'Ali Must Go' — The 1978 Student Protests

In April 1978 the federal government, under Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjo and Federal Commissioner for Education Colonel Ahmadu Ali, increased the daily university feeding charge by 50 kobo — a reversal of long-standing subsidies. The National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS), led by Segun Okeowo, called nationwide protests under the slogan "Ali Must Go." On the campuses of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, the University of Lagos, the University of Ibadan, the University of Ife and elsewhere, soldiers and police were deployed. Students were shot; Akintunde Ojo at Lagos was among the named dead, alongside others at ABU. NUNS was banned and Okeowo was arrested. The episode is one of the earliest documented instances of military-era violence against a national student movement and is invoked in every subsequent campus mobilisation through the 1980s and 1990s. Ahmadu Ali later returned to public office as PDP National Chairman in the Fourth Republic, where the chants of "Ali Must Go" followed him into retirement.