MEMOIR: Iyayi: a Prophetic writer

Emeka Ibemere

Obviously, He is a prophetic writer of all times. 24 years ago when he wrote his book; Violence, he was not having in mind the plight of the present day workers in Nigeria. Not even the struggle by the Academic Staff Union of Universities-ASUU was pictured out then. But today, all the themes and sub-themes of that award winning novel are playing themselves out in Nigeria today.

So, when he is asked to write his memoir, one page will certainly occupy his struggle with the military dictator of the former head of state, Ibrahim Bademosi Babangida, fondly called IBB.

Festus Iyayi, author, novelist, writer, lecturer and comrade will never forget so soon his ordeal in the hands of the military juntas when he led Academic Staff Union of Universities-ASUU in a strike in the twilight of that despotic regime.

Therefore, it will not be an understatement to say that the present leaders of ASUU are on a jolly ride if compared with what Iyayi and his fellow comrades went through under IBB’s regime for pulling lecturers out of class for a year.

The leadership of ASUU then is different from the leadership of present day ASUU, thanks to democracy.

 ASUU under Iyayi was when people look for leaders to lead the union, rather than now it has been politicised.  Iyayi was identified by his fellow teachers who persuaded him to take the position of leadership which he accepted and provided leadership at the time the military was clamping down dissenting voices across all professionals and Civil Society Groups.

He answered the call for leadership; took the risk, stand the stress, and the conflicts that were the order of the day and paid the price:

They were thrown into jail, regularly raided by the SSS, detained, and their books and papers seized.

Under Babangida, Attahiru Jega, Toye Olorode, Idowu Awopetu, Asobie Assisi, Iyayi and many others were detained.  Iyayi and the late Dimowo were thrown in an underground cell in Lagos.

Iyayi was also stripped naked, thrown into a cell and asked to pack faeces with his bare hands in Benin City. He was beaten by common criminal inmates. A student of literary studies once said that Iyayi, the author of Violence, a novel was actually living up to the billing of his proletarian concept society.

As the first Nigerian ‘Proletarian novelist’, he had early predicted the struggle he was going to go through as a Marxian philosopher. Iyayi in Violence reports the struggle between the workers and bourgeois who represent the ruling class.

Festus Iyayi was born in 1947, in Ugbegun in Ishan Edo State, South-south Nigeria. He is a Nigeria writer known for his Marxian posture. Iyayi is a social commentator and adopts philosophy relating to philosophical theories of realism in his writing while, depicting the social, political and moral environment and system. To Iyayi, both the rich and poor can live and work together without the other inflicting violence on the lesser being, no matter their circumstances.

Iyayi was also a former president of the Association of Senior Staff of Universities (ASSU).

Iyayi started his education at Annunciation Catholic College in the old Bendel state popularly known as ACC, finishing in 1966. In 1967, he went to Government College Ughelli graduating in 1968. In that same year, he was a zonal winner in a Kennedy Essay Competition organized by the United States Embassy in Nigeria. He left the shores of Nigeria to pursue his higher education, obtaining an M.Sc in Industrial Economics from the Kiev Institute of Economics, in the former USSR and then his PhD from the University of Bradford, England. In 1980, he went back to Benin and became a lecturer in the Department of Business Administration at the University of Benin. As a member of staff of the University, he became interested in radical social issues, and a few years after his employment, he became the president of the local branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a radical union known for its upfront style on academic and social welfare. He rose to the position of president of the national organization in 1986, but in 1988, the union was briefly banned and Iyayi was detained, in that same year he won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature for his book Heroes. He was later removed from his faculty position. Today, Iyayi is a member of different Nigerian literary organizations and works in the private sector as a consultant. His works include: Violence, Longman (1979) The Contract, Longman (1982) Heroes, Longman (c1986) Awaiting Court Martial,

He grew up within a very large family. According to him, in a recent report, he said his family was the most prominent in Ugbegun, Esan Central Local Government Area of Edo State.
He said. “My grandfather was very industrious. He was the first to introduce cocoa plantation, rubber plantation, palm tree plantation, cotton plantation and orange plantation. He had Lorries and vehicles. He was in the Action Group. He never changed even when the NCNC in those days terrorised opponents. They destroyed our house. First, they tried to get my grandfather to change. They said he should come and pay money. Later they said he shouldn’t pay money. Later they said they would give him all kinds of things, but he refused. He remained in the Action Group”, he was quoted to have said recently.
His grandfather was a very principled man. His late grandfather was a mediator settling disputes in their village, as people would take matters to him for settlement.
“If you came to report anybody to him or report to him that somebody said this about him, he would sit you down and send for the person”, Iyayi stated, adding that the late grandfather encouraged people to go to school, sent his children and grandchildren to school.
He was a very principled man. The European District Officer at that time used to visit him.
“My cousins, my parents and I drew a lot of inspirations from him. He was a very progressive, principled and industrious man”, Iyayi told a reporter.
Iyayi was influenced by his grandfather and the missionaries especially the Catholic Reverend Fathers of that time. In an interview with a national newspaper he stated:
“As I said, if you came from such a background, you are bound to be affected. Then, of course, I went to Annunciation Catholic College (ACC), Irrua. It was a school where discipline was a core value. We had Rev. Fathers, like Father Angiune; he was very instrumental then to our upbringing in the secondary school. Again, you experienced fairness. For example, when I got to Annunciation Catholic College, I discovered that everybody had to be a Catholic, but when I left Ugbegun for the college”.

In a review by Tolase Latinwo, he systematically pictured Iyayi as a visionary writer and a prophet, as a writer. 

 Iyayi’s Violence is thematically about those who faces hardship and struggles to make a living.

“The novel chronicles a desperate man Idemudia, who is in need to fend for himself and his wife, Adisa. The hard economy often pushes him to extremes such as selling his blood.

Unfortunately, all he ever gets is temporary relief as poverty refuses to release its tight grip on him.

When he gets a menial job as a labourer, he clutches onto it like a drowning man would straw, only to work himself into a coma. Confined to his sick bed, life seems very unfair to Idemudia. He concludes that “his unfinished education, his joblessness, his hunger, his poverty, all these … were different forms on violence” exerting themselves on him.

Similarly, in her desperate bid to save her husband from the grip of death and offset the mounting hospital bill, Adisa commits adultery. This act of desperation threatens the couple’s marital life until Idemudia recognises the depth of sacrifice both of them have had to make to survive the ‘violence’ of forces that Queen, Obofun and the society at large have wielded on them.

Though the novel portrays the life of a poor, jobless man in Nigeria of the 70s, it equally mirrors the struggles and hardship thousands of jobless youths face today. More importantly, it raises a few issues on business ethics and human resources management which are worth reflecting on in today’s business environment.

One important issue raised in Violence concerns remuneration. One may ask if there is not a fair and acceptable standard for determining the wages or salaries an employer pays or an employee receives for his labour. It seems workers tend to receive only a part of what employers can or are ready to pay.
The story, however, reveals that workers do not always accept what is dished out by employers and sometimes seek ways to negotiate more pay as happens when Idemudia and his co-workers are forced to call a strike when all efforts to negotiate with Queen fails. The threat of a strike is met with resistance and Queen makes all attempts to suppress the strike. This style of human resources management is what Idemudia describes as slavery:

“A man gets a job and he cannot protest. He cannot ask for higher wages, the period of his leisure is cut down arbitrarily and he must come out to work when he is old. This was slavery”

Sexual inducement and sexual gratification are ethical issues that Violence highlights. In the business world, the belief that you use what you have to get what you need seems to support the unethical behaviour of business men and women who see sexual inducement (as frequently practiced by Queen to receive government contracts, and Obofun’s demand for sexual gratification before he (Obofun) can offer Adisa assistance in the form of whisky to sell) as a justifiable means to an end.

Violence is full of suspense and has a twist at the end when Idemudia suddenly learns about Adisa’s infidelity. Furthermore, the treatment of business ethics and human resources management is thought provoking and remains topical decades after the book was written”. All these issues raised by Iyayi 24 years ago are today’s common enemy of the poor in modern Nigeria.