Baba Aye's

May 31st is a day of utmost significance to me, in my personal and political life. And the two days of May 31st that defined me in fundamental ways were in the consecutive years of 1988 and 1989: when I welcomed a brother into my life, and when the events that would shape my political and ideological trajectory for life occurred. Ibukun means Blessing I had grown up for almost seventeen years as the only son. I have four lovely sisters who are dear to me. However, I always longed for a brother for many years. I was doing my A levels at Anwar Ul Islam College Agege in 1987 when my mom became pregnant. By then, it didn’t seem to matter, though somewhere in my heart, I prayed the baby would be a boy like me at last. Momsie's water broke just as I was getting ready for school. Dad dropped me at the Iyana Ipaja bus stop as he took my mom to the same hospital I was born years back. On arriving back home in the evening, I got the news that mo ti r’énikéjì. To say I was elated would ...

Eddie Madunagu is undoubtedly one of the most profound and insightful socialist thinkers and publicists in Nigeria’s history. His books such as The Tragedy of the Nigerian Socialist Movement and Problems of Socialism: The Nigerian Challenge¸ which were published some four decades back present us with some of the clearest analysis of the situation of the radical and revolutionary Left in that period, probably much more sharply than any other book. Over the following decades, Comrade Eddie continued with analyses of the left and the society which we want to change. His column every Thursday was the sole reason why I bought The Guardian for most of the 1990s. It must be stressed, as many have done and will continue to do, that Eddie has not only been a theorist. He has, along with his soul mate Bene, contributed to some of the most sustained efforts at building left organisations and united fronts. They have also contributed significantly to critical thinking for new generations of...

Comrade Ayodele "Iturity" Akele The death of Ayodele Akele marks the loss of one of the fiercest and most consistent class fighters in Nigeria, over the last four decades. From June 1980, when, as a students’ leader at Yabatech he emerged as founding Secretary General of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) he trod a path of self-sacrifice and unrepentant struggle as unionist and socialist activist. At the time of his death, he was National General Secretary of the National Conscience Party (NCP). As a quantity surveyor, he worked at the Lagos State Property Development Corporation (LSPDC) from where he was elected Lagos State Chairman of the National Union Public Corporations Employees (NUPCE) in the late 1980s till 1996 when NUPCE along with CSTWUN and RSEU, merged to form the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations Civil Service Technical and Recreation Services Employees (AUPCTRE). Beloved by rank and file workers who had implicit trust in ...

The news of the death of Rotimi “Molobi” Musa Yaqub Obadofin was a very saddening one for me. I gathered it came from a ruptured appendix whilst he was at Osogbo, on April 7. I did not share some basics of his “Marxism-Leninism”, even at the time I worked closest with him. He did have several flaws (which of us, do not in some form or the other), which did make me wary. But, he was one of the greatest teachers I had on organising within the mass of the people and particularly the working class. Such a debt is one that one never fully pays, not even when you pay a tribute on his departure, from the multifaceted scenes of politics which he was a key player in, for some four decades. I met “Molobi” as we fondly called him at the time, in the first quarter of 1989, at Ilorin. He had relocated to Lagos before then, as far as I could recall. He however was in our beloved Petrograd, Ilorin and was a looming presence at the workers’ study group of the People’s Liberation Movement, ...