I am proud to say that I taught Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem at Bayero University Kano. Indeed, whenever I was in his company I always expected the familiar introduction: ‘”AB Zack”’ (as he liked to call me) was my tutor at Bayero. These guys taught me Marxism”. What does one say after that, coming from one of the brightest minds to emerge out of Africa in the latter part of the twentieth century? As a student, Taju was a gem: always seeking answers to questions; always asking for articles or books (no internet then you see) with clear ordering of the sequence of the reading materials. Students of this calibre are not just a joy to teach, but they also ensure lecturers are current with the debates.
Taju was born in Funtua, Katsina State, Northern Nigeria to parents who had migrated to this major northern agricultural district from Ogbomosho, Oyo State, Southwestern Nigeria. He was a true Nigerian, one who felt at home in Kano as in Onitsha or Lagos, appropriated by all sides of diverse Nigeria. On completion of his secondary education, Taju gained entrance to Bayero University Kano (BUK), where he obtained First Class Honours in Political Science, as well as a national merit award, and later proceeded to St Peter's College Oxford as Rhodes Scholar to pursue his doctoral work. At Oxford he continued his political work (which he had started not only with the university students union, but also with the Nigerian Labour Congress) as President of the University African Students Union.
Intellectually and politically Taju was a vibrant person, a great orator and one with a passion for politics. He was an ardent Pan-Africanist, who later became Secretary General of the newly formed Pan-Africanist Movement on the recommendation of the late Mohamed Babu, former Minister in the Tanzanian Government of Julius Nyerere. Taju was also a development activist with the portfolio of Deputy Director (Africa) for the UN Millennium Campaign (UNMC) and until his death was Director of Justice Africa and Chair of Pan Africa Development Education and Advisory Programme. He was a fearless campaigner against injustice who had his brush with the Nigerian State Security Service on a visit to his homeland in 1989. He was very much aware of how the Left in his country has been depleted by intimidation and bullying and he felt he had to act to stem the tide. Fearlessly, he organised the triumphant return to Nigeria in 2005 of Dr Patrick Wilmot, the Left Caribbean academic who was deported from Nigeria by the Babaginda regime.
My last conversation with Taju was at the International Conference on Institutions, Culture and Corruption in Africa in October 2008 organised by UNECA. As usual I was introduced to the audience as his former tutor and as such he had to watch his ways. Taju went on to give an electrifying talk for well over the allocated time, without referring to his notes. At the end, he apologised that he had to leave to catch a plane to Kampala. I now cherish the picture he insisted we took. He is survived by his wife Munira and two daughters, Aida and Aishat.
The Tajudeen Challenge
I met Comrade Tajudeen Abdulraheem 23 years ago in Oxford, through a Trinidadian comrade, David Johnson, a fellow historian. When I informed David that I would be travelling to Oxford to do research at Rhodes House Library, he suggested I contact Taju as a potential host. Our paths never crossed when I was resident in Nigeria, from 1977–1984, but Taju knew almost everyone that mattered on the Nigerian left. Our first meeting therefore turned out to be a Central Committee Indaba that took in more members, with the arrival of Adebayo Olukoshi the following day and other Nigerian Comrades. Our discussions principally revolved around the perennial question of la project Africain – what else to talk about? – the left in Nigeria; the struggle against Apartheid; the Africanists scholarly racket; neo-colonialism/imperialism and race but hardly Pan-Africanism. This is instructive partly because Taju came from a Marxist tradition that was shaped by the left experience in Nigeria, an experience that is strictly speaking rooted in the history of Nigerian intellectuals and their romance with the ‘progressive’ faction of the fractious Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). It is not co-incidental that his first scholarly publication, co-authored with Adebayo Olukoshi, was about the left and the struggle for socialism in Nigeria.
Taju continued to struggle within this tradition when he took up a position as researcher-cum-activist at Ben Turok's Institute of African Alternative (IAA). The debates then, our debates, if I can call it that, were shaped by an orthodox Marxist project that was informed by classical formulations about history, theory and society. The short-lived Journal of African Marxist (JAM) was anything but African; it published articles written by African intellectuals who professed Marxist ideas but were far removed from the day-to-day reality of those for whom they claimed to speak. This distance – not just literal and metaphorical – troubled Taju who was still bogged down with primary research – his dissertation. Time and again he would evoke Cabral as if to remind us all about the monumental task ahead.
By the time he finished his dissertation Taju had crossed the proverbial Rubicon; resolved to look from within, to explore linkages and potentials within the evolving African community of exiles particularly Ghanaians, and to return to the source a la Cabral. This was the context, indeed the moment of the African Research and Information Bureau (ARIB). Indeed, ARIB would become the symbolic signpost between Taju's self-professed Marxism and his discovery of Pan-Africanism as the essential vehicle for the liberation of Africa.
Unlike IAA, ARIB was an African organisation, stitched together by Ghanaian comrades who had been forced into exile by Rawlings: Napoleon Abdulai, Zaya Ayeebo et al. I suspect ARIB gave Taju the intellectual space to think through the African condition in close proximity with battle-tested comrades fresh from the barricades with rich experiences to reflect upon. ARIB was praxis in ways that were unimaginable at IAA; it ministered to the needs of the swelling ranks of West Africans in the 1990s and was an intellectual rendezvous for both continental and disapora Africans. These were extremely hard times when funding was hard to come by and several attempts to cross the Atlantic came to nothing.
ARIB was involved in community matters, with race and race relations. The network widened to include Diaspora Africans, principally Caribbeans; other Africans also came on board. Before long Taju's network included the legendary John La Rose and Mzee Babu Abdurrahman, the Zanzibari revolutionary intellectual. Taju became Babu's protégé, for he would draft him to organise the Kampala Pan-African conference which catapulted him to the continental stage. Before long, Taju was confronted, a la Padmore, with an organisational as well as a theoretical question: Pan-Africanism or Communism? Did Taju (re)invent himself as a pan-Africanist to pursue his self-professed Marxist objective of capturing state power? Or did he use Marxism to advance the cause of Pan-Africanism?
These two related questions underline the seminal contribution of Comrade Tajudeen Abdulraheem. Like Padmore before him, Taju did not abandon the socialist project. Rather, he skillfully employed Pan-Africanism to advance the socialist project in ways that are not too easy to understand. Unlike Padmore, however, Taju did not make an a priori distinction between organisations on the basis of their alleged revolutionary potential, that is to say, ‘revolutionary’ versus ‘non-revolutionary’ binary.
Taju's abiding concern was how to creatively pursue the revolutionary agenda even in situations/organisations that are outrightly reactionary or seemingly counter-revolutionary. This is why he was tirelessly involved in all types of disparate liberal activities that on the surface had no bearing to his ideology. Where comrades jettison NGO's as advancing the cause of imperialism, Taju demonstrated that the reverse is possible if the ideal is solidly ground on a Pan-African platform. Where leftist traditions collectively indict multilateral organisations as imperialist outfits, Taju turned this on its head by making us rethink an alternative trajectory. His abiding faith in human propensity for change against all odds – privileging agency over structure – remains Taju's seminal contribution to twenty-first century African history. He demonstrated, through tireless practice, that it is possible to humanise inhuman organizations, to neutralise liberal outfits as vehicles of change, and to sell the agenda of revolution without appearing to be revolutionary.
The challenge is how to deepen the privileging of agency over structure so as to advance the struggle for our collective emancipation. This is Taju's legacy!
May 2009
If you sent a postcard from heaven
If you sent a postcard from heaven
If indeed there is such a place, where all the stars before you went
I imagine that in your eloquent, earthshaking, sensational way
You would convey to us, how you rendered a report of your time here –
The report of a messenger, who carried a vision of an Africa full of promise, which would thrive when its people, once viciously divided, unite in one purpose with one voice
And your new mates would marvel at the ‘new arrival’ from the other world
Who carries the fire of conviction in his belly, the power of his message in his eyes and the hope of his people in his words
Just like the time you were with us, your audience would never be indifferent
Your boisterous presence would leave no soul untouched …
If you sent a postcard from heaven
You would tell us how you unceremoniously but boldly sought an audience
With the ‘King of Kings’ – not Ghaddafi – but the Rainmaker in your new city
You would state your continent's case and demand a turnaround in centuries of injustices against its peoples at the hands of insiders and outsiders alike …
You would plead the case of Africa's peoples and ask for a break, for a new dawn …
If you sent a postcard from heaven
It would be the last postcard you would send
For your passionate defence, charm and eloquence wouldn't be lost on your Host A new mission for you will await – Another cause to champion
You will again deserve the pass of the city; you would tour its length and breadth
Like you traversed your continent, making a case for your people
If you sent that last postcard, you would assure us that the task at hand was simple – having accomplished your task before vacating this scene
Your simple yet powerful message of one continent, one people, was delivered from Cape to Cairo
And the rest would be up to us … to make the message count.
So long, dear brother