Aremson: The Tragic Exit of A Hero of Our Barricades

There is no death in recent times that has left me as disconcerted as the tragic killing of Aremson by a hit-and-run driver on 12 October. I have tried to write, and each time got disoriented by the weight of emotions, some of which I still grapple with naming.

This is not simply because of memories from over three and a half decades of friendship. I recalled our collaboration, the heated debates that continued late into the night before mobile phones, and the lengthy WhatsApp calls of recent times. My mind went to the cell we shared at Ikoyi prison during the June 12 struggle and the bed in a dingy hotel somewhere between Ojuelegba and Yaba as we put mechanisms in motion for the burning of tires to effect an NLC/TUC general strike that was called off at the last moment. I reflected on how my respect for Aremson soared when I visited him at home in August. Seeing the impact of a series of strokes on his health, and how he remained unbowed and unrepentant, I saluted him as one of the most rugged never-say-die fighters in the ring of life itself.

Over the last few days, as I stared at the blank page on my computer, my mind kept going back to what Femi Obayori described as fate’s trickery on humankind, and indeed on one of its finest species not because he was perfect, but because he was consistent, tenacious and dogged in fighting. Bullets, detention, stress and even stroke could not stop his heart from beating with the passion of struggle for the working people he lived for. It was a bloody hit-and-run that stilled the heart of one who lived such a remarkable life, with such a rude finality!

The life of Aremson was, however, not merely a life. It was deeply rooted in, mirrored and inspired the spirit of resistance for generations. And whilst his breath has ceased, that life, like a seed buried, will breathe life into the hearts of generations of fighters for generations to come. Ours is to water it, with our stories in tribute, of the heroic struggle at our barricades which defined the life of a people’s general: Abiodun “Aremson” Aremu.  

From Ilorin to Lagos: first contacts, PAYCO & the embers of PLM

My first meeting with Aremson was sometime in 1989 at what used to be the Triumph Motel in Ilorin. That apartment is one of those revolutionary spaces that would have a lot to say if walls could talk. It was  the base of the People’s Liberation Movement (PLM) comrades where lively debates would stretch into the nights, even when there was little to eat or drink. Aremson’s  expressed his passionate commitment to the struggle and the inspiration of the Cuban revolution on his politics. Apart from the Nigeria-Cuban Friendship and Cultural Association (NCFCA) which I would serve as publicity secretary several years later, he made me aware of the Friends of Abel Santamaria.

Two years later, I moved to Lagos, and we reconnected at one of the activities organised by the trade unions to honour Wahab Goodluck after his death on 10 September 1991. This would mark the beginning of closer collaboration on some fronts. The first of these was the Pan-African Youth Congress (PAYCO), where Aremson’s influence was always palpable even though he did not occupy any leading official position. Richard Mamah was National President and Femi Obayori the General Secretary. I was saddled with the task of serving as PAYCO Lagos State Secretary, with Victor Imana as Chair. We were also (along with Rasta Paul) the key officials of the League of Black Nationalists (LBN) on campus at Unilag.

From the beginning of 1992, the PAYCO Lagos Chapter organised a series of guest lectures and symposiums and the weekly “African Discussion Forum” sessions at the All-Africa Peace and Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO) office a building away from the NLC secretariat on Olajuwon street. We also took political education to pupils in secondary schools, both on the mainland (Mushin and Ebute Meta) and on the Island (especially Obalende). We set up Pan-African Students Clubs (PASCs) in some of these schools. In others, we spurred them (the students as well as progressive teachers whom we met in the course of organising) to reshape some of the existing student societies such as Press Clubs, literary & debating societies, and historical societies, into theatres of radical discussions on African history and Pan-African possibilities.

When Dr Mayirue Eyeniegi Kolagbodi died in July 1992, Aremson was pivotal in the flurry of activities to honour the great trade unionist. This would lead to the formation of the Kolagbodi Memorial Foundation (KMF). KMF’s annual guest lecture delivered by leading pro-working class academics and trade union leaders have continued till date as leading moments in the Nigerian labour movement’s calendar. KMF also publishes the Labour Factsheet. 

It is important to underscore the importance, in my view, of the PLM (or WPLM: Working People’s Liberation Movement, as it initially was called)  in the evolution of Aremson’s politics. It was the most worker-oriented Marxist-Leninist group in practice, after the eclipse of the Socialist Working People’s Party (SWPP) of Wahab Goodluck, Ibidapo Fatogun, S.U. Bassey & Co. in the 1980s. I hope comrades like Sandinista, Longman Bamidele and Nameless will take up documenting its history. Aremson’s politics reflected the finest dynamics of PLM’s ideological orientation and approach to practise for the rest of his life.

June 12 struggle: radicalisation and its discontents

The June 12 democratic revolution was a defining moment. We threw ourselves without reservation into organising and mobilising. Aremson’s place in Mushin was one of those places that were havens for comrades. Earlier in 1991, he had been arrested there with four student union leaders: Abdulmahmud Aminu, NANS President; Abiodun “Revo” Ogunade a former NANS Vice-President in the preceding leadership and; Olaitan Oyerinde, an Ex officio. Their “crime” was to have organised an Academic Reform campaign: ACAREF, which would entail improved funding of education and payment of bursaries to students.

What was a rivulet in the pre-June 12 period became a huge river. It was not simply that Aremson’s place became much more significant as a haven for resistance. His grassroots organising led to the identification and winning over of many a diehard fighter in the neighbourhood. I was a man of several homes and even more “drop-in & move next day” places. But, Mushin was the one place where I had three places I could call underground homes. From these, I worked closely with Aremson and other comrades in that axis to build resistance. To unite our forces, we formed the Progressive Youth League Mushin (PYLEM).

We organised a massive rally for the reversal of the annulment of the June 12 election at Isolo Junction in the heart of Mushin in September 1993. Police broke up the demonstration and arrested some youths in the area. We, the PYLEM organisers, could very well have got away without being arrested. But Aremson pointed out something that we all could not but agree with.

He argued that we would lose the moral right to call for another demonstration if we walked away, as the youths from the àdúgbò (area) who had answered our call were arrested. So, we stepped forward as leaders of the rally and demanded that the people arrested be released. The youths who had just been arrested were released. Aremson, Femi Opeolu, Wasiu and I were arrested instead. We were taken to Panti and pápàpá taken to the Yaba magistrate court and from there straight to Ikoyi prison.

The next two years of the six-year ideological and political contestation between revolution and counter-revolution that was the “June 12 struggle” threw up, amongst other things, an ethno-nationalist trend across tendencies on the left, sometimes (particularly as the O’odua People’s Congress, OPC), this was in collaboration with liberal elements. One of the earliest of these was the O’odua Youth Movement (OYM) which Aremson and most comrades from the earlier PLM project played key roles in. Those from that project who were within Molobi’s orbit were central to establishing the O’odua Liberation Movement (OLM).

In later years, as the June 12 struggle progressed, other Yorùbá self-determination groups such as the Yorùbá Revolutionary Movement (YOREM) led by Wálé Balógun, and united platforms such as the Àpapò led by Olá Òní, and the Coalition of O’odua Self-Determination Groups (COSEG) emerged as projects of some sections of the left in the South West.

I have always been of the view that for many on the left at that period, particularly so in the Southwest, who took up the gauntlet of self-determination, it was some shortcut calculus through the national question to socialist revolution. In discussions, some would argue that it would be easier to organise a struggle for socialist revolution in a largely mono-ethnic nation state.

Whatever the reason for that turn though, many got caught in the analytical primacy of ethnicity even within what could otherwise pass for class analysis. Aremu was not one of them. You would hardly ever, if at all, find him arguing from, or about, a Yorùbá standpoint, revolutionary or otherwise. Though he was a founding leader of OYM, all his public arguments showed working-class and anti-imperialist spirits, without any ambiguity whatsoever.   

The 21^st Century & popular barricades: UAD, ANSA, JAF/LASCO & ACIS-M

Born seven months before Nigeria’s independence, Aremu became politically aware as a teenager. By his early twenties, he had become a student leader and president of Kwara Tech, an institution which had a rich history of resistance in the heydays of the students movement. Aremu had also at the time set off on his path to being a lifelong anti-imperialist with undying affection for the Cuban revolution. The furnace of the June 12 struggle forged these elements of his politics into political steel.

Altogether, the 20^th century prepared him for the 21^st when we would have had to invent an Aremson if there had not been one. Opportunity met preparedness in the most challenging circumstances for the left, as Abiodun Aremu. These were within the rubric of the United Action for Democracy, the All Nigeria Socialist Alliance, and the Joint Action Front. Further, when the left movement had all but collapsed on campuses, with only a few Trotskyist and International Socialist groups having a presence on campuses, he helped build the only Marxist-Leninist youth movement ACIS-M amongst youths within and outside campuses.

To put the foregoing in perspective, we start with his role in the UAD. When we formed the UAD on 17 May 1997, the left largely dominated it (and in a way that reflected cleavages in the movement at the time), with Chima Ubani and Sylvester Odion-Akhaine as co-secretaries. But it was clear that it was a united front of the left with reformist liberal forces. Olisa Agbakoba as the pioneer National Convener reflected this fact.

Things appeared to change in 2002. The National Convention held in 2002 at the Michael Imoudu Hall, Labour House, Yaba, elected Bamidele Francis Aturu (BF) National Convener, leading a National Administrative Committee including J. Gaskie, Ibrahim Zikirullahi and Aremson. We celebrated that night: UAD was now unambiguously powered by the left. But as events would show, that was not enough.

The following year, BF ran for Lagos State governor on the Democratic Alternative platform. By UAD rules, he had to step aside for this purpose temporarily. However, even when he came back, he no longer provided leadership. When the tenure of that NAC expired, it was Aremson who provided leadership to save the day, first in a caretaker role and then for two terms as National Convener. No greater National Convener did UAD ever have than Aremson. And I say this, not only as a founding member of UAD and former National Convener myself, but also without prejudice to appreciating the fact that virtually all the comrades who had taken up that role before now were comrades of note, in their different ways.

The exemplar place of Aremson in UAD’s history relates both to the internal workings of the coalition and its political influence externally. The UAD’s regional and state structures were never as vibrant before or after his tenure. National Coordinating Committee meetings and the National Conventions were organised as and when due. And it was not just about form and procedures. Discussions, though at times heated, were qualitative on “state of the nation” as well as on how to build the UAD, resulting in well thought out resolutions which were followed up with concrete action.

Externally, bulletins were regularly issued about the national political situation. And it did not stop there. Aremson organised workshops, symposiums and other avenues for national discourse as UAD or in collaboration with allies. He brought together comrades with some of the best minds from across all shades of the radical left to discuss at these forums. A particular case struck my mind as it affected me.

Sometime in 2006, I got a call from Wale DonLesky that Aremson wanted me to present a paper on NEPAD at a conference being anchored by UAD with the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO) and the Justice, Development and Peace Commission (JDPC). I said I wouldn’t be able to be there because of a MHWUN assignment I was to go on with my union president. Ten minutes later, I received a call from Aremson who said: Baba Aye, you cannot say that you will not be there, please. Festus Iyayi and Segun Sango are the discussants of your paper and they have both agreed to be there. Compañero, you must arrange to be there. There was no way I could say no after that.  

A series of fortuitous events led to him becoming the Secretary of the Joint Action Front (JAF) in a way similar to how the UAD leadership was thrust on him, albeit in a different manner. The nature of labour struggles in Nigeria took on additional dimensions in the 2000s. A combination of neoliberal transitions - political and economic – and the resurgent fightback of a militant working-class started shaping how our class fought. General strikes became an annual routine. They also went apace with mass protests. The leadership of organised labour would call on the left civil society movement to join it in organising mass protests, but never involved them when it reached deals with the federal government to call off the strikes. And these were massive strikes that made President Olusegun Obasanjo to recognise their dual power potentials. He once said that the NLC was operating as a parallel power in the country, amid a general strike.

After the trade unions called off successive mass strikes in 2000, 2002, 2003 & once more in 2004, the radical civil society insisted on the need for a joint platform of labour and civil society. Thus was the Labour & Civil Society Coalition (LASCO) formed. A few months later that same year, the civil society formed the Joint Action Forum (JAF), which was the civil society leg of the emergent LASCO tripod. The NLC and TUC were the other two legs. Chima Ubani emerged as the JAF Secretary and LASCO Co-secretary (with Beko Ransome-Kuti as Chair). Alas, on the way to Yola, Chima died in a car crash on 21 September 2005.

Again, Aremson would have to fill a crucial coalitional leadership gap. However, even before he had to take on the JAF secretariat, he became involved in another situation rooted in the same unfortunate event of Chima’s death. This was a political project to rally core-left groups in an alliance. The Abuja Socialist Collective (ASC) which was formed with the convening of its first meeting on 12 October 2005 (that had been scheduled before Chima’s death), resolved to canvass for a united front of core left groups at Chima’s burial on 27-28 October. This laid the basis for the All-Nigeria Socialist Alliance (ANSA).

A steering committee was constituted comprising Prof. Dung Pam Sha, Ngozi Iwere, Baba Aye, and Aremson as secretary. ANSA started with much promise. It adopted Working People’s Vanguard, the ASC’s paper which I edited as its mass circulating paper whilst Mass Line which Baba Omojola edited (as the Socialist Revolutionary Vanguard, SRV cadre paper, but on a non-sectarian basis which had a few of us from other tendencies already on its Editorial Board) was to serve as the theoretical organ of the Alliance.

For reasons beyond the scope of this tribute, ANSA had atrophied by 2011. But JAF had become a force to reckon with in the labour movement, even though LASCO had not been fully formalised. The NLC NEC adopted it, but not the TUC NEC.

Aremson, as JAF secretary, often observed NLC/TUC NEC meetings where they decided to strike and led on the streets at barricades. He never allowed the close relationship that his role enabled him to have with the trade union bureaucracy to stop him from telling the truth to labour leaders and former labour leaders, like Adams Oshiomhole whom he called out just a few weeks back, for his stance against the PENGASSAN strike in the faceoff with the Dangote Refinery management.

Often people see Aremson at the barricades without appreciating some intricacies behind that. A situation that comes to mind relates to the July 2011 strike that was called off before it started. I and Aremson evaded state security sleuths and crashed together on a single bed in a dingy hotel somewhere at Ojuelegba to prepare for the strike.

We anticipated that it would be anything but normal, if it happened at all. Working with some lumpen “area boy” youth in that area, we had piles of used tires available for burning. We hardly slept. And by 4:30am thereabouts, we learnt that the NLC and TUC had reached an agreement with the government. As we both discussed what should be the next step, Aremson said we had to go ahead with barricades of fire, to make our point for posterity and make it clear to the masses, including the lumpen fighters awaiting directive from us that we were not part of those selling them out. Six months later #OccupyNigeria rocked Nigeria as the 2012 January Uprising. And Aremson was in the thick of this with JAF right from the early days of that historic massquake.

Repeatedly under his watch, JAF took to the trenches in struggle, standing up against the privatisation and commercialisation of public healthcare delivery; defending lecturers in tertiary institutions and particularly ASUU in their fight for better working conditions and the right to education; adding its voice of support to strikes and protests of trade unions across several sectors, and; raising the question of political alternatives, including at a summit for that purpose. In recent years, JAF’s relevance declined. A bold step was taken with a symposium in April this year. Despite the state of his health, Aremson was there urging comrades to keep the flag of struggle flying and calling for the formation of a JAF party.

Initiating the Amilcar Cabral Ideological School (now ACIS-M) in July 2005 was one of the most important steps Aremson took in these last two decades. This is because without regeneration of cadres, movements die. Today, it is very obvious that the vast majority of Marxist-Leninists from twentieth century Nigeria do not belong to any core organisation. And for the exceedingly few that do, these organisations are clubs of handfuls of grey-haired men (hardly any women, really).

This is without prejudice to the sincerity in their hearts or knowledge in their heads. But educating and organising younger generations of revolutionaries is crucial for sustaining revolutionary organisation, traditions and praxis. That is the importance of a platform like ACIS-M. It is also important to stress that Aremson's efforts in this direction extended beyond ACIS-M. Since 2008, he had been one of the key figures associated with the Social Action’s Anti-Imperialist camps. He also nurtured relationships with several leftists in the student movement from other groups and tendencies. Aremson also appreciated the role of the Take It Back movement and the African Action Congress party and forged close relations with several of its young members, who alongside ACIS-M comrades built the Alliance of Nigerian Students Against Neoliberal Attacks (ANSA).

Sùn re o, compañero! Hamba kahle!

It’s almost a week now, and I have come to accept that Aremson, in flesh, is gone – ó di à’rìnàkò. But his spirit lives on. This is not because he was a saint. Saints are myths. He was human and with flaws. My heart goes out to his wife, a grassroots mobiliser in her own right, and that made her home our home. I can hardly imagine what a blow this is to her, beyond the impact we bear.

You fought a good fight, Aremson. History will be fair to you.  Farewell, dear friend and comrade. Adiós compañero.