Olukotun: Memories of a Student Unionist

Today the remains of Professor Ayodele Olukotun, the eminent scholar-journalist, will be entrusted to Mother Earth within the grounds of the University of Ibadan. As one might expect, since the passing of this Punch columnist, tributes have continued to pour in on the life and times of this remarkable public-spirited intellectual.

However, this particular tribute to this eminent scholar takes a different approach.

This will be done by shedding light on a little-known aspect of Olukotun's life as a student-activist in his youth at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University ) where he did his undergraduate studies from 1970 to 1976.

In contemporary times, it is not often appreciated that in his early years as an undergraduate student at the then University of Ife, Professor Olukotun had been an active member of the Student Union executive. This is clearly seen in the fact that on several occasions he served as Assistant Financial Secretary, General Secretary and President of the Students' Union. For him, at that time, trade unionism was practically his life. I am able to recall here that as Assistant Financial Secretary, he took it upon himself to fight for a much better food profile for the entire student body. He was so successful in this endeavor that campus-wide he earned a new moniker, "Ayo Olukotun of Food Prize Fame." This was because, largely due to his fiery interventions, the food served in the dining halls became much better in terms of quality and quantity. But even then, since roses have thorns, this initiative on Olukotun's part drew unfavorable attention from another member of the executive whose statutory duty it was to exert effort in this vital area of ​​well-being. be students. It is to Olukotun's credit that they quickly and competently filled this gap.

Meanwhile, as the permanent head of the Students' Union, he also had an ongoing battle with the then status quo forces of the Nigerian state. On that note, I vividly remember his confrontation with the Federal Information Commissioner under the Gowon regime. He, i.e. the commissioner, made untenable claims about public affairs in Nigeria. Olukotun, as an officer of the Student Union, would not let him. He hired the federal commissioner. Specifically, in a press release, he fired a broadside that took the senior public official to the cleaners. Among other things, Olukotun, as reported in the back page of The Daily Times, testified as follows: "This statement by the Federal Commissioner is lamentably absurd and does little credit to the intelligence of the Commissioner ."

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On another occasion, when there was an ongoing battle between Olukotun and his political rivals in the student body, Olukotun deployed Sorensen-inspired Kennedy-like rhetoric when he writes: "We are caught in war, seeking peace; we are caught in division seeking unity; we reach with magnificent precision for the moon, but fall into raucous discord on earth. My classmates let us stop to shout at us so that we can hear each other and our voices. It was with the same elan that he wrote in the following lines: "The peace we seek, the peace we seek to win is not the victory over a faction, but one that brings healing in its wings."

I also vividly remember the Great Trek episode that Olukotun, as president of the Student Union, led in the 1970s. Specifically, based on some perceived national grievances, UNIFE students wanted to travel to Lagos, then the seat of power where Gowon, as head of state, resided and presided.

The whole nation was on edge. Would the 10,000 Ife students under Olukotun go to Lagos under threat? In the feverish and rather charged circumstances, I recall Olukotun himself appearing on primetime television to discuss the matter. In the tube, when pushed further on the proposed trek by TV reporters, Olukotun cryptically deflected the interviewer's push, saying, "We keep our strategies close to our chests." In the end, the trip to Lagos never happened. Be that as it may, the day before this momentous event, the front of the campus had been surrounded by heavily armed agents. All that was clear; however, the authorities of the time had a taste of the power of student power. Certainly, we were far from the culture of subversive generosity that currently characterizes student unionism in contemporary Nigeria. Incidentally, and unbeknownst to many of us, Olukotun's background as a radical student unionist was such that one of the major embassies, in his diplomatic dispatches to his home country, reported that a Dynamic student union leadership was alive and well in Nigeria, especially Ifé. The report further details...