Opinion: An open letter to late Prof. Festus Iyayi Posted in wpzoom Opinion on November 27, 2013 7:55 am / 0 Comments inShare 1 by Che Oyinatumba 364px-Graveyard_by_kona4tacos-1- My Dear Comrade Prof. Iyayi, I read you before we met. Like a faithful beholding his patron saint, I longed to see the hallow ring around your head but your humility and down-to-earth approach to issues discussed at Working Peoples Vanguard(WPV) meeting further endeared you to me. My Dear Comrade Prof. Iyayi, I read you before we met. Like a faithful beholding his patron saint, I longed to see the hallow ring around your head but your humility and down-to-earth approach to issues discussed at Working Peoples Vanguard(WPV) meeting further endeared you to me. When the publication ran into financial storm, you were a steady anchor and we sailed through the rough weather. My respect for you further deepened when you stepped down from contesting the Deputy National Chairman-South South of the Labour Party in the collective best interest of the Edo delegates. Recent events in Labour Party (LP), particularly the sale of the party’s ticket to the highest bidder without respect to ideological orientation of the money bag, have vindicated you. You made tremendous sacrifices and like a pilot light you shone to uplift the dying hope in the Nigerian Left Movement. The Nigerian Left Movement, has lost a lot of gallant soldiers. Some to the cold hands of death-these ones we do not mourn-for they merely ceased to exist as matter in motion, leaving their footprints in the iron cast sands of time. The first set of lost soldiers of the Nigerian Left we mourn daily, are those lost in the world of NGO, who preferred s reformation to revolution, who unconsciously have become agents of Western imperialism and yet still delude themselves that they are fighting imperialism and globalization. A good number of these soldiers are found in the pro-democracy division of the NGO community. The quest for grants have cowed many of them into almajiris at the gate of imperialist agents instead of confronting the eco-political system that has reduced Nigeria into a nation where its citizens are daily violated. This calls to mind your book Violence where you defined violent act as “when a man is denied the opportunity of being educated, of getting a job, of feeding himself and his family properly, of getting medical attention cheaply, quickly and promptly. We often do not understand that it is the society, the type of economic and hence the political system which we are operating in our country today that brutalizes the individual, rapes his manhood. We often do not realize that when such men of poor and limited opportunities react, they are only in a certain measure, answering violence with violence” The second set of lost soldiers of the Nigerian Left Movement we mourn greatly are those lost in the Nigerian Political Party space. They are mostly Special Assistants, Personal Assistants or any other nomenclature that catches the fancy of the politician. These comrades went in with good intent, knowing full well of the slippery nature of the terrain but believed they could make a difference from the inside, forgetting that he who wants to dine with the devil must have a long spoon. They have over-stayed in the inside and like a paper used to wrap salt, they are now as tasty as salt. The political climate is ripe for a third army as change is long over needed but these comrades now have inertia to action. As a Movement, the Nigerian Left, inclusive of Labour Movement, should study Ogie Obala in The Contract, for us to understand at what point the rain started to beat us (apologies to Achebe). What has made the firebrand student union activist dead upon graduation? Can these student union activists be immune from these postgraduate “realities” that drain idealism? My Comrade Prof., if you remember, we had discussed a mid-school for student activists and student leaders. This post-graduate informal mentorship school (like the apprentice among the Ibo traders) will serve as a pool from which future trade union leaders will be recruited. It is this yearning gap that has created vacuum in the leadership of the struggle that now every Tom, who collects money from the bourgeoisies and can organize street protest in the interest of a group in the intra class war among the ruling class, sees himself as a leader of the Left and conscience of society. It is this unfortunate situation that has given birth to PDP and APC mushrooming as opposition parties while they are the same fingers of a leprous hand. My Comrade Prof., unlike the other writers who have won one “International award” or the other, depending on the imperialist audience they are trying to impress, your works are not merely interpretation of the society or running down your society but you boldly prescribed solutions. According to you, which I agree with with emphasis, “you would like to see, however not just for a handful of men to take up arms to rub one individual(or kidnap one “oga”) I feel and think it is necessary that all oppressed sections of the our community ought to take up arms to overthrow the present oppressive system. The system has already proved that it operates through violence.” Even in Heroes, your rendition of the Nigerian Civil war, you maintained that “the war was stupid but more stupid were the reasons given for it, the reasons that led up to it. Why couldn’t the people, the leaders, have been more honest with each other? Why did they have to be dishonest to cause a war?” “The unity of this country was not threatened until the politicians and their partners in corruption allowed their greed to run riot.” “Your people were good to me, we never had any quarrel with the Ibos, nor did the Ibos have any quarrel with the Hausas or Yorubas until politicians and generals allowed their lust for power and greed for profit to run riot. As a believer in one Nigeria, I believe we owe it to you to lend our voices to an indissoluble one Nigeria, even if we do not participate in the proposed national dialogue by this administration that Nigerians believe has not been honest with them. Anybody in doubt of what your contribution to the dialogue would be, should read the Contract. The stormy journey to nationhood, is not our inability to talk, but the lack of courage by the ruling class to do the right thing and if need be, commit class suicide for the egalitarian good of the society.As I write you, there are dishonest reports about the cause of your elevation to celestial glory. The Kogi State Government is claiming that its convoy travels at 80 kilometers per hour and could not have been reckless enough to generate enough momentum at impact that would have caused you to stop being in motion. It is a common knowledge that no convoy even that of a bank’s bullion van travels at such a snail pace as being claimed by Kogi State Government, a State Government whose Governor nearly died due to the recklessness of his convoy. It is an elementary driving lesson that once there is a head-on collusion, one car must have left its legitimate right of way. With what I have seen of the Pilot One on any convoy, they drive against the traffic, to intimidate the oncoming traffic and allow their priced cargo to occupy both lanes on a single carriage road, I dare say that Kogi State Government is lying.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 19:52:34 +0000
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