken over by the NLC, which instead registered a political party called the Party for Social Democracy, in 2003. The party, in 2006, changed its name to the Labour party.
After Abdulwahed Omar became President of the NLC in February 2007, it was yet again to Comrade Iyayi that the NLC turned to review the programme and operations of the Labour Party. In between executing this task, Comrade Iyayi was part of a 3-person NLC delegation, led by the Congress President (Omar), to LO Norway in Oslo in early December 2009. The main objective of the trip was for them to exchange ideas and experiences with both the Norwegian trade unions and the Labour Party there, and using appropriate lessons from the 100 years of cooperation between LO Norway and the Norwegian Labour Party, to strengthen our Labour Party. Iyayi eventually wrote a 151 page report on the Nigerian Labour Party, which was presented to the National Executive Council of the NLC in July 2010 in Akure, the seat of the only Labour Party ruled state in Nigeria.
Iyayi was passionately committed to the ideals of the working class. He believed that the working class movement will be at the head of the vanguard organisation to liberate Nigeria from the crouches of underdevelopment, poverty and domination by imperialist (capitalist) powers and their Nigerian agents and collaborators. Even when he had cause to doubt the commitment of many in the leadership of the labour unions, he never wavered in working with and amongst them, and deploying his considerable intellectual, organising and communication skill to persuade them; to win them over to the cause of workers for fairness, justice and equity in the working place and in the wider Nigerian society.
In 2006, Iyayi took leave of the university and came to work with us at the headquarters of the NLC on full time sabbatical from his teaching post at the University of Benin. During the one year he spent at the NLC, his dedication to work, his humility and his contributions to debates at organ meetings of the NLC were outstanding. He was tireless when it came to producing draft positions, documents and was very dependable to meet the tightest of deadlines. No job was too small for him to do, as long as he was convinced it is to advance workers’ cause.
While on the sabbatical, despite our age difference (he was 13 years older), he never bypassed me as General Secretary to take anything to the president. He scrupulously followed the official protocol at a time some principal officers found it convenient to undermine that position and office.
Long after going back to his base at the university, we still depended on this intellectual giant of the working people of Nigeria. His imprints are on some of the key documents the NLC produced especially in the period between 2007 and 2011, which also coincided with the first tenure of Omar’s presidency of the NLC. These documents include: “NLC Position on Deregulation and Privatisation,” “Position on Electoral Reform in Nigeria,” “Position on Niger-Delta and Environmental Degradation,” “NLC Position on Job Creation” presented during the Job Submit organised by the federal government in collaboration with the ILO, “NLC-Civil Society Summit on Electoral Reforms;” to mention just a few.
This is apart from the countless editorial works we called him to do at very short notice. In this category are some of the key documents of the 2011 10th Delegates’ Conference of the NLC. His distinct style, lucid articulation and marshalling of points could be seen in those documentations.
In February 2008, when NLC turned 30 years, it was again Comrade Iyayi that we asked to deliver the 30th anniversary lecture, which held at the Yar’adua Centre in Abuja. Thereafter, he was among the progressive intellectuals, civil society activists and trade unionists that we tasked in the “NLC @ 30 Commission” to review the state of the trade unions in the 30 years since the registration of the NLC as sole national labour centre, and to do a prognosis on the future of trade unions in the next 15-20 years. Unfortunately, with the illness and subsequent death of Prof Omafume Onoge, who was co-chair of the commission, the commission could not complete its assignment before the 2011 delegates conference and the crisis which hit the Congress soon after.
In late 2008 also, the NLC commissioned a team of 15 experts to do a detailed study for it on key areas of our national life (Agenda for National Development), from the economy to agriculture, transport, housing, industrial development, culture and society, governance, etc. Comrade Iyayi was part of that team. The Congress used the work of these experts and empanelled a subcommittee of the team, which working with the NLC held several sessions to develop an NLC Alternative Development Agenda. Comrade Iyayi and Prof. Toye Olorode were easily two of the most visible members of the team working to produce a qualitative document. By the time of the 2011 NLC delegates conference, this document was 90% completed. Again, the post conference crisis of the NLC had let this important project to lie in limbo under the current dispensation in the NLC.
Iyayi was very worried and pained at the crisis which engulfed the Congress following the 2011 delegates’ conference and the Omar leadership’s determination to get rid of the General Secretary of the NLC. He was among the first who contacted elders of the labour movement to try to nip the crisis in the bud before it escalated. Unfortunately, as he discovered later, some of those he had approached to make peace, had their own reasons why they wanted the General Secretary out of the Congress, and contributed in spreading deliberate falsehood to smear his person and reputation. Of course, almost three years on, with our movement almost lying prostrate, Nigerian workers now know better…
On 20th September, I and my colleague, Comrade Iduh Onah, sat down with Iyayi to talk extensively about the ASUU strike. The interview, published in the September-October edition of The Worker, is perhaps the last comprehensive interview he gave to any medium before his cruel departure on that fateful November 11, 2013 around Lokoja.
In the part two of the interview (to be published in the next edition of The Worker), we asked him what were his views on restoring normalcy to the NLC following the crisis after the 2011 delegates’ conference which had made some unions to pull out of the NLC. His answer was that the NLC must do self examination or self introspection. “…it is important for all stakeholders in the movement to try and create one strong central labour organisation,” Iyayi began thoughtfully and concluded: “…but it has to be one based upon justice. If there is no justice, people will pullout. That is what has happened to the PDP. There must be justice and so if we want reconciliation; if we want people to be under the same roof; I don’t want to use the metaphor of the umbrella that tears. Under the same roof, we must make sure that we have justice in the relations between the different parts of the NLC.”
Though Comrade Iyayi left the Presidency of ASUU in May 1987, over a quarter of a century ago, he remained one of the best known advocates and campaigners for educational reforms, funding of education and university autonomy in the country. The over 10, 000 words interview we had with him for The Worker magazine about one and half months before his painful death remains till this day the most powerful defence of the ongoing strike action of university lecturers that anyone had done in the course of the five months old industrial action. The two-part interaction, spanning over two hours and over many pots of tea, turned out to be an epic exposition on the state of our universities.
When we asked him for clarifications with regard to an advertorial on the status of implementation of the 2009 agreement between ASUU and the federal government by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, where, on the issue of transfer of Federal Government landed properties to universities, the advertorial claimed that government had made it clear that it cannot transfer government landed property to ASUU as it has no structure to manage or maintain such property, Iyayi’s response was:
“You see, we reached an agreement with government when ASUU proposed that since public properties were being recklessly sold – NITEL, NICON Noga, this one, that one; they were just dashing them out – ASUU then suggested to government to create a university holding company owned by all the federal universities in Nigeria and then cede some of these properties to the holding company and the profit that will derive from its management, they will get money to fund their operations such as research.
“The government gave out all the buildings in Abuja, the ones in Lagos such as the former Federal Secretariat in Lagos; they dashed them out. Those properties could have been given out to the university holding company owned by the entire federal universities in the country, not individual universities. Under such a scenario, they will not run to government cap in hand begging for money; they will use the profits to run their activities.
“We didn’t say give landed properties to ASUU; it is to the universities under a holding company. We spoke to the vice chancellors about two days ago and they were very happy about that agreement, because it will help them but the government is not interested in going in that direction. What they are interested in is that they will get their friend like this power company that they just dashed out; they want to give these things to their friends…”
One of Iyayi’s last acts of defiance and protest against government’s indifference to ASUU’s strike action was when he led other academic staff of University of Benin, with all protesters dressed in ceremonial academic regalia on the streets of Benin City a few weeks before his death.
With the exception of Comrades Eskor Toyo and Toye Olorode, there are indeed very few Nigerian academics, living or dead; that have demonstrated such devotion, dedication and belief in the working class movement as Comrade Iyayi. He was a nationalist, a working class giant, first class intellectual, ideologue of the working class, mobiliser, organiser, propagandist of workers cause, and indeed, a working class phenomenon, whose gap will be very, very difficult to fill.