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‘If University of Ife wants my body, give it to them’ Gani Fawehinmi, shortly before he died. For anybody who has a sense of history, late political activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi’s choice of University of Ife as the institution deserving of having his corpse will not come as a surprise. University of Ife(now Obafemi Awolowo University) is Gani institutionalized.

Like Gani, Ife students, and indeed various workers’ unions in the institution, are known for their stance against oppression. Ife students and lecturers have over the years led the cause for the evolution of a fair society.

Ife campus politics is usually as hot and intriguing as the national one, but unlike what obtains at the national level, you don’t win elections by the depth of your pocket, but rather by your antecedents, what you have to offer and your intellectual worth, and if you get good judgment on these criteria and get elected into office, Ife students will not hesitate to send you packing if you derail on getting there( like Tunde Fagbohungbe 1991,Yinka Sotade 2002, Elegbede Muhammed Hemhem 2005).

Prominent activists like Femi Falana, Bamidele Aturu, Fred Agbaje and Lanre Arogundade all started their activism in their days as Ife students. Falana was Students’ union PRO 1980/81 session and Arogundade the last NANS president from Ife(1984). Other activists and social critics like Wole Soyinka and Dipo Fasina were/are Ife lecturers.

From the sixties through seventies and eighties and even till today, University of Ife(now OAU) has been at the forefront of genuine national struggles for the emancipation of the oppressed  masses from the clutches of the cabal that has continued to feed fat while the larger populace are being pauperized.

Ife students fought successive military juntas to standstill despite having no more than their pens and placards as weapons. The June 1998 pro-Abiola protest led by Ife students is a case in point.
More recently, Ife students have protested strongly against anti-poor national policies like hike in fuel prices, hostel privatization, tuition fees introduction, unchecked proliferation of glorified secondary schools in the name of private universities etc. Many national policies have been reversed in the past because of agitations spearheaded by Ife students and lecturers.

It is only in Ife that a disappointing minister with all his security details can be refused entrance into university campus by students(Bayo Ojo, 2005); It is only in Ife that a presidential candidate with anti-students antecedents(Ali-Must-Go crisis of 1978) can be taken to the cleaners by students(Obasanjo 1998); It is only in Ife that a serving powerful head of government agency can be grilled by students and confronted with questions about his hypocrisy in a public lecture(Ribadu 2007). Such is the place of Ife in national consciousness.

Gani was never an Ife student or lecturer, but he was proudly associated with the school because he shared common aspiration with the students and lecturers of the institution. For this reason, he was always ready to defend Ife students, financially and in the courts, whenever injustice is being meted on them for speaking against the state. My first encounter with Gani would have been sometime around December 2001, when he came to Ife campus, on the invitation of Students’ union, to deliver a lecture, but I couldn’t make it to the sports complex venue as the time clashed with my lectures.

It should not be forgotten that the now generally quoted Senior Advocate of the Masses honour for Gani was conferred on him by Ife students in 1988.
All these have not come without a price. While Gani Fawehinmi and other pro-masses radicals were being sent to jail, Ife, being an institution rather than individual, is being punished in its own way. Successive governments have continued to neglect the school because of the radical nature of its students and lecturers.

Obasanjo revenged the 1998 Ife ignominy by totally ignoring the school throughout his eight years rule while a school like ABU got a multi-billion naira ultra modern teaching hospital complex.

Finally, this is not an endorsement of Gani’s wish that his corpse be given to University of Ife if they request for it, rather than been given an immediate burial as prescribed by his religion, Islam. As a Muslim, I do not approve of that, but I feel his choice of Ife requires some reflections.

•Suraj Oyewale, writes from Dideolu Estate, off Ligali Ayorinde street, Victoria Island, Lagos

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