By Ikechukwu Amaechi
For residents of the university town of Oye Ekiti, Tuesday, September 10, was a black day: it shouldn’t have been. But in Nigeria, black days have become the new normal. When citizens begin to see every new day as bonus from outlaws, something has gone tragically wrong. Nigerians are right now at that incongruous crossroads of national anomie.
On that fateful day, students of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (FUOYE) chose to protest epileptic power supply in their school, which they claimed had made their lives miserable and hellish. It was peaceful. For students, such protests are not out of place. It is in the tradition of aluta and, therefore, should not be punished with death.
But as it is usually the case, the peaceful protest turned violent immediately policemen got into the mix. Two young students, Dada Kehinde, a 100-level student of Crop Science and Horticulture and Okonufua Joseph, a 300-level Biology Education student, were shot dead.
Since then, the police, obviously the villains, have gone into overdrive as they are wont to do, ratcheting up incendiary accounts of what happened. First, they were in denial, their notorious trademark, as the state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Caleb Ikechukwu, a Deputy of Superintendent of Police, claimed that nobody died.
The Police Commissioner, Asuquo Amba, doubled down on the PPRO’s patently false claim that policemen did not fire at the students. Suddenly, the students, victims of their vicious attacks were labelled villains that must be hunted down and severely punished, Amba’s reason being that two policemen were wounded and two patrol vans burnt in the totally avoidable fatal drama his men orchestrated.
At no point did he acknowledge that two young lives were unjustifiably, brutally cut short by trigger-happy policemen. Kehinde died of gunshot wounds to the eyes. For the almighty police commissioner, the fallen students were nobodies whose lives could be wantonly wasted without consequences for all he cared. Two of the students have been arrested, others have gone into hiding with their school shut down indefinitely. They are the children of the hoi-polloi with little or no rights, not to talk of privileges, as Nigerian citizens. That is the tragedy of the Nigerian state.
And all this happened just because the students wanted to complain to the wife of Ekiti State governor, Mrs. Bisi Fayemi, who happened to be passing by at the time of their protest, about the sorry state of their living condition in the school. That audacity is considered an affront to “constituted authority” that must be severely punished.
There are as many narratives of the Oye Ekiti tragedy as there are actors but one does not need to be clairvoyant to know where the truth lies. For starters, it is incontrovertible that the protest was peaceful until Mrs. Fayemi came into the picture.
The students claim they flagged down Mrs. Fayemi’s convoy to explain to her the reason for their protest. There is no reason to doubt this story. They were not protesting against her. It is doubtful if they knew beforehand that she would be passing by. It was just coincidental that she was around at the same time they were protesting. If they were not protesting against her and didn’t have foreknowledge of her itinerary, she couldn’t have been a target. Moreover, none of the issues they were complaining about had anything to do with her, not even her husband’s government.
The university in question is a federal institution, and the students know that. Electricity is in the exclusive legislative list, and therefore, an exclusive preserve of the federal government. So, why would the students attack Erelu Bisi Fayemi because they don’t have electricity in their campus?
Besides, Mrs. Fayemi is only the wife of Ekiti State governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi. She is not an official of the Ekiti State government. The fact that she took it upon herself to embark on a tour the state’s local governments, which was what took her to Oye Ekiti on that fateful day, one of the many aberrations of this dispensation, does not make her the alternate governor of Ekiti. It is simply a proof of the fact that Nigeria’s democracy inebriates insufferably.
On a personal level, Governor Fayemi is perceived as a friend of the students. Both the governor and his wife claim to be life members of the aluta community. So, they should be kindred spirits with the students.
If there is any First Family in Nigeria that should be students-friendly, that ought to be the Fayemis, yet, when the students flagged down Mrs. Fayemi’s convoy to explain their plight to a “friend,” who they thought would give them a listening ear, one of her security aides slapped the Students Union President, Comrade Awodola Oluwaseun, who had stepped forward to address her.
It was at that point that the hitherto peaceful protest turned violent as the students affronted by the irresponsible action of the police officer reacted angrily.
Could you imagine what would have happened if the woman had come down from her vehicle to address the students. Even when the issues were not in the purview of her husband’s government, she could still soothe their nerves by making promises that would never have been fulfilled. She could have become their heroine instantly, a listening mother.
But she was scared of her own people. Why are Nigerian leaders mortally afraid of the citizens? Why do they think they must be protected from the same people they claim to be governing?
It is this mortal fear that led to the tragedy. To ward off supposed enemies from their madam, the police shot at fleeing students directly with live bullets. The students pointedly accuse Mrs. Fayemi of ordering her security details to open fire on them.
But Mrs. Fayemi disputes this narrative. In a letter she personally signed, she claimed that the protesting students had dispersed as at the time she got to Oye town.
“I did not encounter any group of students when I got to Oye town. They had dispersed before my arrival,” she claimed.
“Half-way through our event, there was a disturbance outside. The FUOYE students (and possibly infiltrated by local thugs) had re-grouped and were trying to get into the venue. The security officers prevented this from happening.
“We finished our program, and by the time we got outside, we found that vehicles from my convoy and those of my guests that were parked outside the venue had been vandalised.
“As we were driving out of Oye town, we encountered at least two roadblocks that the students had mounted to prevent the movement of vehicles. I could see students/thugs throwing stones and large sticks at us as we drove by.”
Mrs. Fayemi, a self-acclaimed social justice activist, said she is scandalised and shocked beyond words to hear that she instructed security officers to shoot at students.
Maybe she really is. Who knows? But her story does not add up. Moreover, video evidence of the tragic encounter does not bear her narrative out.
One of the videos, a 15-second footage showed four policemen aiming shots at some of the protesters, as frightened female students filming the incident cried out.
Another clip, about seven seconds long, also showed two policemen chasing some of the students and firing directly at them.
It is possible that Mrs. Fayemi did not order the policemen to shoot and kill the students. In fact, I will be surprised if she did. But the policemen acted on her behalf. They are her security details who were protecting her. So, she is vicariously liable for their action. That bloodletting was avoidable. And it could have been avoided if she acted differently. If she wanted, she could have reined in her dogs of war when they went berserk.
Her claim that she did not personally come in contact with the students is even more fatuous. It is an afterthought, a face saving gimmick. If she did not, then who were the police protecting? At what point were the students killed? Nigerian students may be exuberant, but they don’t behave the way Mrs. Fayemi described. From where did they regroup to come to the venue of the event and why would they do that if there was no previous encounter between them?
But truth be told, what happened didn’t surprise me. Mrs. Fayemi loves power. She hugs the limelight with relish. Unbridled quest for power and excessive crave for adulation are recipe for tragedy. That was what happened in Oye Ekiti penultimate Tuesday.
But I was knocked for six by the take of Ekiti elders on the tragedy. Prof Joseph Oluwasanmi, their leader, said the elders were “grateful to God for sparing the life of the First Lady, Erelu Bisi Fayemi, officials and journalists on her entourage during the crisis.” We all are. After all, was it not John Donnes, the English poet and cleric in the Church of England, who said: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
But what about the victims? The elders called “on students and youths generally to eschew violence in all ramifications in expressing their grievances.”
To them, demand for accountability is tantamount to politicisation. “In view of the open politicization of the crisis, the council strongly warned politicians against exploiting situations that are mournful and detrimental to the wellbeing of the populace as a political tool,” Ekiti elders admonished.
Sucking up to the powers-that-be in such manner is sickening. If the students killed were children of the high and mighty, would that have been their reaction?
Governor Fayemi has promised to support the families of the slain students and pay the medical bills of the injured students. That is good. But he should go a step further. Nigerians need to know what happened and who played what role. Why did they students have to die?
