Last Tuesday, at 11.00am, I received an anonymous breaking news SMS from a reader – I guess – which simply read: “Chief Segun Okeowo, ex-student leader, is dead.” I replied immediately, paying glowing tribute to a man I never met but whose character, leadership qualities, doggedness and determination defined student unionism in a bygone era.
I was in secondary school when the famous “Ali Must Go” demonstration – which became synonymous with the late activist – took place across the country. We, in our young minds, never knew what it was really about, but we joined the undergraduates in some of the protests in Lagos nonetheless.
I never realised how student unionism has fallen until I wrote my three part series on the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) last year. After the publication of the first part, I received series of calls, emails and SMSs from students and stakeholders in the education sector. I was appalled at some of the allegations which I could not publish because I could not independently verify the allegations as they bother on the character and integrity of some individuals. But suffice it to say that I wept, and continue to weep for the so called “future leaders” of our great nation.
I was specifically told of instances where the leadership of a faction of NANS hired street urchins, miscreants and “mercenaries” to join their demonstration when they couldn’t get real students to participate! Can you beat that! I was told they could not get the required student number because they were perceived as “government agents” working for dubious and corrupt politicians and public office holders. This is where we are today.
It is scenarios like this that make one yearn for the ‘good old days’ of Okeowo and his contemporaries when student unionism had intellectual and ideological depth and relevance. Back then, students even prepare their own budgets to counter that of the military regime each year. Such was the level of their intellectual prowess.
The late Okeowo was the President of the proscribed National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) who provided courageous leadership for the decisive students’ nationwide protest against the commercialisation of education by the then General Olusegun Obasanjo military regime in 1978.
Christened “Ali Must Go,” the protest emanated from the order of the then Federal Commissioner of Education, Col. Ahmadu Ali, (yes, the same former PDP Chairman under Obasanjo’s civilian presidency) who announced the increase in tuition and feeding fees for all universities in the country. The students went on protest agitating for his immediate removal from office.
It is quite instructive that Col. Ali, a medical doctor, was at a time NUNS president while he was an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan.
The then Federal Military Government had increased the feeding fees from 50 kobo to 70 kobo! Can you believe that! Previously, the costs of eating at various campus cafeterias were: Breakfast, 10 Kobo; Lunch, 20 Kobo and Dinner, 20 Kobo, making a total of 50 Kobo for a three-square meal a day.
With the new increase, breakfast cost 20 Kobo while lunch and dinner cost 25 Kobo each making a total of 70 Kobo per day.
As expected under the military, response to the protest was swift and brutal. Akintunde Ojo, a student of the University of Lagos – Okeowo’s initial alma mater – and some other students were killed by agents of the Nigerian state. It didn’t stop there. NUNS was proscribed while Okeowo was arrested, physically assaulted and rusticated (expelled) from UNILAG. The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, another renowned activist then, took up his case and served as his legal counsel; his chambers also provided temporary refuge for him.
He, however, completed his degree four years later at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1982, graduating with a second class honours degree in Literature in English, with the assistance of Professor Wole Soyinka and other radical lecturers who made his obtaining a full degree possible even at the risk of incurring the wrath of the military.
Though the government stuck to its guns and the increment was never reversed, the protest, however, marked a watershed in the annals of students uprising in Nigeria as it conveyed to the military government, the shocking capacity for students to mobilise forces across the country. The protest was also significant for it helped to further mainstream student unionism as a national discourse, just as it showcased the power of students to agitate and force change.
Okeowo continued his activism at Ife even in the face of oppression. It was little wonder that he was one of those who condemned the police killing of four students during a funeral procession at the University in 1981. Indeed he was one of those who testified to that effect before the administrative panel of enquiry set up by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), over the incident.
The clampdown on radical student unionism and left-wing lecturers intensified under Obasanjo where many of them were either expelled as students or dismissed as lecturers across the campuses. This however, did not stop the agitations and by 1984, NANS (which emerged out of the ashes of NUNS), now armed with a Students’ Charter of Demands, picked the gauntlet to embark on a nationwide protests and boycott of classes, when the Buhari-Idiagbon regime attempted to further commercialise education, through the re-introduction of tuitions fees in the Universities.
Like most radicals and idealists, Okeowo and his contemporaries were carried away by their radicalism and failed to understand the necessity of overcoming the challenges in the education sector through a focused and consistent struggle against bad leadership which transcend student unionism and dovetails into the organised labour movement.
The NANS of nowadays is a far cry from the ideals of NUNS as it is at present split into factions and is now a platform for politicians to ‘connect to the youth of the nation.’ The present crop of student leaders would not lose a night’s sleep in collaborating with any government in power no matter the level of its anti-people educational policies. They are mainly interested in paying courtesy calls on state governors, who they approach to sponsor their conventions. Is it any wonder that after such ‘sponsorships’ the students would lack the moral right to criticise the government that sponsors them?
Armed with his degree, and with age beginning to tell on him, Okeowo (who had a NCE certificate before gaining admission into the university) later pursued a commendable career as an educationist, rising to be principal in many schools in Ogun State such as Ogijo High School; Makun High School, both in Sagamu and Christ Apostolic Grammar School, Iperu Remo. He was appointed a commissioner in the Ogun State Electoral Commission, 1983; he was also member, Federal Government Panel of Enquiry on Ahmadu Bello University Students’ Crisis in 1986.
His maturity equally led to his being appointed a member of the late Chief Rotimi William led 1976 Constitution Drafting Committee, (CDC), constituted to write what later became the 1979 Constitution by the same Obasanjo regime, though he was later removed from the committee.
Okeowo was quite prominent in the activities of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) and the All Nigerian Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPSS). His last stint was as Chairman of the Ogun State Teaching Service Commission from where he retired in 2011.
This remarkable Nigerian who – through his actions – defined protests and students activism for his generation was criticised by some for not using his early rise to fame and prominence to drive social change and make a lasting impact at the national level. Such critics would have wished he used his experiences to groom young leaders who would have taken the gauntlet and moved into the future with it rather than being subsumed under the bureaucratic inertia of the civil service where he was later involved.
This notwithstanding, Okeowo was a truly great, sincere and focused student union leader whose boldness has remained unmatched till date. His was a generation that fought and drove home the point that educational opportunities should be accessible for everyone who required it in Nigeria. Though unsung, he remains a hero to this writer, students of his era and some who may be reading this.
