The nature of two holes on the
late Professor Festus Iyayi’s body gives life to suspicions by his colleagues
that he may have been shot.
Along with grief, anger will be
the dominant emotion when Professor Festus Iyayi is buried this week in his
hometown, Ugbegun in Edo State. The two feelings have mixed, predictably with
unsavoury outcomes, since the former president of the Academic Staff Union of
Universities, ASUU, died on 12 November in an auto accident on the Lokoja-Abuja
Expressway.
Iyayi was travelling to Kano in
the company of three other ASUU members for a meeting on the ongoing strike by
members of the union when a police escort van in the convoy of the Governor
Idris Wada of Kogi State rammed into the bus the university teachers were
travelling. Iyayi died instantly, while three his colleagues were seriously
injured.
Wada, who was severely injured
in an accident involving his convoy last year, was widely criticised by ASUU
and the wider public for his failure to learn from his own experience and for
allegedly failing to stop to assist the victims.
The escort vehicle was said to
have veered off from its lane to hit the bus bearing the ASUU members, a claim
the Kogi State government denied.
The Nigeria Medical Association,
NMA, called for an official inquiry into Iyayi’s death and urged the Federal
Road Safety Corps, FRSC, to curb the recklessness of official convoys.
The FRSC also got a slice of the
criticisms, following an accusation that it was shielding the driver of the
vehicle that smashed into the bus conveying Iyayi and his colleagues.
One week after, ASUU dismissed the view that Iyayi’s death was accidental and
forcefully contested the official claim that his heart was pierced by a strange
object at the accident scene. The association pointedly blamed the death on the
government and “its agents”. In a statement issued by the University of Benin
chapter of the union, ASUU said Iyayi did not die in an accident,
but was “wilfully” murdered. The union said it will demand concrete
answers from the government for the alleged murder. It demanded that an autopsy
be performed on Iyayi’s corpse and warned government officials to stay away
from the burial.
“His burial should not be an
avenue for government officials to score cheap political points, as we will
resist any state involvement in the burial,” the union raved. Civil society
groups in Edo State also demanded an inquiry into Iyayi’s death.
Was Iyayi murdered? ASUU
believes it has what constitutes prima facie evidence to support its suspicion.
Members of the union point to two holes, one in the chest and another in the
back, as offering a less than complicated indication that Iyayi was shot.
Photographs of Iyayi’s corpse obtained by this magazine, show holes that look
like entry and exit bullet holes.
The Joint Action Front, JAF, a
coalition of labour organisations, accused the government of masterminding
Iyayi’s murder. A statement signed by its president, Comrade Abiodun Aremu,
said the circumstances of Iyayi’s death are questionable.
The group believes that Iyayi was allegedly murdered to destabilise ASUU.
“We strongly believe that the assassination of Comrade Iyayi was carried out by
expert shooters in the cover of the Nigerian intelligence, reminiscent of the
state murder of Dele Giwa in 1986 and Kudirat Abiola in 1996,” the statement
said.
Another on his back
JAF also alleged that the statement of Dr. Paul Amodu of the Specialist
Hospital in Lokoja, where Iyayi was rushed to, did not adequately explain the
piercing of Iyayi’s heart by a strange object.
Dr. Sylvester Akhaine, a
Political Science lecturer at the University of Lagos, is similarly persuaded.
Akhaine alleged that the accident was invented as a cover for the murder
because ASUU’s struggles have made the government hot under the collar. He
argued that there was nothing at the accident scene that could have drilled
holes in Iyayi’s body. When told the coroner’s inquest did not support his
claims, Akhaine retorted:
“The coroner’s report is not the result of an
autopsy. Until an autopsy is done, you cannot say anything to the contrary.”
Writing in THE NATION, Dr. Ropo
Sekoni, a retired teacher of Comparative Literature, branded as incompetent
Amodu’s claim that the piercing of Iyayi’s heart must have been responsible for
his death. “What is this medical talk designed to achieve, a science-driven
identification of etiology of death? Did Dr. Amodu’s observations derive from
the result of a post-mortem examination?” Shekoni asked.
Dr. Ngozi Ilo and Dr. Sunny
Iyalo, ASUU National Welfare Officer and Zonal Coordinator respectively,
who travelled with the deceased, also disputed the claim that a metal object at
the scene of the accident was responsible for the holes on Iyayi’s body.
But how closely do the holes on
Iyayi’s body resemble those made by bullets, especially given that the one on
the chest looks big? A retired army colonel told TheNEWS that the holes have a
high degree of consistency with those made by bullets. “There is a 70 per cent
probability that the man was murdered and 30 per cent that it was an accident,”
he said. If it was an accident, he argued, the impact would have caused a squeeze,
not neatly drilled holes. He explained that a close-range shot from a pistol
would cause the bullet to enter an object, as it allegedly did Iyayi, and exit
through the back. “The big hole in the chest shows that it was a pistol. This
is because the wound a pistol creates is bigger at the entrance and smaller at
the exit. But if it was a Kalashnikov (AK47), it would be smaller at the
entrance and bigger at the exit,” he further explained. The retired officer
added that AK47 bullets gather momentum as they hit target, unlike pistol
bullets, which create bigger impact at the point of entry.
“There is the possibility of
shooting in the confusion of the accident or that the accident could have been
contrived to cover up shots,” the retired colonel told this magazine.
But did any of the survivors
hear a shot before or after the crash? Not exactly, but they are not ruling out
the possibility that a gun may have gone off on account of the impact created
by the collision. This is because in all likelihood, the vehicle responsible
for the accident had heavily armed passengers. “I heard the two vehicles
collide. But given that it was a police vehicle, it is possible that, as we
usually notice, cops in the escort vehicles of governors are always armed. So,
anything could have happened on impact,” reasoned Anthony Monye-Emima,
Chairman, University of Benin ASUU branch. If that was what happened, could
Iyayi’s death be described as anything but accidental? Obviously not.
Lawyer and former university
teacher, Professor Itse Sagay, urged caution. Sagay, who was sacked alongside
Iyayi from the University of Benin by the military regime of General Ibrahim
Babangida in 1987, said: “Nobody can pinpoint exactly what was responsible for
the injury (the hole in the chest), which I believe killed him. There was no
piece of iron or sharp-edged object found that could have done it. I believe
the only solution to the problem is to have a very thorough autopsy to
determine the cause of death and from there, one can then begin to build on
what possibly could be responsible for his death.”
Sagay added that since there is no doubt that Iyayi’s death was caused by
somebody in Governor Wada’s convoy, a case of murder or at the minimum,
manslaughter, could be established.
The Nigeria Labour Congress,
NLC, ascribed Iyayi’s death to criminal negligence and executive recklessness.
Abdulwaheed Omar, NLC President, said the organisation will petition the
National Human Rights Commission should the federal and Kogi State governments
refuse to take responsibility for Iyayi’s death.
Culled
from Sahara reporters
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