An academic lecturer in the University of Benin and accomplished novelist, Professor Festus Iyayi is dead.
He died in a car crash this morning while travelling to Kano by road to take part in the National Executive Council meeting of the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) scheduled for Wednesday.
The meeting was put together by ASUU to discuss modalities to end the five months old strike, which has paralysed academic activities in the nation’s ivory towers after ASUU’s meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja.
Born in 1947, in Ugbegun in Ishan, Edo State, Dr. Iyayi was president of ASSU in 1986 until 1988 when the union was banned and he was detained. He has authored many books among which is Violence, The Contract, Heroes, and Awaiting Court Martial. He won the Commonwealth prize for Literature in 1988 with his book, Heroes.