TAJUDEEN'S POSTCARD: REMEBERING FALLEN COMRADES IN NIGERIA

For any comments and input please respond to Dr. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem
or


29 September 2005

The past week has not been a good one for the endangered specie of
committed progressive people in Nigeria. Middle of the week there was the
tragic death, by yet another road accident of Comrade Chima Ubani,42,
Director of the country's premier human Rights NGO, Civil Liberties
Organisation, CLO, and a foremost defender of the poor, and a shining star
for consistency and total commitment to the struggle for the liberation
of the ordinary people in the face of successive autocratic military
regimes of the 80s and 90s in Nigeria and the creeping elective
dictatorship of a civilianized General Obasanjo since 1999.

He died in an accident between Maiduguri and Kano in the north East
part of the country where he had been part of the Key leaders of Civil
Society and the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, mobilizing support for a
successful series of national strikes across the country against yet
another increase (the Eight since Obasanjo return to office in 1999) in the
price of petroleum products.

His body and that of the deputy photography Editor of The Vanguard
Newspaper, himself an active Trade Unionist, Oyeleru, who also died in the
accident were returned to Lagos on Saturday.

They are yet to be buried but that same day (Saturday 24, 2005) yet
another tragedy struck at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital,
Samaru-Zaria, the death a Senior comrade, veteran strugglist, radical
historian and organic intellectual in the tradition of Frantz Fanon and
Amilcar Cabral: Dr Yusuf Bala Usman. Many people outside of Nigeria may
not have known him personally but more would have become aware of him
by reputation and remember and mourn the sad loss of the firebrand Pan
Africanist Intellectual guerilla.

It was an inconsolable weekend. For my generation of Student activists
Bala Usman was the icon of our times whose radical scholarship and
political activism thought us to ask very uncomfortable questions about the
kind of knowledge we were being taught and the society we were living
in.

The 70s and 80s were full of epic battles and the cold war was at its
peak. In Africa, the liberation of Southern Africa including former
Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau on the West
coast, Zimbabwe and South Africa from settler regime and apartheid were
prominent on the agenda. The struggle against neo-colonialism was also
intense and anti imperialist struggles were being waged across the
underdeveloped world from Africa through Asia to the Middle East and Latin
America. These were days before Donor-driven formalized struggles that
have today turned many revolutionaries into RESOLUTIONARIES.

They were periods when imperialism was called by its proper name not
disguised under euphemisms like globalisation, Friends or partners!

Bala and his peers of equally committed scholar-activists from across
the continent who were teaching in various universities in Nigeria in
those Oil boom days opened our eyes and ears to the world around us and
inspired us to believe that we can change it for better. There were many
radical scholars, some of them exiles and refugees from Idi Amin and
Obote 2 regimes in Uganda including Prof Yolamu Barongo, the indomitable
Okot a P'itek and the confirmed Nigerian-Uganda one of the veteran Pan
Africanists of that period who have stuck it out in Nigeria, Ocello
Oculi.

There were others like Yusuf Bangura, AB Zack Williams and others.
There were radical scholars from the Diaspora too like Dr Patrick Wilmot
who was later deported from Nigeria by the Babangida regime. People Like
Ali Mazrui were regular Guest Lecturers on Nigeria's campuses trailing
one controversy or the other. By no means were all the radical
lecturers only Africans or people from the diaspora. There were
internationalists like Bjorn Beckman Ahmadu Bello university became the haven for
progressive scholarship and a big thorn on the sides of the ruling cliques
of Nigeria. There was progressive hegemony on the campuses that shaped
student ambitions and inspire them to read critically.

The high point of this was the centenary of Marx conference held at
Ahmadu Bello University in 1983. Some of the sectarian political and
intellectual battles that was to decimate the Left forces not only in Abu
but across the country could be traced to this period.

Bala was very prominent in these debates and enjoyed for many years the
status of first among equals. He was born into the royal house of
Katsina in emirate northern Nigeria, he did not have to do anything to
survive. He could just have demanded and be given anything he wanted by way
of personal pleasures and riches by virtue of being a royal and growing
up at a time when the Emirs held sway. In the colonial settlement the
British had ensured the inbuilt hegemony of the Hausa-Fulani aristocracy
over the affairs of Nigeria, a legacy that is still shaping Nigeria's
power struggles today.

Bala could have combined his royal long spoon with his academic
erudition and choose to be part of any government or ruling cliques across the
country and feed fat on the sweat and blood of the people of Nigeria.
But Bala chose to side with the masses. He became a traitor to his
class. He committed a class suicide and remained a revolutionary throughout
his life. He could have checked out of the country like many of us
(some voluntarily, some of us became stranded abroad, and others left
through coercion or for tactical/strategic reasons) but he did not. He
believed that he was best able to contribute directly from the home front.

Whatever political or intellectual disagreements anyone may have
developed with YB Usman in a life steeped in struggles on many fronts even
his worst critics will pay him the tribute of saying he remained true to
his convictions against every odd, trial and tribulations.

At a time when too many former Leftists have left the struggle and
found light on the other side. In periods when some of our erstwhile
comrades will ban their own books or articles if they could there is
something to be said for a Man who stayed the course till the end of his
relatively short life. He was only 60 though because many have known his name
for a long time they always thought he was much older.

Nigeria is indeed made more impoverished both intellectually and
politically now that the loud and very clear thunderous Voice of Bala will no
longer be there to speak unpleasant truths to power in that potentially
great country damned by successive little minded leaders impervious to
any knowledge that could go beyond their noses so as to deliver on the
great promise of the country.

It is perhaps befitting to a life of struggle that Bala's last public
duty that many will remember for its high drama was at a conference last
month called by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on
corruption. Bala was one of the participants.

President Obasanjo was the Chief guest and he addressed the audience
with his usual monologue and holier-than-thou pomposity. At intervention
time Bala was on the floor and he, as was characteristic of his
fearless and fierce intellect took on Baba Iyabo (Father of Iyabo, as Obasanjo
is also known in Nigeria) and tore into then empty shrines of his timid
anti-corruption crusade and leader-centric governance.

As we all know, Obasanjo is such a big 'democrat' who cannot understand
or continence anyone disagreeing with him and doing so, so openly! He
ordered his Security goons to seize the microphone from Bala otherwise
he was going to walk out. Somehow the Security heavies could not find
the over 6 feet tall Bala who was standing with a microphone in a hall
full of all the high and mighty in Nigeria. The conclusion of many was
that even the security guys were sympathetic to Bala's lampooning of
President-Know-all. That was Bala Usman: Bold, full of guts and fearless
before those who think of themselves as our lords and Masters.

Of course the hypocrisy of conspicuous grief after death of a public
figure is already suffocating the country. The President was one of the
first to send condolences on the two departed comrades declaring one 'a
brilliant young activist' and the other 'a statesman' and how the
country will sorely miss them!

It is customary to pray for the departed the departed but I want to
make a slight change to the convention by saying: May the spirit of Bala
and Chima remain restless and Continue to haunt us to continue the
struggle for which they lived and died actively serving.


"Forward ever, backward never".....Kwame Nkrumah (1909 - 1972)

..................DON'T AGONISE! ORGANISE!!.......

For any comments and input please respond to Dr. Tajudeen Abdul Raheem
Tajudeen28@yahoo.com or thursdaypostcard@justiceafrica.org



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