ex-ASUU boss, Iyayi, died

FROM EMMANUEL ADEYEMI, Lokoja
The Sole Administrator of Specialist Hospital in Lokoja, Kogi Sttae, Dr. Paul Amodu, has revealed how former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)  and activist, Prof. Festus Iyayi, died in a road accident involving the convoy of Governor Wada Idris.
The ex-union leader died at about noon on Tuesday along Banda village about 10 kilometres from Lokoja, the state capital, when he was going to attend ASUU National Executive Council (NEC) meeting in Kano which was meant to resolve the  ASUU strike.

Amodu said he was briefed by one Dr. Idoko, who he attached to the governor’s convoy. according to him, the rear vehicle of the convoy rammed the bus in which Iyayi was travelling in as the bus tried to avoid a pot hole on the highway
In his words: “The accident occurred when the ASUU bus conveying Prof. Iyayi and one Dr. Ngozi Ilo was trying to dodge a pot hole on the highway when the rear vehicle in the governor’s convoy suddenly collided with them
“The vehicle collided with the side which the professor was sitting and something pierced straight through his heart, and he strapped on the seat motionless with a copy of a national newspaper in his hand
“Beside his seat was a pair of Novas an anti-hypertensive drug which suggests that he might have been hypertensive. However, the woman sitting in the front of the vehicle (Dr Ngozi Ilo) only had part of her right hand flesh slightly chopped off, no fracture in the hand as alleged
“When she was rushed here, we later discovered she had a little cut in the leg and a fracture in the tipia bone (upper part of the leg), she was treated by a consultant, Dr Chizoba Osita Nwokese and had been discharged
“I believe that what will be will be. Although he must have been hypertensive, but he died due to an object, which penetrated straight through his heart,” Dr. Amodu said.
Meanwhile, Iyayi’s corpse was claimed at the specialist hospital by his immediate younger brother, Peter Iyayi, who is a lecturer at the Federal University in Lokoja
The younger Iyayi came in company of some ASUU officials including the branch chairman of Ambrose Alli University in Ekpoma, Edo State, who left with the body at about 12 noon yesterday.