Today, the remains of Professor Ayodele Olukotun, the eminent scholar-journalist, will be committed to mother-earth within the grounds of the University of Ibadan. Predictably, since the passage of this Punch columnist, tributes have continued to pour forth on the life and times of this remarkable public-spirited intellectual.
Today, the remains of Professor Ayodele Olukotun, the eminent scholar-journalist, will be committed to mother-earth within the grounds of the University of Ibadan. Predictably, since the passage of thiscolumnist, tributes have continued to pour forth on the life and times of this remarkable public-spirited intellectual.
Meanwhile, as a perennial Students’ Union official, he also had a running battle with the then status-quo forces of the Nigerian State. On this note, I vividly remember his confrontation with the Federal Commissioner for Information during the Gowon regime. He, that is, the commissioner, made some untenable assertions about public affairs in Nigeria. Olukotun, as an officer of the Students’ Union, would not let him be. He took on the Federal Commissioner.
The whole nation was on edge. Would the 10,000 strong students of Ife under the leadership of Olukotun trek to Lagos as threatened? Under the feverish and rather charged circumstances, I recall that Olukotun himself appeared onto discuss the issue. On the tube, when pressed further on the proposed trek by television reporters, Olukotun cryptically deflected the interviewer’s thrust by saying, “We are keeping our strategies close to our chest.” Ultimately the trek to Lagos never happened.
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