Events, incidences and circumstances often coalesce to bring about the remembrances of things gone and things that make for how the present is constituted out of the past. The months of May and June brought about such reminiscing in the very sad events of the demise of Professor Ayo Banjo, followed almost immediately in June by that of my formidable foe and later lifelong friend, late Femi Oladele Lucas Falana (no relation with the SAN). I mourn these two solid people specially because of the roles Providence allowed them to play in my evolution and foundational leadership training—and I on theirs.
I fondly refer to the late Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo as “my Vice Chancellor”, but most people do not know the depth of the gratitude I owe the late professor and his deep humaneness. My relationship with Femi Falana was however adversarial and turbulent. And it was the confrontation between us, during the period when student union activism at the University of Ibadan was most critical, that brought Prof. Ayo Banjo as a humane mediator. When Aderemi Raji-Oyelade, a distinguished professor at the Department of English, University of Ibadan, and one of the key players at the period in time, narrated this series of events in his tribute to Professor Banjo at 90, just like the renowned columnist and my classmate Segun Ayobolu did earlier, I felt compelled to stretch the narrations.
I cut my student union activism as a member of the executive of the Federation of Oyo State Student Union in 1981. My audacity, or if you like, notoriety, especially with the Bola Ige administration has been the subject of many pieces, and is beautifully narrated in my memoir, The Unending Quest for Reform (2023). My concern with student welfare, got me involved in a series of campus-wide conversation and consultation during the incumbency of Bayo Olowo-Ake as SUG president. The conversation was around the need to focus unionism on university development while abjuring an adversarial unionism for unionism’s sake. Hence, the key stakeholders at the university level were resolved to facilitate the emergence of a consensus candidate for the SUG presidency and a successor to Bayo Olowo-Ake. After some rigorous interviews and consultation, I emerged as consensus candidate out half a dozen others.
With this development, I was summoned by the Pyrate Confraternity and provided with a set of conditions that would facilitate its acceptance of my candidature. I refused these conditions as a matter of principle, and therefore, lost the election, and Femi Falana was the hatchet man who won. Unfortunately, his tenure set off perhaps one of the most violent student riots in the history of student activism at the University of Ibadan. Being a critical player, and given my erstwhile position as a consensus candidate, I was prevailed upon to weigh in as part of the team to restore order. I reached out to the student union parliament and the SUG president (Falana) in the eye of the storm, so we can work out a damage control protocol. Unfortunately, my peace gestures were spurned by the president. I had no choice but to initiate a vote of no confidence in the parliament that got him impeached as the SUG president.
When late Prof. Samson Olajuwon Olayide, the Vice Chancellor, eventually set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the student riot, and the renowned journalist and former editor of the Sketch newspapers—the late Labanji Bolaji—was appointed to head it, Falana and his cohort had a memorandum ready that had my name and those of my supporters as culprits. The memorandum recommended that we be rusticated. While the commission of inquiry went about its findings, Prof. Olayide, the Vice Chancellor, unfortunately met an untimely demise. And this was where Prof. Ayo Banjo, the deputy Vice Chancellor, stepped in, in an acting capacity. Whether he saw through the political antics on campus or was just eager to bypass all the shenanigans for the sake of peace and development, we can only keep speculating. Suffice it to say that the commission of inquiry met its natural end and we were exonerated.
The University of Ibadan was not therefore just a citadel of learning for me; it was equally a foundational space for the emergence of my professional direction as a reformer. I was grounded in the theoretical and intellectual perspectives on leadership, the humanities and social science disciplines, conflict and change management, that blossomed to become today, my unending quest for reform. From the Pyrate Confraternity to Femi Lucas Falana, I learnt different lessons on the role that conflicts and purposefulness play in human and institutional trajectories.
I am glad Femi Lucas Falana and I did not give up on each other, or allow our future collaborations overturned by the heat of adversarial foundational conflicts. We both realized that the University of Ibadan and our notoriety were only a phase in our lives that we had to negotiate on our paths to even more fundamental phases. I am more convinced than ever that between me and Femi Lucas Falana, our paths crossed, and that engagements and confrontations produced a better us that looked back on those activism days—as I am now doing—with fondness, hindsight and deep reflection on the trajectories of human evolution.
By Prof. Tunji Olaopa, a Professor of Public Administration & Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission, Abuja.
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