Ali Must Go remains one of the most recognisable political slogans in the history of Nigerian student activism. What began in April 1978 as a dispute over changes in university financing rapidly became a national confrontation involving the National Union of Nigerian Students, university authorities, the police and the military government of General Olusegun Obasanjo.
A photograph attributed to the Bim Babarinde archive is captioned as showing Deji Osibogun and his friend Yomi Sobowale at the University of Ibadan around the period of the crisis. Both men were connected to the university during that era. Osibogun studied Theatre Arts at Ibadan before beginning a career in broadcasting, while Dr Yomi Sobowale later graduated from the University of Ibadan College of Medicine in 1981.
The photograph evokes a generation whose university years coincided with a fundamental argument about the responsibilities of the Nigerian state: how much of higher education should government finance, and how far could students go in resisting decisions made by an unelected military administration?
Nigeria’s Expanding University System
The dispute developed against the background of the rapid expansion of education during Nigeria’s oil boom.
Following the civil war, increased petroleum revenues gave successive military governments greater resources for infrastructure and social programmes. Education became one of the most visible areas of state investment.
The Federal Government launched the Universal Primary Education programme in September 1976. In 1977, university tuition fees were abolished, strengthening the expectation among many Nigerians that education would increasingly be treated as a public responsibility rather than a privilege determined mainly by family income.
That expansion, however, was expensive.
EXPLORE: Nigerian Civil War
By the later 1970s, Nigeria’s finances were under increasing pressure. Government expenditure had risen sharply, while the favourable economic conditions of the earlier oil boom were weakening. Officials began seeking ways to reduce the cost of maintaining an expanding university system.
University tuition remained free, but the government moved to increase what students paid for feeding and accommodation.
The University Charges Behind Ali Must Go
Popular accounts of the Ali Must Go crisis often focus on food charges, but the financial changes affected more than meals.
Subsidised feeding charges that had stood at about 50 kobo per day were increased to ₦1.50. Accommodation charges also rose substantially, reaching about ₦90 per session under the revised arrangements.
The changes appeared especially severe to students who had entered university during a period when the government was simultaneously promoting free tuition and wider access to education.
There was another important issue: student financial support.
The Federal Government was reconsidering its responsibility for loans and scholarships, particularly those intended to help students from poorer backgrounds. Responsibility for some forms of assistance was being shifted away from the centre.
For students from families without substantial financial resources, the argument was therefore larger than the cost of eating in a university cafeteria. It concerned whether a system that had recently promised broader educational opportunity might become increasingly difficult for poorer students to afford.
Segun Okeowo and the National Union of Nigerian Students
At the centre of the confrontation was the National Union of Nigerian Students, NUNS, led nationally by Segun Okeowo.
Okeowo served as NUNS national president during the 1977 to 1978 period and became the most prominent student leader associated with the uprising.
NUNS initially pursued the dispute through negotiations and public advocacy. Its leadership increasingly broadened the debate beyond specific feeding and accommodation charges.
The union pressed the principle of free and accessible education, challenging the military government over the wider direction of education policy.
Within the Federal Government, one of the most prominent officials associated with the controversy was Colonel Ahmadu Ali, the Federal Commissioner for Education.
Ali became the public face of the dispute, although the financing decisions involved the wider Federal Military Government and the National Universities Commission.
Professor Jibril Aminu, then Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, defended the need to revise university charges against the background of government financial pressures.
The institutional complexity of the policy would eventually disappear behind a much simpler and more powerful political message.
17 April 1978: The Nationwide Boycott Begins
On 17 April 1978, students began a nationwide boycott of lectures.
Major demonstrations occurred in university centres including Lagos, Ibadan, Ile-Ife and Zaria. Thousands of students and, in some locations, members of the wider public became involved.
The University of Ibadan was one of the important centres of mobilisation.
What began as an organised student action soon became increasingly confrontational. Police were deployed as demonstrations moved beyond campuses and onto public roads.
The most consequential early violence occurred in Lagos.
At the University of Lagos, police intervention during the demonstrations resulted in injuries and the shooting of Akintunde Ojo, a student whose death became one of the defining events of the crisis.
Ojo’s killing transformed the atmosphere.
A dispute that had begun over university policy was now also about the use of state force against students.
How Ali Must Go Became a National Slogan
The words Ali Must Go quickly became the rallying cry of the protests.
Students demanded the removal of Colonel Ahmadu Ali and continued to press for free education and changes to government policy.
The slogan was politically effective precisely because it simplified a complex dispute.
University financing involved the Federal Military Government, the National Universities Commission, education administrators and changing national economic circumstances. Protest movements, however, often rally around recognisable individuals who come to symbolise wider government decisions.
EXPLORE NOW: Military Era & Coups in Nigeria
Ali represented the education establishment.
His name therefore became shorthand for the policies students opposed and for the government they believed had failed to respond adequately to their grievances.
Violence Spreads Beyond Lagos
The confrontation did not remain confined to the University of Lagos.
There were disturbances at the University of Ibadan and the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, while events at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria became particularly deadly.
Students at ABU had initially participated in protest action, but the atmosphere deteriorated sharply as reports of deaths and police violence elsewhere spread.
Security forces confronted protesters in Zaria, and several people were killed.
The deaths in Zaria became another major turning point in the national crisis, deepening anger across university campuses.
By this stage, the original argument over accommodation and food charges had been overtaken by a wider struggle involving state authority, student rights and the use of force.
Obasanjo’s Military Government Responds
Nigeria was then governed by the military administration of General Olusegun Obasanjo, who had become Head of State following the assassination of General Murtala Muhammed in February 1976.
The government was unwilling to allow the demonstrations to continue indefinitely.
By 21 April 1978, the authorities moved to close universities affected by the unrest.
Student leaders were arrested. Segun Okeowo and other senior NUNS figures were among those detained in connection with the demonstrations.
The government subsequently established a commission of inquiry into the university crisis under Justice Uthman Mohammed. The commission examined the causes of the disturbances, the conduct of students and the response of state institutions.
The consequences also extended beyond the student movement.
University academics regarded by the authorities as sympathetic to radical student politics came under scrutiny, and the government later dismissed several university employees.
NUNS itself was eventually proscribed.
The crackdown demonstrated the limits of political organisation under military rule. Nigerian students had shown that they could mobilise nationally, but the government retained the power to close campuses, arrest leaders and dismantle their national union.
The Students Did Not Simply Win
Later memory has sometimes turned Ali Must Go into a straightforward story of courageous students confronting government and forcing it to retreat.
The outcome was more complicated.
The revised university financing arrangements were not simply abandoned because of the demonstrations. Universities reopened and the new charges largely remained.
Nor was Colonel Ahmadu Ali immediately removed because protesters demanded his departure. He continued as Federal Commissioner for Education until later in 1978.
Measured only against the immediate policy demands of the protests, the students did not achieve a clear victory.
Their lasting achievement was political.
They demonstrated the capacity of Nigerian students to coordinate action across campuses and place educational policy at the centre of a national debate.
They also established a model of student activism that would reappear repeatedly during subsequent decades of military and civilian government.
Deji Osibogun and Yomi Sobowale in a Generation of Protest
The photograph associated with Deji Osibogun and Yomi Sobowale offers a personal entry point into this larger history.
Osibogun studied Theatre Arts at the University of Ibadan. His career subsequently moved into broadcasting, public service and business. He worked in broadcasting from the late 1970s and later established Creazioni Nigeria Limited, while also becoming associated with media enterprises including Space FM.
Sobowale continued his medical education and graduated from the University of Ibadan College of Medicine in 1981.
Their subsequent careers unfolded far beyond the demonstrations of April 1978, but the university environment in which they came of age was being shaped by questions that extended well beyond academic life.
Who should pay for education?
How should public resources be distributed?
Could government policies be challenged through nationwide protest?
EXPLORE NOW: Democratic Nigeria
And what happened when students confronted a military state prepared to use force?
Those questions made April 1978 one of the defining episodes of Nigerian university history.
Conclusion
Ali Must Go endured because it became about much more than Colonel Ahmadu Ali.
The crisis began amid disputes over feeding charges, accommodation costs and changing arrangements for student financial assistance. Under Segun Okeowo, NUNS turned those grievances into a broader campaign over the meaning of accessible education.
The government’s response transformed an education dispute into a confrontation over political power.
Akintunde Ojo was killed in Lagos. More people died as violence spread, particularly in Zaria. Universities were closed, student leaders were detained and NUNS was proscribed.
The immediate financial policies survived the uprising, but the political memory did not disappear.
“Ali Must Go” became part of Nigeria’s language of protest because the events of April 1978 demonstrated how rapidly dissatisfaction over everyday policy could become a national challenge to authority.
Author’s Note
The central lesson of the 1978 Ali Must Go crisis is that disputes over education are rarely only about fees. The confrontation exposed deeper questions about inequality, public responsibility, representation and the right of citizens to challenge government policy. Although the students did not overturn every policy they opposed, their nationwide mobilisation permanently altered the history of Nigerian student unionism and left a political slogan whose meaning survived long after the prices that triggered the dispute had faded from public memory.
References
Federal Republic of Nigeria. Government Views on the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Nigerian Universities Crisis. Federal Ministry of Information, Lagos, 1978.
Longe, Olutunshore. No Justice, No Peace, No Education: An Exploration of the Nigerian Student Leader Contribution to the April 1978 Crisis. Department of History, Columbia University, 2022.
Ojo, J. D. “The Constitutional Aspects of April 1978 Students’ Demonstrations in the Nigerian Universities: A Critical Analysis.” Philippine Political Science Journal, Vol. 8, No. 12, 1980.
Onyeonoru, Ifeanyi. “Human Capital in Nigerian Universities: The Presence of the Past and the Thrust of the Future.” In The Idea of an African University: The Nigerian Experience. Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.
National Universities Commission. Biographical history of Professor Jibril Aminu, Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, 1974 to 1979.
National Association of Nigerian Students. Historical archive of NUNS and NANS national presidents, including Segun Okeowo, national president, 1977 to 1978.
University of Lagos. Institutional history of the 1978 student crisis and Akintunde Ojo.
University of Ibadan, College of Medicine. Alumni records for the 1981 graduating class.
Aghedo, Iro, and Oarhe Osumah. Studies of political violence and protest in Nigeria, African Study Monographs.
