IN my visit to the United States from May 22, 2024 to deliver a Lecture, I was determined to meet a man I had never met. I wrote him from Nigeria and we agreed to meet. At the crowded Port Authority train station in New York, we easily picked out ourselves; his image was etched in my memory. We went into a locked embrace.
To us, the protesters were heroes. When in the new session that year, I was admitted into Ife, the first student rally I attended, was a demand that the four expelled leaders of those protests must be re-admitted to complete their studies. One of them was Offiong Offiong Aqua, the 22-year-old pioneer President of the University of Calabar, UNICAL, Students Union.
The regime had befriended student leaders and so, did not expect any protest either from the students nor from a populace it assumed it had conquered. Aqua arrived from Ilorin in the night and immediately convened the UNICAL parliament which voted for protest. The parliamentary approval meant the student executive was empowered to utilize the union funds to actualise its decision. Back in 1978, that was no small money: one dollar was equivalent to 66 Kobo. So, the UNICAL Student Union budget was the equivalent of $2.5 million!
At this point some socialists led by veteran journalist, Dapo Fatogun, and labour leader, Wahab Goodluck, secured a scholarship for him to study in Moscow and also got a flight ticket.