MY LITTLE AND HUMBLE TRIBUTE TO CHIEF SEGUN OKEOWO, TRULY AND INDISPUTABLY THE LAST OF THE GREAT STUDENT LEADERS OF NIGERIA Chief Segun Okeowo may be as old as 73 when he died early this week. He had already acquired NCE with some years of work experience before enrolling for 1st degree at Unilag. That was the basis of his maturity when he was the NUNS (precursor of the NANS) Leader. He led us in the Ali Must Go demonstration in 1978, while I was in my second year at the Univ of Ibadan, and he was at Univ of Lagos, being the President of NANS. I was very active in the Protest against Obasanjos military government then, and interacted a bit with Chief Okeowo, mainly through meetings and liaisons. During the crisis, he refused to be cowed, intimidated, bribed, induced, despite all the pressure mounted on him to call off the strike. For his role in the protest, Mr. Okeowo was expelled from the University of Lagos where he was a second year English major student. He finally completed his degree five years after at the University of Ife in 1982 graduating with a second class honours degree in Literature-in English. Mr. Okeowo was a member of the 1976 Constitution Drafting Committee, CDC, constituted to write what later became the 1979 Constitution. He created a stir when he appeared for the inaugural meeting in an all-red overall suit with a kangol classic hat to match. The CDC chairman, the legal luminary, Late FRA Rotimi Williams screamed in dramatic outrage accusing Mr. Okeowo of platform act than a preparedness to help write a constitution. The Obasanjo government subsequently took him out of the CDC. It was sweet revenge for Obasanjo after Mr. Okeowo had led the celebrated revolt of Nigerian students against the price hike on student’s feeding introduced by the Olusegun Obasanjo military regime in 1978. The protest was dubbed the “Ali Must Go” protest taking its name from the then minister of education, Col. Ahmadu Ali, a medical doctor and army colonel who had been NUNS president himself as a student at the University of Ibadan. By 1989, he was the Principal of Ogijo Community Grammar School, Ogijo, Ogun State (a secondary school near Ikorodu - at the border/boundary of Ogun and Lagos States). He once honoured a colleagues (a classmate of mine, Kamaldeen Ekemode, former Provost, Lagos State College of Primary Education (LACOPED) invitation to him for a one day lecture for the students of Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu Campus and continued to interact with him thereafter until he (Chief Okeowo) was posted to another secondary school in Sagamu,Ogun State. You will see that he read Education, knew and was passionate about education and teaching all his life. He was, I would say, the last of the truly great, sincere and focused student union leader in Nigeria. Not the types we have these days. May his soul rest in perfect peace. Amen. nigeriavillagesquare/articles/akintokunbo-a-adejumo/reminiscences-of-nigeria-12.html
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:59:16 +0000
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