Ex-ASUU president Festus Iyayi dies in car accident

Former president of the Association of Senior Staff of Universities, ASUU, Dr. Festus Iyayi is dead. He died Tuesday morning in a car crash on his way to Kano to participate in tomorrow’s National Executive Council Meeting of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) expected to declare an end to the over 4-month strike. He was a writer known for his radical and sometimes tough stance on social and political issues. Dr. Iyayi was president of ASUU from 1986, but in 1988, the union was briefly banned and Iyayi was detained. He was born in 1947, in Ugbegun in Ishan, Edo State. A well known author with four books to his credit (Violence, The Contract, Heroes, and Awaiting Court Martial), Dr. Iyayi in 1988 won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature for his book Heroes. In 1968, 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). 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.