Soyinka seeks coroner’s inquest into Iyayi’s death

 Professor Wole Soyinka

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Tuesday said a coroner’s inquest should be conducted into the death of a former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Festus Iyayi, before his burial.

Soyinka in a statement said failure to conduct the inquest to ascertain the cause of Iyayi’s death would “make all of us accessories to a possible crime.”

He enjoined other citizens to demand the inquest along with him as a means of seeking a “collective shield” and  also in  the service of truth and patriotism.

There have been controversies surrounding Iyayi’s death after he was killed in a car crash on his way to Kano to participate in the National Executive Council meeting of ASUU.

Soyinka’s call for a coroner’s inquest appeared to have arisen from the publication of the mortuary photos of Iyayi’s body in The NEWS magazine.

The poet and playwright said tributes to the late Iyayi were meaningless if doubts surrounding his death were “silenced.”

He said, “The world is watching. With the mortuary photos of the late Festus Iyayi just published in THE NEWS, the world is waiting and watching if the corpse shown in that image will be interred without a coroner’s inquest.

 “To allow this to happen is to make all of us accessories to a possible crime. It means we are now attuned to the culture of impunity and forfeited all claims to elementary citizen security. Tributes ring hollow if doubts are silenced.” Read more