Baba Aye's

Today is yet another day on the calendar with both personal and political significance to me. On this day 20 years ago, the Labour Party (LP) held its Founding Convention, with great hope which I captured in my article for the Labour Factsheet titled “We Have Arrived.” I was elected into the party’s leadership for the first time, with resounding applause. I remember a supposed journalist from a fake newspaper coming up to me to ask a question (I was quite sure he was SSS). His question was why did I get clearly the loudest ovation of those elected even though I emerged as National Auditor, a position that would be considered the least weighty on the NWC? My response was straightforward, I’d spent the better part of my 33 years at the time in selfless service to the working class first as a student activist across three campuses for almost a decade and then for five years as a full-time trade unionist, including as NLC Lagos State Chair (Caretaker Committee) at a crucial point in

Sixteen years ago, I was about leaving Gombe, where I had helped run an IUF education programme for its affiliate, the Agricultural and Allied Workers Union of Nigeria (AAWUN) when I got a phone call that my wife was in the labour ward to deliver our third child. By the time I got to Abuja, the bundle of joy was already in her mum's arms, kicking and crying with such energy.  It was one of those moments when the heart gets congealed with emotions that can be fully grasped with fatherhood. But there was an additional feeling that swept over me. And it came from the thought that I could very well have died sixteen earlier on that same date, and never had the privilege and pleasure of fathering her and her siblings.  That moment in 1992 was a political one. It was the day CAFCA took its last stand at the University of Ilorin. It was a day I almost died whilst saving a building torched by the anti-riot police's teargas from burning and almost lost my life in the process. We were ev

Students of the Federal College of Education (Technical) Akoka declared 18 February as Liberation Day, forty years ago. On that day, the autocratic Provost of the school, Dr Auta was humbled and made to reinstate the students union which he had banned five years earlier in the wake of the Great Anti-SAP Revolt. Four student leaders from the University of Lagos, Akoka came to invite him to the university campus close by, at the behest of the FCE(T) students: Omoyele "Sho" Sowore, Tope "Authority" Ajeigbe, Lanre & yours truly.  But the journey to that day started five months earlier with the resistance of 17 students at the college on teaching practice. These students, who included Tayo Aderinola, were denied their Teaching Practice allowance, even though this was budgeted for. And they asked questions.  Auta's response was to suspend them. But they would not simply give up. They formed a group called G17 with the help of Gbenga Fakoya, a former student and me

With increase in kidnapping and other crimes, the Afenifere leaders have just suggested a multi-level policing in the country. To what extent do you agree with the Afenifere leaders? Do you see this yielding meaningful results considering the existing Police structure? Kidnapping has become a major industry of what you can describe as the insecurity sector of the national economy. You might want to recall that in the first half of 2021 alone, over N10 billion which amounted to $19.96 million at the time, was recorded as ransoms paid to free over 2,000 kidnapped people. This did not stop the deaths of about 10 percent of these victims. We thought things were bad at that time. But compared to now, that was child’s play. This nefarious industry now has different scales, large-scale, medium scale, small scale and even micro. You tend to hear of those big women and men or increasingly so middle-class people that are kidnapped. But even welders, cobblers, barbers and other poor artisans