And a gallant soldier marches on – A tribute to Comrade Motajo

Comrade Abdulkareem Motajo with Giraldo Mazola Collazo the Cuban Ambassador to Namibia, in 2017

The news from Abiodun Aremu on a WhatsApp group on the Nigerian Left earlier this evening packed a heavy blow in one paragraph. Comrade Adulkareem Motajo, who had a diabetic condition, passed on yesterday night in Cuba. Arymson had been contacted by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples (ICAP). The message was a painful one: “…I'm very sorry to write to you at this time. Unfortunately, I am writing to give you a sad news. Our brother, friend, Comrade motajo died a few hours ago around 8 pm… The medical team did everything in their hands to save him but It was not possible. I'm So sorry.”

Comrade Motajo was a soldier’s soldier on the left for his boldness. To me, this was not about his being clearly the closest socialist in the country to the Cuban people. It was his readiness to throw body, heart and soul with audacity into practical work, even when this could cost him his life.

He was a protégé of Wahab Omorilewa Goodluck (Baba Goodie or WOG). By the time I would know Baba Goodie in the late 1980s, Motajo, a member of the Socialist Working People’s Party (SWPP) led by IF (Ibidapo Fatogun) & WOG  had already proceeded to Cuba for studies. We met only in 1992, after he came back, through Rotimi “Molobi” Yaqub, who unfortunatelypassed away four years ago.

At the time, Molobi was building the Labour Redemption Movement which published a monthly cyclostyled paper Labour Guard, from the old IF & WOG office two blocks away from the NLC Headquarters on Olajuwon, Yaba. Building on the successes of LRM, we started building the Imoudu Front of Nigeria at the beginning of 1993. We worked together in its protem central committee. Molobi was interim coordinator, I served as the interim General Secretary and Motajo as interim publicity secretary.

When the founding congress of the IFN held on 3^rd July, we resolved on having a full-time worker (a dockworker, Comrade Oye’) as General Secretary, and I became a became co-secretary for propaganda and education with Motajo. In that role, we produced The Imouduist also a cyclostyled paper, but of higher production standards and richer contents than the Labour Guard.

At the time, Motajo worked as a full-time secretary of the Isolo Rd., Mushin branch of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW). Shortly after, during the Abacha period, he became General Secretary of the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE). After the reinstatement of the republic, he was ousted in a power struggle within NUATE.

But he remained undaunted, he would come back years later as Assistant General Secretary of the union and rise back to become its General Secretary, a position he held till he clocked 60 years in 2015 and retired. During his period as GS of NUATE, and for a few years after, he also served as a member of the presidium of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU). One can say his sole efforts more or less led to winning almost a dozen affiliates of both the NLC and TUC to the WFTU, even though they all still remained affiliated to their Global Union Federations comprising the Council of Global Unions with the ITUC.

One thing which made Motajo stand heads and shoulders above most comrades of his generation, particularly as they grew beyond their early ‘40s was his readiness to organise and fight on the field. He was someone you could go into battle with, without the slightest fear that he would not hold his ground. I can remember several street protests in the military days when one would look around once the bullets started raining and would see only a few comrades. Motajo would definitely be one of them, no matter how few the last ones standing were.

Probably his most iconic stand was however during the civilian regime of General Obasanjo. In 2003, the greatest of the many resistance with general strikes and mass protests against fuel price increments before 2012 was waged for 8 days. Workers power shutdown the country from 30 June to 7 July. An angered Obasanjo who had just been sworn-in for his second term barely a month earlier declared that the NLC was running things like an alternative government!

Decisive battles were fought on the streets in those days. Probably the sharpest of these were on 6 July. By that time, what had been a total shutdown was facing some reverses, and the state was becoming emboldened. The TUC which had joined NLC for the strike pulled out (resulting in a split and emergence of a short-lived CFTU). And buses had started plying some major roads.

From our reports, one of the main places this was going on was the Badagry Express Road. Under the command of the late Bright Anokwuru, the NUSDE president and a member of the NLC CWC, we marched on that major highway. When the bus drivers stubbornly continued moving despite appeals to them, I threw myself on the tarmac. Anokwuru felt that was a crazy and suicidal act and tried to get me to stand up.

Motajo was like ẹ fi sí lè, ẹ fi Baba Aye sí lè. Tí wọn ba don wò, wọn a don tán - òkú a sùn ní bí lé ní (leave him alone, leave Baba Aye alone. If they try it, they will have to finish it, a lot of dead bodies will litter here today). Eventually, we managed to stop traffic with that, well, arguably mad act on my part. But that was not the icing on the cake of mad defiance that day.

When we got back to the NLC secretariat, the police tried to kettle us in. Teargas billowed as they repeatedly kept firing these into our ranks. Motajo grabbed an NLC banner and walked directly through that haze, without so much as a handkerchief to keep the fumes from his nose, to the anti-riot mobile policemen (MOPOL).

They were shouting “get back, we will shoot!” And his responses? Initially he was like “you can’t shoot me you are workers like us”. “Your officers are exploiting you, how many of them are here?” As the “go back or we shoot!” became strident cries from the police, he went on like “I am not armed – I carry the workers’ flag. If you kill me, the workers will wrap my body up in this”.

He marched up to the now rather confused policemen and offered them the NLC flag. They refused to collect it. But shortly after they left us in peace, for that day – we had won a battle, grace a Motajo! The following day, the police killed four protesters, including one at the gates of the NLC Headquarters.

I think that apart from his natural omo eko ruggedness (I used to jokingly and with respect call him agbalagba omo ‘ta, sometimes), this his bold approach to battles was also informed by his “Cubanization”. One can say that in many a way, Motajo was and saw himself as more Cuban than Nigerian.

The Yoruba lineage between the south western peoples in Nigeria and the Afro-Cuban movement was no doubt one of the reasons for this, particularly aver the last twenty-five years of his life. But it was much more than that, it was rooted in the heritage of Fidel, Che, the 26^th of July Movement and the Sierra Maestra.

As I earlier said, without a doubt Motajo was the closest person on the Nigerian left to the Cubans. He actually had a home there and had won awards of friendship. He was seen as an unofficial Ambassador of Cuba to Nigeria and with just cause. Thus, not surprisingly, he played a key role in the re-organisation of the Nigeria-Cuba Friendship and Cultural Association (NCFCA) at the turn of the century.

We worked closely together on this project, with Archbishop Magnus Atilade, whom we also lost last year and Molobi. A new executive committee was constituted in the year 2000. The Archbishop was president, Molobi secretary general, Motajo communications officer and me as PRO. Once again, we sat together on an editorial board, this was for the publication of Cuba Si, newsletter of the NCFCA.

Years later, in alignment with the changing situation in Cuba, and to my chagrin, the NCFCA would transform into the Nigeria-Cuba Friendship, Business and Cultural Association (NCFBCA) with Motajo still its heart and soul.

As an International Socialist, my view on Cuba had always been at best one of critical support. I was inspired by the history of the Cuban revolution and the role of Cuba in Portuguese-colonised African countries’ liberation struggles as a young teenage revolutionary. I still am. And the country’s role in recent times on the new coronavirus pandemic shows how attempts at building a post-traditional capitalist society, with a socialist ideology, could result in greater prioritisation of social services like healthcare.

Socialism in my view though, is much more than “nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy” and formal structures of “people’s democracy”. A socialist revolution cannot simply be about giving bread to the people. Working-class people must have bread and roses – and they must take both the bakery and the garden in their very own hands in palpable ways.

Motajo was aware of my views and there was mutual respect whilst we collaborated, despite his obviously staunch “Marxist-Leninist” ideological disposition. More lasting differences had to do with the question of ethnic identity. Like many on the Left, particularly but not at all limited to Yoruba comrades, he also dug deep into the quicksand of “self-determination” struggle.

From the later part of the 1990s when it was formed, till he took his last breath, Motajo was one of the pillars of the O’odua Liberation Movement (OLM). Whilst I have maintained friendly personal relations with comrades in a number of the Yoruba self-determination groups, apart from possibly those in the Yoruba Revolutionary Movement (YOREM), OLM cadres were the ones I have remained closest with.  The group has had some of the finest from the left, Baba Omojola, Rotimi ´Molobi” Yaqub Obadofin and now Motajo all of whom have now passed on, as well as Riro and the likes of Milo & Iku who remain as the group’s standard-bearers.

Despite his turn to the politics of ethnic identity, Motajo never stop seeing himself as a Communist. In the early years of the century about a dozen or less of the remaining disciples of WOG, such as Motajo, Joel E., Dr J & Dan U., constituted themselves into a Communist Party of Nigeria (COMPON). I told him this was a sect almost in the religious sense as it made little sense for such a number to consider itself a party. He agreed that my position might be valid. But, considering the near collapse of the left, even holding to the faith of what could be and proclaiming it as such was, he argued, important.

He further tried to cajole me into joining them. He said, “you see that is why we need younger bright revolutionaries like you to join COMPON. I know you are M31M, but it doesn’t matter”. Motajo was the youngest of the members of COMPON. Of course, I laughed it off, and we continued with the beers we were having.

But in 2005, when our group would take the first step towards rallying the left together as the All-Nigeria Socialist Alliance (ANSA, 2005 – 20100) by convening an Abuja Socialist Collective (ASC) on 12 October, it was from COMPON that we got support. The letter issued was signed by four persons, ostensibly as two leftists in the trade unions and two from the CSOs. But only one of these, Daniel Umaru, then a Deputy General Secretary of AUPCTRE was not a member of our group.

Whilst ANSA lasted, Motajo participated in its life, particularly in the first two or three years. Like many others, and particularly so as a man of action, he was pissed by the lethargy that began to set in pretty quickly reducing it in no time to an annual talking forum of the left. After this, he turned towards trying to help build the Labour Party as a mass, left force.

He had been involved in the Labour Party from its inception in 2002, but from the side lines. We engaged in a series of lengthy strategic discussions on how to make the party what it should have been in the period leading to its Founding Convention on 28 February 2004, where I was elected into its first National Working Committee.

When it became obvious within a few years that both the trade union bureaucracy and the dominant right-wing of the party bureaucracy were hellbent on keeping the party as an establishment party draped with the colours of Congress, we also worked together with a number of other groups on the left to constitute the Campaign for a Mass-Based Labour Party (CMBLP). Motajo (along with Anokwuru) was the pillar of CMBLP in the trade union movement.

The NUATE secretariat became the centre of CMBLP activities. And when the campaign collapsed shortly after the 2^nd Regular Convention of LP on 12 December 2009, it still remained a key space for left activities open to all for meetings, symposiums, media briefings etc – of course including the NUATE restaurant and bar, with tasty dishes, ever chilled beer and clusters of workers discussing in a relaxed atmosphere.   

For almost thirty years, even when we didn’t agree, including on political strategy and tactics, we maintained a warm relationship, for he was forthright and one whose commitment to the struggle sprang forth from his heart. He was human, with his failing, but as a comrade said to me on the phone while writing this “Motajo se ‘yan”. And another on a WhatsApp platform said he was “one of our most consistent comrades”.

As I write, beyond the political or as some of those things that reflect the personal being political, several moments we shared flash through my mind. In different parts of Lagos and Abuja, the beer parlours and gardens we visited, the laughter as we washed down pepper soup with “maximum security standard” cold beers and joked. It’s hardly surprising that my last port of call before leaving and first port of call on arrival anytime I was traveling out of the country through Lagos or even on some local flights from that airport was more often than not the NUATE secretariat, when he was GS.

And whenever he was coming to Abuja whilst I was there, he would have called me “Baba Aye ki lo ‘n se le? Ba wo la se ‘n ri ra? (what is happening, how do we see?). On several occassions, I would pick him up at the airport. And when work made that impossible it was almost definite that anyhow, anyhow we would meet up later in the evening. Sometimes he’d pass the night at our place or simply come and visit my wife and the children, saying he always looked forward to my wife’s cooking and wished he had more time when in Abuja to visit us at home.

I also remember seeing him last at the symposium in honour of Archbishop Magnus Atilade, a day to the interment of his remains, at New State High School, Mushin, in January 2019. I also met his wife, Arike Motajo. My heart goes out to you, big sister. Take comfort in the fact that our comrade lived a good life and touched many a life. He was a gallant soldier in many ways. And he lived life to the full as he knew he could. A gallant soldier marches on, into history. His deeds and strength of character will never be forgotten. His fight is over, but the struggle continues until victory. Fare thee well comrade, Rest in Power!

Ferney-Voltaire

21/4/2020