The first part of this topic, published on Sunday, 15 September, 2024, was the debate between the Marxist scholar at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife, Dr. Segun Osoba (as he then was), and another (conservative, foreign) lecturer in the same institution, Professor L. Beverley Halstead over Osoba’s acceptance of the request by the university’s Student Union Government to “give a small talk” to the Great Ife students on the occasion of the third anniversary of the gruesome murder, on February 1, 1971, of a University of Ibadan undergraduate, Adekunle (‘Kunle) Adepeju, during a peaceful student protest on the U.
I. campus. Accepting, Osoba intimated the students that he would speak on “Student power in a situation of public moral crisis”.
We saw in the first part how Halstead felt it was not part of Osoba’s duties to give what he perceived would be an “inciting” talk to the students and how he said the university authorities were sitting on edge over the matter. Osoba, on the other hand, argued forcefully that it was both his responsibility and patriotic duty to address the students. Today, we are publishing the “small talk” delivered by Osoba.
We shall return to make closing remarks: “Our nation is in the grips of a serious moral crisis and value disorientation. We live in an age when our consciences have become so blunted and de-sensitized by the greed for personal wealth and power that the suffering of millions of .