| Urhobo Historical Society |
Omafume Onoge: Africa�s Revolutionary Marxist
By G. G. Darah and Sunny Awhefeada
Delta
State University, Abraka, Nigeria
Omafume Onoge
Professor
Omafume Friday Onoge, Africa�s most
distinguished Marxist social anthropologist, passed away into eternity
on Sunday
July 12, 2009, due to prolonged illness. He would have been 71 next
October. Professor
Onoge was an academic and cultural colossus and activist who applied
revolutionary methods to advance the cause of democratic change in the
Niger
Delta region, Nigeria, and the African continent. With his death, a
dark
penumbra of human capital wastage now overhangs the world�s horizon of
radical
scholarship and political activism. As a multi-talented researcher,
teacher and
inspirational speaker, Onoge�s intellectual radar covered all fields of
academic intervention and struggles for change and justice. We are not
competent to evaluate the quality of Onoge�s contributions to the
diverse and
dynamic vineyard of thought and political action. We shall focus this
tribute
on his theoretical discourses and radical activism in the domains of
the social
sciences, culture, and literature.
Born on
October 20 1938, Onoge attended primary
and secondary schools in his native Effurun before proceeding to the
United
States of America in 1961 for University education. In America, he
attended
Macalester College, Minnesota, the same alma mater of Ghana�s Kofi
Annan, the former
United Nation�s Secretary General. Onoge�s prodigious potentials were
first demonstrated
at Macalester when he completed the four-year programme in two years
and making
a First Class on graduation. He was the second student in the history
of
Macalester College to win the Dan Forth Fellowship for post-graduate
studies,
1963-1967. A Federal Government of Nigeria scholarship award took him
to the
prestigious Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, the birthplace
of the
legendary Kennedy family. Onoge returned in 1970 garlanded with a
Harvard M. A.
and Ph. D degrees in Social Anthropology. He started lecturing at the
University of Ibadan where he applied his arsenal of Marxism and
Afrocentric
ideology to introduce revolutionary pedagogy in the Social Sciences and
literary criticism. Onoge also taught at Harvard University and the
Universities of Dares Salaam, Tanzania, (1976-1977) and Jos form
1982-2002
where he served as Head of Department of Sociology, the Dean of the
Post-graduate School, Member of the University Council, and University
Orator.
His
passion for education for liberation was
evident during the three years of the work of the Darah-led project
committee
for the establishment of the private Western Delta University, Oghara.
Onoge
had been course mate of Professor Nurideen Adedipe at the School of
Agriculture, Ibadan, who was then the chairman of the Standing
Committee on
Private Universities of the National Universities Commission (NUC).
This
association was vital in the quality of interaction with the NUC. With
the
Uvwie monarch, His Royal Majesty, Abe I,
Onoge was a motivating influence in the consolidation of the Federal
University
of Petroleum Resources set up in 2007 to partially redress decades of
past
neglect suffered by the oil producing states in the location of
tertiary
institutions.
Professor
Onoge also occupied the exalted
post of Executive Director of the Port Harcourt-based Centre for
Advanced
Social Science set up by the late Professor of political economy,
Claude Ake.
When Onoge retired to his natal community of Ugborikoko in Effurun,
Delta
State, he committed his learning and diverse experience to the
promotion of the
politics of cultural renewal and emancipation of the Urhobo people and
the
Niger Delta Region. He was the intellectual power house in the
78-year-old
Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) and the Uvwie Kingdom of his birth. He was
unequivocally
committed to the executives of Chief Benjamin Okumagba and his
successor,
Senator Felix Ibru, the former Governor of Delta State (1991-1993). As
a member
of the UPU think tank Onoge brought rigour and panache to deliberations
and
this was evident in tenor and focus of communiqu�s of meetings which
bore the
solid stamp of proletarian and ideological sophistication. Onoge was on
the
delegation of Delta State to the Nigerian National Political Reforms
Conference
in Abuja (2005) and served on the Ledum Mitee-led Technical Committee
on the
Niger Delta in 2008.
Onoge�s
numerous writings, essays, and public
lectures articulated the imperative necessity for revolutionary change
and
democratic reconstruction of post-colonial African societies. His
theories and
praxis were grounded on the special colonial and neocolonial
predicament of Africa
and the African Diaspora resulting from centuries of European
capitalist and
imperialist violence and plunder. Onoge�s thoughts and actions leaned
on the
experiences and theoretical works of veteran scholars and humanists who
had
combated imperialist situations in other climes of the world. He was a
compendium of knowledge on radical thinkers and liberators in Africa,
the
Americas, the Caribbean region, Europe, and Asia. He would quote
effortlessly
the views of international revolutionaries such as Karl Marx, Frederich
Engels
of Germany/England, Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin of Russia, Mao
Tse-tung of
China, and Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam. Onoge had a thorough grasp of the
writings
and careers of African American and Third World thinkers and political
angels
of change such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du
Bois,
Malcom X, Claude McKay, and Martin Luther King, and Angela Davis of the
United
States. In the Caribbean and South America, Onoge was a first-rate
authority on
radical icons such as Marcus Garvey of Jamaica Toussaint L�Overture of
Haiti, and
George Padmore, C. L. R. James, and John La Rose of Trinidad and
Tobago, George
Lamming of Barbados, Walter Rodney of Guyana, Fidel
Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara of Cuba,
and Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon of Martinique.
In the
African �homeland� Professor Onoge was
the best interpreter of the thoughts of Edward Blyden of Liberia,
Africanus
Horton of Sierra Leone, Casely Hayford and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana,
Sekou Toure
of Guinea-Conakry, and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau/Cape Verde. He
was at home
with the works and politics of Felix Moume of Cameroon, Agostihno
Neto of Angola, Julius Nyerere of
Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya,
Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel of Mozambique, and Albert Luthuli,
Oliver
Thambo, Giovani Mbeki, and Nelson Mandela of South Africa. However,
being a
Marxist dialectician, Onoge expanded the frontiers and possibilities of
received
ideas and domesticated them for the Nigerian and African milieu. In the
true
tradition of Marxism, Onoge creatively combined theory with practice by
always
seeking innovative ways to communicate the reality of the African world
in the
complex and rapidly changing global environment.
In this
universal tradition of revolutionary
scholarship and politics, Onoge�s profundity of thought, theoretical
sophistication and erudition of expression put him in the same pantheon
as the
distinguished Senegalese Egyptologist, Cheikh Anta Diop, Samir Amin of
Egypt, Mohammed
Babu, Dan Nabudere and Grant Kamenju of Tanzania. Omafume Onoge also
belongs to
the class of venerated anti-imperialist thinkers such as Patrice
Lumumba of
Congo, Paul Baran of India, Andre Gunder Frank of Argentina, Archie
Mafeje,
Bernard Magubane, and Ruth First of South Africa, George Novack of the
United
States, Ernest Mandel of Belgium, and Basil Davidson of the United
Kingdom.
In
Nigeria, Onoge�s kindred spirits in the
Nigerian academia include indomitable intellectuals such as Comrade Ola
Oni, Eskor
Toyo, Essien Udom, Chike Obi, Mokwugo Okoye, Eme Awa, Mayirue
Kolagbodi, Claude
Ake, Nkenna Nzimiro, Chimere Ikoku, Okwudiba Nnoli, Segun Osoba, Bade
Onimode,
Peter Palmer Ekeh, Bala Usman, Baba Oluwide, Edwin Madunagu and Patrick
Wilmot
(Jamaican). We are aware that Onoge�s Urhobo compatriots, Ekeh and
Onigu Otitie
would not insist on being classed among Leftist scholars, yet they
shared the
luminous limelight of being the most prolific intellectuals on Urhobo
culture
and politics. Although they were not in university settings, the top
cadres of
the Zikist Movement like M. C. K. Ajuluchukwu, Abubakar Zukogi, and
Raji
Abdallah were of the same ideological cast with Onoge�s academic
colleagues.
Within the Urhobo universe of activist scholars and nationalists
Onoge�s
stature is comparable to that of Mukoro Mowoe, St. Gideon Urhobo who
founded
the Gods Kingdom Society church in 1934, and Chief T. E. A. Salubi, a
front
liner of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC),
President-General of
UPU (1961-1982), Minister of Education in Western Region (1962-1963)
and
prolific writer and historian.
In the
Nigerian star-studded pantheon of
radical nationalist we must mention Uche Chukwumerije who, from his
days as
ideologist and propagandist in the rebel Republic of Biafra, has
managed to
advertise his badge of �Comrade� as Secretary (Minister) of Information
during
General Sani Abacha�s regime (1993-1998) and a three-tenure Senator of
the
Federal Republic since 1999.
Perhaps it
is helpful to recognize a sub-group
of literary scholars, critics and cultural analysts where Onoge stood
out in
dazzling stellar colours. This Nigerian literarti include Chinua
Achebe, J.P.
Clark, Wole Soyinka, Emmanuel Obiechina, Sa�adu Zungur, Abiola
Irele, Dan Izevbaye, Sam Assein, Steve
Ogude, Theo Vincent, Biodun Jeyifo, Ropo Sekoni, Chinweizu, Ime Ikkideh, Femi Osofisan, Kole Omotoso, and
Ken Saro-Wiwa. Others in this pantheon are Tanure Ojaide, Olu Obafemi,
Odia
Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Festus Iyayi, Bode Sowande, Tunde Fatunde,
Emevwo
Biakolo, Tess Onwueme, and Ben Okri. However, Adeboye Babalola, Oyin
Ogunba,
Isidore Okpewho, Donatus Nwoga and, Dandatti Abdulkadir occupy a niche
of
theirs on the basis of their pioneering contribution to oral literature
and
folklore scholarship.
The
continental spread of these Afrocentric creators and interpreters of
artistic
culture covers names such as Alex La Guma, Bessie Head, and Nadine
Gordimer of
South Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong�o and Micere Mugo of Kenya, Ama Ata Aidoo
of
Ghana, Nawal El Shadawi of Egypt, Mariama Ba, and Ousmane Sembene of
Senegal,
Ferdinand Oyono and Mongo Beti of Cameroon, and Nurudeen Farah of
Somalia. The
veterans in African oral literature and folklore studies include B.W.
Vilakazi,
Thomas Mofolo, Sol Platje, and Daniel Kunene of South Africa, John
Mbiti of
Kenya, Okot p�Bitek of Uganda, Frances Bebey of Cote d�Ivoire, J.H.K
Nketia and
Kofi Awoonor of Ghana, David Diop and Alioune Diop of Senegal, Ahmadu Hampate Ba of Mali, and Alain Ricard
of France.
Coming
from a family with a solid heritage of
peasant humanism in his natal community of Ugborikoko, Onoge�s early
professional training after graduating from Urhobo College Effurun in
1957 was
as an agronomist, first at the oil palm plantation ,Effurun, then at the Moor
Plantation School of Agriculture, Ibadan, where he was nick-named
�Heavy Bella Faraday:
the Local Elvis Presley� for his skills in playing the guitar. It can
be said
that his scholarly and political career was shaped for greatness at
Ibadan.
This was at the dawn of independence for Nigeria in the late 1950s as
she was
just emerging from the dark decades of British colonial rule. The
University
College Ibadan was aflame with radical nationalist and Pan Africanist
ideas.
Onoge would ride a bicycle from Moor Plantation some 15 km away to
watch
Soyinka�s plays at the Arts Theatre at the campus. At Urhobo College,
he took
part in drama events held at the King George IV Hall in Warri. Onoge was an avid listener to BBC drama
programmes which made him knowledgeable in all the new writings of
Africa in
that decade of �the wind of change� as the former British Prime
Minister,
Harold Macmillan, was to describe that momentous phase of African
history.
Unknown by
many, Onoge was also a produce
buyer of a commodity firm in Uromi in Edo State where his zeal for
university
education was fired by a kind manager who was always urged him to read
hard and
seek admission to a tertiary institution. It was at Moor Plantation in
Ibadan that
Onoge applied for one of the American Scholarship Schemes which he won
purely
on merit. As he used to tell us, the day the telegram conveying the
message of
the scholarship award came, he wept for joy because it signified the
crossing
of a mighty hurdle regarding the cost of higher education for someone
from a
poor family background.
As we have
said, Onoge�s socialist
credentials were nurtured in the pre-capitalist social ecology of rural
Urhobo
and his university education in America in the 1960s decade of the
Civil Rights
Movement honed and sharpened his humanistic instincts in favour of an
egalitarian and anti-capitalist society. For his generation of
thinkers,
socialism and Marxism came as an irresistible alternative. As Professor
Onigu
Otite, his colleague and fellow Urhobo scholar would recall, Onoge took
a
daring gamble by doing his doctorate research on the Christian
charismatic-communist Aiyetoro Community established in the 1940s in
the Ilaje,
coastal area of the former Western Nigeria. Otite adds that in the
1960s,
authorities in the social sciences did not think the pro-equity
experiment at
Aiyetoro merited scholarly attention. Onoge�s adventurous and utopian
spirit is
exemplified in the title of his Ph. D dissertation, namely, �Aiyetoro,
the
Successful Utopia: A Sociological Study of the Holy Apostles Community
in
Nigeria�.
Whilst
in the US Onoge was involved in a series of militant and radical social
organizations including those that campaigned against the US war in
Vietnam. He
shared platforms with African Americans such as Stokeley Carmichael,
Eldred
Cleaver, George Jackson, and the South African musical maestro, Mariam
Makeba.
Onoge was also in the vanguard of the Federal side during the 1967-1970
Nigeria-Biafra
war, and the patriotic urge to be part of the programme of national
reconstruction made him to return to Nigeria in 1969 immediately he
submitted
his Ph.D. project. We can say that with his arrival in the Faculty of
the Social
Sciences in Ibadan, Social Science discourse and indeed the University
of
Ibadan never remained the same again.
In 1970,
the University of Ibadan was the
leading light in intellectual work in West Africa, and the atmosphere
of
optimism and nationalism that grew from Nigerian victory over secession
helped
the ventilation of radical and anti-imperialist viewpoints. The milieu
was also
receptive to ideas of Socialism and Marxism, especially because the
leading
capitalist nations of the world, namely, USA, Britain and France
abandoned Nigeria
during the civil war. Surprisingly, it was the communist Union of
Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) and its African ally, Egypt that offered Nigeria the
military hardware
and technical assistance to prosecute the war. Before this historic
intervention of the USSR, socialist ideas and works were banned from
circulation in Nigeria. Any vector of socialist and Marxist views was
hounded,
arrested, detained or deported if a foreigner. The likes of Michael
Imoudu, Mayirue
Kolagbodi, Eskor Toyo (alias the Lenin of Africa), Ola Oni and Baba
Oluwide
were the first academics to dare the conservative, neocolonial Nigerian
government on this turf. But when the Soviet Union saved Nigeria from
disintegration, the atmosphere became a little more hospitable for
communist averters.
This was the political and academic climate in which Onoge�s
radicalism,
nationalism, and Marxist ebullition manifested and flourished.
By the
time Onoge arrived as Faculty member
at Ibadan there were already seasoned scholars like Essien Udom and
Billy
Dudley both in Political Science, Ayo Ogunsheye, Ojetunji Aboyade and
Comrade Ola
Oni in Economics. Ola Oni�s forte was in
Marxist political economy, having been trained at the London School of
Economics (LSE). For some years he was almost a lone ranger as a
Marxist thinker
and a socialist activist. The entry of Onoge and Bade Onimode in this
setting transformed
the Faculty into what can be described as the intellectual secretariat
of the
social sciences in Nigeria, nay West Africa. There were also Busari
Adebisi and
Peter Ekeh both political scientists, and Akin Ojo, a nuclear
physicist. By the
mid 1970s, Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie and Biodun Jeyifo in English
extended the
frontiers of Marxist scholarship and pedagogy. Laoye Sanda who studied
under
Onoge became the linchpin at the Ibadan Polytechnic. It was the
patriotic and fearless
commitment of these intellectual giants that repositioned Ibadan as a
centre of
radical thought and revolutionary visioning.
The path
of a radical and militant
scholar-activist had been blazed by Onoge�s predecessors in the
Nigerian
Marxist family. Dr. Mayirue Kolagbodi of Ughoton in Okpe area of Delta
State
was the first Urhobo to obtain a Ph. D degree in 1963. He returned from
Leipzig, Germany, to start work as the Secretary to Comrade Michael
Imoudu,
Nigeria�s �Labour Leader Number One� from 1945. Professor Eskor Toyo
who
studied in Poland and Baba Oluwide (alias Baba Luwi, Baba Omojola, and
Jagunmolu of Ijeshaland and Afenifere)
also served as Secretaries to Imoudu. The formidable combination of
these
titans of labour and Marxist scholarship upgraded the ideological
quotient of
trade unionism as was evident in two post-independence general strikes
in 1963
and 1964. Kolagbodi was Onoge�s mentor in this sphere and he never
betrayed the
heritage all through his years of gregarious engagement with the
proletariat,
peasants, youths, and the lumpen bourgeoisie in the country and Africa.
The New
Left Movement
As already
pointed out, the Marxist socialist
movement in the academia in Ibadan was headed by Comrade Ola Oni and
assisted
by Onoge, Onimode and Ojo. Soon after the Nigerian civil war in 1970,
the
Ibadan group undertook a tour of the country to connect groups that had
been
scattered as a result of the war. In the
East they met with Nkenna Nzimiro, Chinua Achebe, Chimere Ikoku,
Okwudiba Nnoli,
and Arthur Nwankwo who were then operating under the rubric of Frantz
Fanon Centre.
In Zaria, the New Left Movement interacted with members of Aminu Kano�s
Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) such as Balarabe Musa,
Abubakar
Rimi, Baba Omojola (who was operating the Toilers� Brigade in the
Bohemian
quarters in Kano), Bala Usman, Mahmud Turkur, Patrick Wilmot and other
younger
converts to Marxist humanism.
The New
Left deleation also rallied support
with the likes of Ebenezer Babatope at the University of Lagos, and
with Segun
Osoba, Seinde Arigbede, Toye Olorode, Idowu Awopetu, Biodun Adetugbo,
Segun
Adewoye, and Bayo Ademodi at the then University of Ife. The purpose of
this
nationwide mission was to galvanize resources for the formation of a
socialist
party that would participate in the politics of radical change that the
end of
the Nigerian civil war presaged and beckoned. In all of these
engagements,
Professor Omafume Onoge was the intellectual power house.
The
University crisis of February 1971 that developed from the police
murder of
Kunle Adepeju, a student of the University of Ibadan, was the first
opportunity
for the New Left Movement to demonstrate its political will and
relevance. The
Socialist core of the academics sided with the National Union of
Nigerian
Students (NUNS) then headed by Olu Adegboro. The socialist lecturers
secured
the services of a young and vibrant lawyer, now Chief Gani Fawehinmi
(SAN), to
defend the students at the Justice Kazeem tribunal set up by the
General Yakubu
Gowon military junta. Onoge�s theoretical clarity on the question of
class
struggle and the necessity of popular alliance of the oppressed were
brilliantly exhibited during the tribunal sitting. The intervention of
the
Marxist movement transformed the local, campus event to a national
movement
against military rule in favour of democracy. The posters the students
produced
called for probe of corrupt military governors and an immediate end to
military
maladministration and tyranny.
The
political organization of Marxists which Ola Oni headed operated under
the
general platform of the Nigerian Academy of Arts, Sciences and
Technology. It
published a journal, Theory and Practice,
and Onoge was the pioneer editor. One of Darah�s early articles �Igho
sh�emu
sua: Notes on Capitalist Ideology in Urhobo Oral Literature� appeared
in the
second edition of the journal in 1977. As Nigeria tottered chaotically
to the
first promised terminal point of military rule in 1974, the Academy
produced The Nigerian People�s Manifesto. It is a
120-page document that derived its ideological insight from The
Communist Manifesto of 1845 by Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels which is ended with the insurgent summons: �Workers
of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains�
The Nigerian Peoples Manifesto
examines the
terminal crisis of neocolonial capitalism in Nigeria and the imperative
need to
employ revolutionary constitutional reforms to establish a superior,
socialist
political and economic system. The preface to the document proclaims
that the �Nigerian Peoples manifesto emanates from
discussions with patriotic, anti-imperialist and progressive mass
organizations
of peasants, petty-traders, patriotic trade unions, tenants�
associations,
social reformers, black nationalists, students and youth movements,
young
socialist organizations, Committee for African Revolution, and the New
Left
Movement. The Peoples Manifesto is a concrete response to the yearnings
of the
working people and patriotic forces for a programme of action to smash
the
politics of deceit, ethnicity and exploitation inflicted on our people
by the
old, corrupt, bourgeois politicians and their imperialist masters.�
From the flourish of imagery, and the
semantic
and syntactical structure of the Manifesto,
it is evident that Onoge was the editorial engineer in the drafting and
production of that historic document. In 1975, the economic programme
of the Manifesto was published and it was
jointly authored by Comrade Ola Oni and Bade Onimode. The title was Economic Development in Nigeria: The
Socialist Alternative.
One of the
positive outcomes of the
intervention of the radical intelligentsia in the nation�s politics was
the
rise of popular consciousness among young people, students and the
working
class. The generation of students� leaders featured names such as Olori
Magege
of the University of Benin, Mohammed Sokoto, Mohammed Kungwai and
Abdulrahman
Black of the Ahmadu Bello University, (Zaria), Solomon Agunbiade (alias
Chairman Mao for his luxuriant beards), Laoye Sanda, Olu Agunloye, Odia
Ofeimun, Silas Zwingina (now a Senator), Olu and Banji Adegboro of the
University of Ibadan, Edwin Madunagu and Segun Okeowo of the University
of
Lagos, and Ayo Olukotun of the then University of Ife. In spite of the
three
decades of corrupt, military maladministration, these names and their
prot�g�s still
constitute the backbone of Nigeria�s patriotic and radical
intelligentsia today.
A few more
details on this development is
pertinent at this point. As the radicalisation of the campuses
intensified, the
progressive students consolidated to form their own organizations. In
1970
there was only the Afro-Culture Society that offered alternative
platform at
Ibadan besides the bourgeois-liberal formations such as the Sigma Club
that
specialized in ostentatious carnivals and revelries. Ironically, their
annual
musical festival was tagged �Havana� probably in admiration of the
capital of
Castro�s Cuba. In the 1973 the Young Socialist Movement (YSM) emerged,
with a
later splinter called Black Nationalist Movement (BNM). A few years
after, the
socialist re-christened their group Marxist Students Movement (MSM)
which
started its journal, The Militant of
which Darah was the pioneer editor. The successor editor was Jimi
Adesina, one
of Onoge�s students who is now a Professor at Rhodes University in
South
Africa. Those who seek the etymological roots of the term �militant�
ought to
interrogate these sources over three decades ago. The leadership of the
radical
students included two medical students who had turbulent experiences on
account
of their involvement; they were Komolu Johnson and Femi Bamiboye. The
MSM later
expanded to Ile-Ife and Zaria and was at the spearhead of activities
organised
by NUNS which became National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS)
in the
aftermath of the 1978 General Obasanjo crackdown in campus radicalism.
The rising
tempo of student and youth
vanguardism across the country added vigour to revolts against military
autocracy and barbarism and Onoge and his colleagues had busy schedules
of
public lectures, symposia, and media interactions. Those who passed
through the
portals of Ibadan in this dynamic decade still cherish the experience
of
intellectual delight of hearing and learning from the incisive and
stimulating
debates involving Onoge and other Marxist patriots.
The
momentum of the 1970s under the
intellectual motor of the Socialist academia culminated in the epic
involvement
of Nigeria in the anti-apartheid struggle in Southern Africa. The
superlative
quality of Nigeria�s intervention in that uprising was due largely to
the
pervasive influence of the revolutionary ideas of pan-Africanism and
liberation
from external domination. Professor Onoge and his colleagues were the
indomitable vessels of the pedagogy of knowledge and education for
liberation.
In this new epistemology, Onoge edified students and staff with copious
quotes
from the works of Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and
Amilcar Cabral.
Thus the
students� movement that developed
from this ferment was ideologically clear-headed and committed to
radical
change in Africa and Nigeria. It was for their struggle that Nigeria
became
acknowledged as a frontline state in the liberation of Southern Africa.
In
tribute to his genius in this regard, Onoge was on the Nigerian
delegation to
the Peoples Republic of China in 1976 along with Segun Osoba and Bala
Usman.
The team was headed by Major-General Henry Adefope, then the Minister
of Youths
and Sports. The purpose was to
understudy the structure of education in China with a view to adopting
it in
Nigeria. This was the highest point of official recognition of the
superiority
of the socialist system, especially in the area of education, social
mobilization,
and youth orientation. It is pertinent to add that Nigeria�s
involvement in the
Southern African liberations struggles revamped the ideological purity
of mass
movements and popular agitations for change and justice. The cruelty of
the
decadent Portuguese colonial regime was etched in the minds of radicals
and the
youth and it was sweet victory for Africa when following a coup by
pro-democracy military officers in Portugal in 1974, the liberation
movements
in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Angola quickly won their independence
from
colonial bondage. The Nigerian student movement momorialised these
achievements
by adopting the Portuguese phrases of �Aluta
continua; victoria a certe� (The struggle continues; victory is
certain)
for their campus activities.
Ironically,
General Olusegun Obasanjo who, as
military head of state from 1976-1979, was the prime beneficiary of
this
insurgent national youth movement, was the one that castrated the
movement two
years into his regime in 1978. In April 1978 there was mass students�
uprising
against unwarranted increase in higher education cost. The action was
led by
this generation of militant Marxist students. During the students�
clashes with
the Police, one student was killed at the University of Lagos and nine
at the
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Onoge and his Marxist colleagues stood
firmly
with the students as they did in the 1971 and 1974 seasons of popular
revolts
against military dictatorship.
Yet,
General Obasanjo, apparently acting a
script from the Pentagon in America, wickedly and falsely accused the
radical
academia of instigating the students to overthrow his government. More
unpardonably, Obasanjo alleged that the students were being used by the
apartheid regime in South Africa to undermine Nigeria. Under the guise
of this
fabricated suspicion, the Obasanjo junta arbitrarily dismissed Onoge
and others
from the University system in August 1978. The casualty list of this
fascist
witchcraft included Comrade Ola Oni, Akin Ojo, Bade Onimode, Laoye
Sanda
(Ibadan), Ebenezer Babatope and Eddie Madunagu (Lagos), and Bene
Madunagu and
Ekpo Bassey Ekpo (Calabar). The NUNS then headed by Segun Okeowo of
Lagos was
proscribed and all the student leaders were banned from admission into
any
Nigerian University in the country. It was the resilience and tenacity
of the
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that restored the
victimized
academics to their posts in 1981.
As it with
most middle class professionals in
Nigeria, the arbitrary sack of the socialist academics put many of them
in
temporary disarray. They had not worked long enough to save money to
build
homes. Only Ola Oni who had secured a university housing loan had a
place of
his own in Bodija area of Ibadan which he quickly converted into a
printing
press and the Progressive and Socialist Books Depot. The house also
became the
secretariat of the Socialist Party of Workers, Farmers and Youth
(SPWFY)
floated in 1978 as a left-wing platform for involvement in electoral
politics
as the military regime was about to disengage in 1979. Predictably, the
Obasanjo military junta denied the party registration along with about
45 other
associations, including that by the Nigerian revolutionary musical
maestro,
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
It is
important to remark the �Winnie
Mandela� role played by Ola Oni�s with, Kehinde and his four children
in those
hectic days of political mobilisation and alliances. Although Oni was
the
undisputed Vladimir Lenin of the movement, it was Kehinde who provided
the
necessary support and warm, generous reception and hosting for numerous
visitors, comrades and ideological troubadours that thronged the Bodija
house
night and day. Managing Ola Oni�s extensive networks and restless
schedule of
work was a heavy burden on Kehinde and the family, a burden made more
precarious by the regular police and security raids on the premises and
the
arrest and detention of Oni.
Schisms
and differences amongst the leftists
did not lighten the load of management.
The
Oni/Ibadan section insisted on floating a
Marxist-Leninist mass party in the orthodox tradition of revolutionary
enterprises in Russia, Poland, Germany, France, Egypt, China, Vietnam,
Indonesia,
Ghana, and South Africa. Some sections of the Left disagreed fiercely
even
after a tenuous agreement in favour of party formation had been made in
Zaria
in 1976. Onoge returned from Tanzania in 1977 to become embroiled in
these
sectarian controversies. Ethno-regional sentiments were at play in some
instances. When the green light for parties was given by the military
in 1978,
the Oni/Ibadan group announced its Socialist Party of Workers, Farmers
and
Youth (SPWFY). Wahab Goodluck, Dapo Fatogun, and Dr. Lasisi Osunde who
had
strong links in the trade unions went their own way with Socialist
Workers Party
just as the Mallam Aminu Kano associates opted for the Peoples
Redemption Party
that saw the election of Balarabe Musa and Abubakar Rimi as governors
of Kaduna
and Kano states respectively. The Ife collective under Segun Osoba�s
leadership
chose to remain uninvolved and the survivors of the Biafran experience
in
Eastern Nigeria had not recovered enough to float an independent party
platform. The split of socialist forces at this historical juncture was
a
drawback for progressive politics and the effects have not been
completely
erased. In the hostile, anti-socialist milieu of military rule, it was
pretty
difficult to carry on the mobilisation of the proletarian forces. The
SPWFY
later metamorphosed into the Socialist Revolutionary Vanguard (SRV)
under Oni�s
leadership. After his untimely death in 1999, the coordination of SRV
rested on
the joint shoulders of Dr. Yomi Jorge Ferreira and Baba Omojola in
Lagos and
Comrade Laoye Sanda in Ibadan.
Following
his arbitrary sack in 1978, Onoge,
as we have said, went home to Effurun in the then Bendel State where
the ideas
of Marxism and socialist work were largely unknown, if not demonised as
crazy,
foreign and subversive. Akin Ojo, Bade Onimode, and Laoye Sanda stayed
back in
Ibadan to engage in the party work. In his Effurun base Onoge had to
live with
his aged father since he did not have a house of his own yet. In Urhobo
society, such a status is source of great embarrassment and snide
comments
against the returnee migrant. Yet Onoge recovered somewhat as Chief
Ebenezer
Babatope employed his links in the Obafemi Awolowo-led Unity Party of
Nigeria
(UPN) to secure a teaching job for him at the then College of
Education,
Abraka. Professor Ambrose Folorunso Alli who also knew Onoge was the
Governor
of Bendel State at the time.
As the
British dramatist William Shakespeare has written, �sweet are the uses
of
adversity. Thus Onoge won more home laurels. He married a new wife,
Patience,
later an attorney-at-law. His first marriage to a sociology scholar,
Tola
Pearse, had ended in divorce some years earlier. The couple had a
daughter,
Forabo, who was to have a First Class honours degree English in Ife in
the
1980s and went to the United States to read law where she presently
practises.
With Patience, Onoge had four offspring � two male and two female.
The Jos
Years
With the
triumph of the ASUU�s industrial
action in 1980-81, Onoge resumed as a Professor at the University of
Jos in
1982, under the friendly headship of Professor J.I. Tseayo in the
Department of
Sociology. Onoge was to become Head of Department (1982-1989), and also
Chairman
of the University�s Consultancy Services, Dean of Postgraduate Studies
(1989-1993), Director, Centre for Development Studies (1993-1994), and
elected
Member of the University Council (1995). During these years, Onoge
brought in
innovations and communitarian strategies which enhanced the status of
the
Social Sciences in particular and the University in general. Among his
colleagues
in the department were Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, former Senate President, and
Professor
Sylvester Ogoh Alubo. But Onoge�s twin brother in ideology at Jos was
the
Marxist political economist, Professor Peter Ozo-Eson in the Department
of
Economics. They were so adored for their forthrightness that they were
able to
beat Plateau indigenes in elections to university positions.
On his
arrival in Jos Onoge quickly
established fruitful rapport with the Urhobo community of miners and
professionals who were very visible in the socio-economic landscape of
the
Plateau. With his aura of intellectualism, he rallied the community to
set up
the Emudiaga Club as an active vent for articulating Urhobo issues in
the era
of leadership tussle amongst ranks of the Urhobo Progress Union. With
the
active support of the likes of Chiefs William Adjekughele and the late
Monorien
Agbatutu, the Emudiaga Club organised the first-ever conference on
Urhobo
Culture and Language at the Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, in
1992.
Onoge regularly acknowledged the kind assistance the Club received from
his
Urhobo College colleague, Chief Patrick Okitiakpe and others in the
funding of
the conference.
In
the year 2000-2003, Onoge became the Executive Director of CASS, Port
Harcourt.
With Professor Peter Ozo-Eson as companion, Onoge inaugurated a new
phase of
administrative openness and transparency, relevant social science
research and
engagement with the critical institutions and political organizations
of the
Niger Delta. Through seminars, workshops, and global networking, Onoge
elevated
CASS to a status comparable to the Dakar-based CODESSRIA (Council for
Development and Social Science Research in Africa) where he was also a
consultant. Onoge�s leadership of CASS brought him into the
intellectual
vanguard of the Niger Delta struggle with regular and positive
interactions
with frontline leaders of the Ijaw, Ogoni, Urhobo, Ibibio, Efik,
Annang, Ogbia,
Egenni, Isoko, Edo, Ukwuani/Ndokwa and other nations of the Niger
Delta.
For
example, on January 4 2003, Onoge,
Ojaide, and Darah travelled to Ogoniland to join that year�s
celebration of
Ogoni Day. Through the six-hour drive, we engaged in impromptu and
ecstatic
discussions on culture, sang and analysed classical Udje songs,
commented on
the endangered environment and the need for the Urhobo people to
construct
strategic alliances with the Ogoni and other nations of the embattled
Niger
Delta. Our delegation was received by MOSOP President, Ledum Mitee and
his
executive and joint projects were agreed on. It was during that trip
that we
took a decision to establish the Urhobo Studies Association at Abraka
to drive
Urhobo scholarship and discourses. The Association started in 2003 and
Onoge
was active in its academic programmes throughout the six years. For the
one
decade that Onoge engaged in liberation politics with the Niger Delta
nations
and organizations, he endeared himself to all as a comrade,
revolutionary and
humanist. In all conferences, workshops, and political gatherings,
Onoge�s
voice boomed and resonated as his prodigious presence dazzled and
puzzled many,
including those on the opposite side of the political divide.
With this
pedigree, Onoge�s choice as member
of the Delta State delegation to the 2005
National Political Reforms Conference in
Abuja was well deserved and ordained by reputation. In February,
Governor James
Onanefe Ibori attended the service of songs for the burial of Professor
Frank
Ukoli, the first Urhobo to attain that status. As soon as he sighted
Onoge, he
declared: �Prof, you will go for the conference� and the statement was
greeted
with robust applause. Chief Ibori had heard Onoge address audiences at
Asaba,
Warri, Benin, and Port Harcourt and he called him �firebrand
professor�. The
leader of the Delta delegation was Deacon Gamaliel Onosode, with Chief
Edwin Kiagbodo
Clark, Chief Ifeanyi Sylvester. Moemeke, Rear Admiral Mike Onah, and
Professor
Itse Sagay as members. A 10-member technical think tank headed by
Engineer
James Bukohwo Erhuero provided strategic backing.
At the
conference Onoge�s deep grasp of
political economy and his oratorical prowess thoroughly overawed the
apostles
of Northern Caliphate hegemony in Nigeria. He led the crucial debate on
resource control and fiscal federalism at the conference. The
memorandum
submitted by Delta State sharply articulated the popular demand of the
Niger
Delta Region for increase in derivation from 13% to 50%. The stubborn
resistance of resource-famished, but politically privileged parasite
states in
the north of Nigeria killed that opportunity for the democratic renewal
of
Nigeria. But Professor Onoge and members of the Niger Delta delegations
returned to the welcome of heroes and heroines in the Region.
The same
robust energy and unswerving egalitarian
philosophy guided Onoge�s participation in the activities of the
South-South Leaders
and Elders Forum under the aegis of Chief Clark. In the work of the
Ledum
Mitee-headed Niger Delta Technical Committee set up by President Umaru
Musa Yar�Adua
in 2008, Onoge was a prolific resource person and brilliant
communicator. He
headed the committee that prepared the U. P. U. memorandum for the
Technical
Committee which advocated the creation of an Urhobo State as the most
reliable
vehicle to guarantee the Urhobo people a place of honour and relevance
in
Nigeria and Africa in the 21st century.
Pioneering
Marxist Sociology of African Literature
In the
1972-1973 academic session, Onoge
handled one of the largest postgraduate courses in Harvard University
as a
Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Relations. He used the
course to
aggregate the various theoretical viewpoints and nuances on
revolutionary
social change from Frederick Douglass of the United States of America
to Amilcar
Cabral of Guinea-Bissau. He always told us that teaching that course
was one of
the most fulfilling experiences of his career, and his reading list for
the
course had about 200 titles.
It was at
Harvard that he published his
path-breaking paper on literature, �The Crisis of Consciousness in
Modern
African Literature: A Survey�, which is probably the most quoted essay
on
African letters and justifiably so. This 30-page essay established the
canons
of radical and Marxist interpretation of arts, artists, and the
consumers of
their works. The essay correctly identifies the political and
ideological
influences that have shaped African written literature in the past 100
years.
Onoge gives the primacy of place to anti-imperialist and pro-liberation
writers
such as Aime Cesaire, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ngugi wa Thiong�o, Alex La Guma,
and the
younger generation of African writers emerging in the early 1970s.
Needless
to say that the perspective of the
essay was to influence critical temper and creative output from the
1980s as
borne out in the post-1980s works of
Timothy Aluko, Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, J.P. Clark, Soyinka,
Chukwuemeka Ike,
Ola Rotimi, Zulu Sofola, and Buchi Emecheta. The next generation of
writers
benefited positively from Onoge�s intervention and that of notable
critics such
as Chinweizu, Jeyifo and Ngugi. The radical orientation is palpable in
the
writings of Femi Osofisan, Akinwumi Isola, Niyi Osundare, Festus Iyayi,
Tanure
Ojaide, Odia Ofeimun, Bode Sowande, Tunde Fatunde, Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Olu
Obafemi,
Funso Ayejina, Abubakar Gimba, Harry Garuba, Remi Raji, Ogaga Ifowodo,
Zainab
Alkali, Tess Osonye Onwueme and others. In the wider African context,
the
Marxist literary canon of socialist realism radically redefined the
aesthetics
of works by Kofi Awoonor, Ayi Kwei Arnah, and Kofi Ayindoho of Ghana
and
Njabulo Ndebele of South Africa.
Perhaps we
should add that Soyinka�s tragic
plays were severely, and sometimes recklessly criticised the Leftists
for their
idiomatic density and un-dialectical affirmation of immutable African
beliefs
and worldview. Soyinka never spares anyone who misunderstands him,
particularly
those who invoke non-African systems; yet he had tremendous respect and
admiration for Onoge and his Marxist views.
Onoge�s
fame rests also in the dialectical
way he domesticated or Africanised the Marxist epistemology in artistic
creativity and criticism. The genesis of the debate goes back to the 19th
century in Europe with Marx and Engels and it was revived in the 1920s
with the
rise of radical writers and dramatists such as Bertolt Brecht of
Germany. After
the Russian revolution in 1917, Leon Trotsky and Georg Plekhanov
expanded the application
of the paradigm. In the 1940s the Frankfurt School that developed
around Georg
Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse introduced
more
controversies, especially with mediation influences of technology. The
English
pioneers were Christopher Caudwell, George Thompson and Raymond
Williams. Terry
Eagleton was to emerge much later. The Bulgarian, Ernst Fischer
published his The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach in
the early 1960s and Adolfo Sanchez Vasquez followed in the early 1970s.
But
African literature was excluded from the pale of this aesthetic quarry
until
Onoge broke the myth with his 1974 seminal essay. This essay and his
�Towards a
Marxist Sociology of African Literature� served as the theoretical
anchor of
Georg Gugelberger�s edited Marxism &
African Literature (1985).
Attending
Onoge�s classes of Sociology of
Literature offered an intellectual feast that was not available in
other
disciplines in the University. His compulsory background reading also
featured
works by Fanon such as The Wretched of
the Earth, A Dying Colonialism, and Toward
the African Revolution. Aime Cesaire�s Discourse
on Colonialism was another, so was Ngugi wa Thiong�o�s
Homecoming essays. For full-fledged Marxist theories there were
Frederich Engels� The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State, Trotsky�s Literature
and Revolution, and Mao Tse-tung�s Talks at Yenan Forum
on Literature and Art. The oft-quoted passage
from Marx was �Philosophers have interpreted
the world in various ways, the point however is to change it.� This
was the
ideological mantra that we all committed to memory. Everyone mentored
by Onoge
found it irresistible and respectable to cite Mao�s �Work
of literature and art, as ideological forms, are products in the
human brain of the life of a given society�.
Nearly all
passages of Fanon were quotable
but the ones easily remembered and dissected in class were �Each
generation must, out of relative
obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it�; �No man can truly wish for the spread of
African culture if he does not give practical support to the creation
of the
conditions necessary to the existence of that culture; in other words,
to the
liberation of the whole continent� and �To fight for
national culture means in the first place to fight for the
liberation of the nation, that material touchstone which makes the
building of
a culture possible. There is no other fight for culture which can
develop apart
from the popular struggle�. The popular political quote from Mao
was �imperialists are paper tigers� which
demystified the military power of Western imperialist nations like the
United
States, Britain, France, and Japan which terrorized Third World peoples
for
decades.
On the
strength of the reputation of Onoge�s
course of the Sociology of African Literature at Ibadan, he was invited
to
inaugurate a similar programme at the University of Dares Salaam in
1976-1977.
He was away in Tanzania when the Festival of Black and African Arts and
Culture
(FESTAC) took place in Lagos in February 1977. In December 1977, Onoge,
Biodun Jeyifo,
Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Kole Omotoso, Femi Osofisan and the rest of us
younger
academics, later known as the Ibadan-Ife Group, hosted a conference
tagged �Radical
Perspectives in African Literature�. The emergence of this group
reflected the
growing division amongst Nigerian literary scholars, the radicals
versus
conservatives or the bourgeois as we called them. In conference after
conference, the two tendencies engaged in robust exchanges which helped
to
inspire new techniques of writing and literary criticism. Professor
Onoge was
surely the intellectual general of the left wing literary scholars.
Marxists,
Activists and Guerrillas
In the
early 1970s our images of revolution
and guerrillas were drawn from foreign lands such as the Soviet Union,
China,
Vietnam, Haiti and Cuba. By the mid 1970s African examples became handy
with
victories of anti-colonial armies in Mozambique, Guinea, Angola, South
Africa,
Zimbabwe, and Namibia. But their guerrilla armies were patterned after
that of
China which needed heavy human capital arsenal. In 1953, the Moncada
insurgents
in Cuba had introduced the small and ideologically focused variety.
After the
triumph of the Cuban socialists in 1959, Che Guevara came to the Congo
in 1965
to initiate a similar forest-based, micro-guerrilla type. The
experiment failed
but the memory remained as seen in the 12-day uprising by Isaac Adaka
Boro�s
all-Ijaw guerrilla outfit that struck in February 1966. The marvellous
feats of
the African guerrilla armies saved the Nigerian Marxist the
embarrassing butt
of bourgeois cynics who used to tease them with the quibble: �where are
your
peasant armies of revolution?�
The
temporary resolution of the apartheid and
capitalist crisis in Southern Africa from the 1980s dimmed the
prospects of
this phenomenon somewhat. But insurgent gangs later sprouted in
Somalia, Sierra
Leone, Liberia, and the Sudan. But Nigerians never imagined that their
land would
ever foster such revolutionary military formations. This illusion was
burst
asunder in the 1990s with the arrival on the scene of radical
ethnicity-based
movements such as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People
(NOSOP),
the Ijaw National Congress INC), the Ijaw Youth Council, and other
environment-focused groups like Environmental Rights Action initiated
by
Comrade Oronto Douglas and colleagues.
The
Federal government colluded with the
multinational oil companies such as Shell to crack down on peaceful
protests,
leading to the government murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni
patriots in
1995. In October 1998, a burst petroleum pipe fire killed about 1,000
villagers
in Idjerhe (Jesse) in Delta State. The government sadistically denied
assistance
and compensation. On December 11, the Ijaw Youth Council launched the
Kaiama
Declaration at Boro�s birthplace which set the tone for militant
advocacy of
resource control and fiscal federalism. In November 1999, Obasanjo�s
civilian
regime sent armed troops to demolish Odi claiming to be in pursuit of
criminals. After these holocausts, the idiom and direction of revolt
against
oil companies and local colonial exploiters changed radically in favour
of
militancy and armed guerrilla politics.
When Onoge
returned to the Niger Delta in
2000, the social ecology of struggle had altered. As the late Ugandan
poet,
Okot p�Bitek once wrote, oil-corrupted Nigeria had become a country
where the
pythons of uhuru (independence) had
devoured the weak and oppressed classes and resource-rich minority
nations of
the Niger Delta. The vocabulary of �local colonial exploiters�,
�resource
control�, �liberation� and �emancipation� had become popular and
ennobling to
use and hear. The most edifying experience for Onoge as a revolutionary
sociologist was the domestication and re-invention of the phenomenon of
small,
mobile, technology-guided, almost invisible and ubiquitous guerrilla
formations. The country�s profit-driven mass media that would not
publicise
views antagonistic to the government�s had become zealous in reporting
and
quoting unedited and anonymous e-mail communiqu�s of these unknown and
unknowable groups. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta
(MEND)
epitomizes this phase of dialectical and historical materialism. Three
weeks
after Onoge�s death, the name Urhobo Revolutionary Army entered the
lexicon of
liberation visioning in the Niger Delta.
Not to be
ignored is the influence of global
events and insurgent movements against the monster of Western,
capitalist
imperialism typified by the United States. Thanks to the revolution in
digital
communication, the Al Qaeda group of Osama Bin Laden demystified the
awesome
power of the United States on September 11, 2001, with the bombing of
the
Manhattan heartland of global capitalism in New York. The world was
awaken from
its slumber of post-Cold War Western monopoly of the weapons of mass
destruction. Welcome to the 21st century; welcome to the age
of
digital communication where the power of knowledge and ideology
overwhelms that
of sheer number and wealth.
The
ramifications of these historic events were well absorbed by change
advocates
in Nigeria and the Niger Delta. Soon after the return of electoral
politics in
Nigeria in 1999, inter-ethnic clashes and religion-fuelled riots caused
mayhem
in many populous cities such as Kano, Kaduna, Jos, Bauchi, Lagos,
Shagamu, and
Ilorin. The upsurge of fanatical Islamic sects like Sharia in some
northern
states nearly made Nigeria ungovernable. Whilst Onoge was in Jos for 20
years,
there were frequent bloody feuds between ancestral natives of the
Plateau State
and migrants from other ethno-national regions. In November 2008, the
most
horrendous of these upheavals occurred in Jos and hundreds were killed.
When the
federal government gendarmes
code-named Joint Task Force (JTF) invaded and destroyed oil-rich Ijaw
communities of Gbaramatu area of Delta State in May 2009, Nigeria�s
electronic
media shut out their viewers from the horror scenes but the progressive
Arab
television Aljazeera aired them to audiences of billions across the
world. With the Gbaramatu show of state
violence, Onoge
and other interpreters of the unfolding drama of radical changes knew
that the
Nigerian ruling class would no longer disguise its imperial agenda of
subjugating the Niger Delta for oil profits to flow uninterrupted.
Vladimir
Lenin, the first president of the Soviet Union (1917-1924) had written
that a
revolutionary situation breaks out when the oppressed masses refuse to
be
governed in the old ways.
Two weeks
before Onoge�s demise, President
Umaru Musa Yar�Adua announced a controversial amnesty programme for
so-called
militants of the Niger Delta. It was the first time that the Nigerian
ruling
oligarchy acknowledged that the masses of the region were no longer
prepared to
be ruled in the old, unjust and exploitative ways. For
Onoge and Nigerian Marxists the world is
undergoing the recurring osmosis of permanent
revolution as predicted by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Che
Guevara,
Frantz Fanon and Nkrumah many decades earlier. Much more fulfilling for
Onoge
in the twilight years was the realization by us that the Niger Delta
has
assumed the historical position of being the locomotive of the Nigerian
revolution for justice, equity, and emancipation from the local
colonial
bondage superintended by the Caliphate-dominated ruling class.
In the
Middle East the invasion of Iraq by
the United States and its Western allies was deteriorating into another
Vietnam
debacle. President Saddam Hussein of Iraq had been tried in a kangaroo
court
and condemned to death by hanging. Yet insurgency did not abate as
suicide
bombers and urban guerrilla outfits continued to torment the invaders
and their
Iraqi comprador agents daily, resulting in heavy human fatalities. In
neighbouring Iran, an anti-imperialist regime stood out stoutly against
terror
threats from the capitalist West that hypocritically called for free
and fair
elections whilst their nations enjoyed excellent relations with Saudi
Arabia
where no elections are ever held. And so the world did not stand still.
The
first major capitalist economic depression in 70 years deceptively
christened
financial meltdown was ravaging the profit vaults of speculators in the
United
States and other free enterprise nations. Frightened of what Karl Marx
once
described as the common ruin of all, the United States abandoned its
rank
racism temporarily and elected Barrack Hussein Obama the first black
African
American as President.
This was a
political earthquake of sorts
which made Onoge reminisce exultingly about the long history of
struggle
African Americans from the era of Nat Turner, William Delany, Frederick
Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, William Du Bois, Jesse
Owens, Marcus
Garvey, Claude McKay, to the generation of Rosa Parks, Angela Davis,
Malcom X,
Martin Luther King, Mohammed Ali, James Brown, and Jesse Jackson. On
January 20
2009 the Delta Diaspora Association gathered at the Godatin Hotel bar
in
Enerhen area of Warri to celebrate the inauguration ceremony of
President
Obama. Onoge was not strong enough to attend but he sent word to salute
the
heroic triumph of Obama, adding that it was one chapter in the long
revolution
to free humanity from the barbarism of capitalism and racism.
Return
to the Source Credo
Amilcar
Cabral is credited with this concept
which he distilled from his experience as the President of the African
Party
for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). By �return to
the
source� he meant the necessity for the revolutionary, educated but
alienated
elite to make deliberate effort to reconnect with his or her cultural
roots
which are preserved in the people�s folklore, arts and history. Aime
Cesaire
from Martinique had celebrated this mental reorientation in his
classical
Negritude poem, Return to My Native Land
(1934). It was echoed in the works of Alejo Carpentier and Nicolas
Guillen of
Cuba years later. To the summons of return to the source Cabral added a
more
difficult challenge for the educated elite, namely, to �commit class
suicide�
by deliberately disengaging from the petty bourgeois comforts of city
life and
joining with the peasants and urban poor to fight for liberation from
oppression and exploitation. Many world revolutionaries had to do this.
Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky of Russia adopted anonymous names to
shield
themselves from the watch and wrath of fascist czars. During the
20-year long
guerrilla fight for national liberation, Mao Tse-tung of China gave out
his
children to unknown peasant farmers to save him form the burden of
parental
sentiments. In Nigeria, Eskor Toyo changed his Oron name; Ola Oni was
Oladapo
Oniororo in his King�s College days in Lagos in the 1940s.
In our
estimation, Onoge went farther than
others in his emersion in the return to the source cultural renewal.
His rural
background in Urhobo set the pace and he consolidated it with his
academic
training in agriculture and social anthropology. During his field work
days in
Aiyetoro Christian community, he offered free teaching to children and
adults
and he was adoringly called �Moses� for this and his luscious beards
reminiscent of Karl Marx�s. Onoge�s studies in anti-imperialism and
African
literature further honed his pro-people outlook. He was humble, polite,
polished, charitable, compassionate and ornate in his baritone voice
that
charmed even adversaries of his ideological passion.
Onoge also
experienced the transition of
cultural return to the sources in other unorthodox ways. One was his
gradual
recognition of the intrinsic values of traditions and their innovative
use to
promote egalitarian consciousness and societal renewal. Take the
instance of
his integration into the local structures of royal and monarchical
affairs. In
our age as starry-eyed revolutionaries, we Marxists scorned anything
having to
do with feudal or traditional power systems. The image of feudalism we
harboured then was taken from classical Marxist literature derived from
the
history of that class in European nations in the pre-French and
pre-Russian
revolutions. Feudal monarchs and their armies were notorious for
blood-thirsty
excesses, plunder and disinheritance of peasant producers and conquered
territories. We carried these horrid images into the African scene and
thus
exhibited antagonism towards all manifestations and symbols of
non-democratic
dispensations.
As Onoge
returned to his Urhobo and Niger
Delta cultural sources, he gradually began to lower his sights as the
Angolan
liberation fighters used to say. One of his students became a king in
the ancient
community of Erohwa in Isoko area of Delta State. The new king showed
appreciation for his former teacher and conferred the title of �Ugo of
Erohwa�
on Onoge. In the early 2000s, his own Uvwie Kingdom also honoured him
with
another chieftaincy title and the Marxist Professor became a �Double
Chief� as
local parlance has it in the Niger Delta. But he was not fussy about
these new
images of local nobility and class distinction. He had adopted his
family�s
cognomen of �Agadagba� (generalissimo) which is also common in the Ijaw
areas
of Gbaramatu and Egbema of the western Niger Delta. On account of his
reputation as a fearless speaker, he had invented for himself the
tell-tale
sobriquet of �Oyivwinta� (Fearless Orator). Whenever his associates
wanted to humour
him, they would invoke the full panoply of names thus: (Double Chief
Professor,
the Ugo of Erohwa, and the Agadagba and Oyivwinta of Ugborikoko!�
Fun-sharing
was one of Onoge�s cultural gifts.
Onoge
underwent other forms of cultural
renewal and re-integration. His father was a celebrated composer and
entertainer in the Uvwie Ighovwan
oral song-poetry of social commentary and moral control. Although we
never saw
Onoge on a dance floor, he had nostalgic memories of the Ighovwan
carnivals performed annually by all seven communities of
the Uvwie state of Urhobo at the waterfront theatre of Ohworhu
temple in the Ekpokpo (Ephro/Effurun) metropolis. The
deluge of urbanization in Effurun from the 1940s had drowned all
channels of
folk cultural expression such as Ighovwan
and kindred art forms. But Onoge was excited to find a similar
aesthetic system
in Udje of the Ughievwen and Udu
people to the east of Uvwie. Nigeria�s national poet laureate J. P.
Clark had
opened scholarly studies into Udje
repertoire in the mid 1960s. Darah did his doctoral thesis on the Udje genre in 1982 and David Okpako and
Tanure Ojaide have extended the studies.
Onoge was
enamoured of Udje satirical song-poetry not only for
its sheer metaphorical
elegance but also for the themes and social discourses of
pre-capitalist Urhobo
society. Onoge enthusiastically drew illustrative material from the Udje texts for his analysis of rural
poverty, emerging class polarization fostered by the oil economy, and
residues
of egalitarian and communitarian consciousness embedded in them. One of
his
favourite numbers was the �Noruayen� song from David Okpako�s Owahwa
community,
a ballad that explores the tragic end of a young and hardworking man
who died
in the process of scooping discarded palm oil thrown into the waterways
by
European merchants. In Noruayen�s fate, Onoge detected that of millions
of
Africans whose destinies were destroyed by rampaging, predatory
capitalism. Yet
another memorable piece for him was �Fraimu�, an Orhunghworun song on a
robustly
built female paragon who was instigated to engage in extra-conjugal
sexual
affairs by a husband who always travelled in search of wealth and
fortune. If
ever Onoge was ill or in foul mood and you sang these songs to him, his
vitality was fired instantly. That was Onoge for you, the scholar and
connoisseur of culture and high aesthetic taste.
The
June 12, 1993, Volcano and its aftermath
Onoge was
already about 10 years in Jos when
the volcanic eruptions of the 1993 June 12 protests for the restoration
of the
election victory of M. K. O. Abiola paralysed Nigeria. The military
regime of
Babangida did not allow Abiola to rule but the storms of the
country-wide
protests and street matches helped to warn the military dictators to
finally
leave power in 1998. The June 12 years of struggle were coordinated by
the
National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) in which veterans like Michael
Ajasin,
Alfred Rewane, Anthony Enahoro, Alani
Akirinade, Wole Soyinka, John Oyegun, and Gani Fawehinmi played pivotal
roles. Throughout
the five years of social upheaval and heavy-handed reprisals by the
desperate
military, Onoge was involved in numerous interventions at public
debates and
platforms. The oil workers pro-June 12 strike of 1994 excited him
exceedingly
and all through his life he venerated Comrade Frank Ovie Kokori and his
militant colleagues for daring fascist General Sani Abacha in his den
of coup
makers. With his associate Ozo-Eson and their leftist friends in the
north of
the country they joined forces with all segments of the Nigerian labour
movement and the gregarious human rights organisations to advance the
cause of
the pro-democracy uprising that opened the political space for
bourgeois electoral
contests from 1998.
Onoge
tenaciously supported governors James
Ibori of Delta State and D. S. P. Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State and
the other
Niger Delta governors and legislators in the agitation for resource
control and
fiscal federalism from 2000-2007. He was a regular guest lecturer in
their
events. Until the last moments, Onoge maintained steadfast alliance
with the
progressive segments of the Nigerian petty bourgeois political class,
from the
days of Aminu Kano, Obafemi Awolowo, Ambrose Alli, Abubakar Rimi,
Balarabe
Musa, Solomon Lar through Ahmed Bola Tinubu to Comrade Adams
Oshiomhole. A few
days after Oshiomhole was restored by the courts to the governor�s
saddle in
Edo State, Onoge visited him in Benin even when he was already frail in
health.
Effurun
and Capitalist Primitive Accumulation
Again, for
Onoge, there was even an earlier
more edifying return to the source event in his Effurun area of Delta
State. This
was the 1986 Ekpan Women�s revolt against oppression and exploitation
by the
Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and their cohorts in Uvwie
Kingdom
and the Niger Delta. The post-civil war boom in the oil economy of the
1970s had
brought petro-dollar wealth to the Warri-Effurun metropolis which is
the commercial
and industrial epicentre of the western Niger Delta. Most of the oil
industries
and institutions destined for the zone were hosted by Effurun that had
more
land to spare for gigantic enterprises and residential properties. The
Warri
Refining and Petrochemical Company ant the Petroleum Training Institute
(PTI) came
in 1977 and the Nigerian Gas Company opened in 1980. Oil
service firms, contractors and foreign
personnel followed and boosted the real estate business. The road
networks had
to be extended into hitherto arable land and green belts. In late
1970s, the
Nigerian government built a 30-kilometre dual carriage road to connect
the
Warri ports with the Delta Steel Oil Company, Ovwian-Aladja, Africa�s
largest
direct steel reduction plant. Military
barracks and pipelines consumed more farm lands. All these developments
chopped
swathes of arable land, much of which was obtained in violation of the
principles of equity and economic justice. In 10 years Effurun or Uvwie
people
had lost their most precious economic resource.
Thus
emerged the strange situation of the
first section of Urhobo territory having landless peasants. The trauma
was
devastating, especially as the management of the oil industry in
neocolonial
Nigeria has no exit points for victims. As the natives and migrants
were chased
into disease-infested slum dwellings and lumpen existence, social
tensions and
violent crimes rose in frequency and intensity. A thriving community of
migrant
sex workers, pimps, gamblers, and itinerant traders sprang up on the
northern
corridor of Effurun metropolis between the military barracks and the
highway to
Sapele. It was appropriately called �Maroko�, being the name of the
notorious
ghetto in Lagos which greedy military officers and latifundists
forcefully
occupied and chased away the residents into homelessness in the 1980s.
The
Effurun �Maroko� was eventually demolished not to provide alternative
and
healthier tenement but because the slum community was sitting on the
path of
gigantic pipes that convey crude oil and gas to processing facilities
and
export terminals on the Atlantic Ocean. Up to the early years of the 21st
century, Effurun was jeeringly referred to as the host of hardened
criminals
and political goon squads which often clashed with casualties and
fatalities.
Armed gangs of motor park touts would stage combats to test their
arsenal of lethal
weapons or the popularity of their leaders. Yet the majority of the
miscreants
who lived so precariously were not natives of Uvwie or Urhobo but
migrants from
other distressed areas of Nigeria and West Africa.
But all the opprobrium and caustic commentaries
blamed the problem on Uvwie youths.
For Onoge
and his generation of Uvwie
patriots, an old order had collapsed without compensatory remedies. In
one of his
outraged articles on the crisis of primitive capitalist accumulation,
he
described the Effurun area as a place where smoke-chocked brothels
litter the
landscape like smallpox. His native land had become an empirical proof
of
Frantz Fanon�s prediction that the national bourgeoisie of the newly
independent countries would have no better thing to do than to turn
their
cities to brothels for European tourists. And the description is apt
because a
2006 census of hotels and guest houses showed that there were about 100
within
the geographical space of about 150 square kilometres. A similar
density was recorded
for churches and miracle centres; there were about 350 churches in the
Warri-Effurun metropolis is 2006. By the time Onoge died, the figure
would have
risen much higher as the socio-economic causes of the aggressive
evangelism had
not changed. Comrade Onoge the erstwhile Marxist atheist and Africanist
lived
long enough to witness the manifestation of Karl Marx�s 19th
century
statement that �religion is the opium of the poor masses� which induces
them to
dream of living in post-humous paradise having been denied the earthly
one by
capitalist exploiters and ruling classes. In fact, one Pentecostal
church
bought the piece of land directly behind Onoge�s villa in Ugborikoko
and the
ecstatic drumming, singing, dancing by the worshippers denied the
Onoge�s the
legitimate right to peace and quietude. This was the ultimate
experience of the
effect of the religious opium and Comrade Onoge had to take drastic
steps to
buy off the plot of land and the new �miracle centre� relocated
elsewhere in
the �mighty name of Jesus!�
In August
1986, the Ekpan women who suffered
more land loss than others did better than reflect in lucid writings.
After
their plea to the NNPC for offer job places and menial economic
engagements
were ignored, the women resorted to the tradition mechanism of mass
protest in
Urhobo as they took over the oil facilities and entire traffic routes
in Effurun,
including the major highways from the Benin-Sapele and Ughelli-Port
Harcourt
ends. Chaos and pandemonium followed for days as armed security
contingents
hounded the protesting women to retreat, though in dignity. These
Amazons of
Uvwie are honoured till this day for doing what the men folk had been
unable to
handle. Yet Uvwie people, like the Ogoni of Eleme area of Rivers State,
have
remained landless hosts of multinationals oil giants and real estate
owners
ever since. The land hunger in Uvwie Kingdom is so severe that Onoge
had to buy
land to build his villa in his natal Ugborikoko in the 1980s. This is
one
reason why the Onoge funeral committee has scheduled a symposium for
August 25,
the 23rd year of the Ekpan women�s revolt against injustice
in the
oil industry.
Death
where is thy sting?
Any one
who lives up to 70 years plus in
poorly governed Nigeria is not strange to tragic events and Onoge was
no
exception. In the late 1990s, he suffered the untimely death of his
immediate
younger brother, Owens Onoge who attained the rank of a Commissioner of
Police.
It was Professor Onoge who sponsored Owens� university education while
he was
pursuing postgraduate studies in the United States. Barely two years
after,
Onoge�s lawyer spouse and compassionate partner also passed away
prematurely.
These twin-bunched experiences had a toll on Onoge�s emotions and
resilience.
But he soldiered on tenaciously, giving all he had to the revolution in
process. We recall one instance of his display of heroic endeavour in
the face
of daunting domestic problems. In February 1978, his caring and
adorable wife,
Patience, was terminally ill and on admission at the University
Teaching
Hospital, Ibadan. But indomitable Onoge managed to write and deliver a
first-rate keynote address at the Nigeria-South Africa conference on
�Democratic Transitions in Africa� at the Federal Palace Hotels, Lagos.
A few
days after he returned to Ibadan, Patience, his lovely and comradely
wife died.
It was
truly a difficult moment for Onoge,
their four young children, his brother Tuesday, friends and associates.
A year
later, Onoge was to recall this trauma with consummate communist humour
when
Darah led the Nigerian delegation to the second edition of the
bilateral
conferences in Pretoria, South Africa. The experience was all the more
significant for Onoge as he shared platforms and robust banter with
President
Thabo Mbeki in relaxed and convivial occasions. The Nigerian delegation
included notable scholars such as Professor Adebayo Adedeji, former
Executive
Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, Professor Jerry Gana
then
Minister of African Integration, Professor Jadesola Akande, former
Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University, Professor Bade Onimode,
Professor
Joy Ogwu of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Baba
Oluwide,
United Nations economic consultant, and the President of the Nigerian
Bar
Association, Mrs. Priscillia Kuye. For Onoge and others, the
interaction with
Mbeki was a lifetime experience that time could not diminish.
Last Moments
Before Silence
A few of
Onoge�s last academic outings
deserve recalling as we round-off this tributary account. The March
2008 �Darah
@ 60 International Conference� that was held at the Wellington Hotel,
Effurun,
offered him fresh space to enlighten and dazzle his peers in the
literary and
pro-democracy constituencies who had converged from many universities
in
Nigeria and abroad. He was a keynote speaker and he chose to address
the topic
of �When Sociology Invaded Literature at Ibadan�. With considerable
difficulty
he was able to reminisce on the stormy days when the leftist and
bourgeois
writers and critics clashed at debates and conferences before the storm
of
military fascism scattered progressive lecturers and patriots from the
country�s Ivory Towers. On August 6 of the same year the Urhobo Studies
Association hosted the second edition of the memorial event in honour
of Oshue
Ogbiyerin and the 1927 anti-tax revolt in Warri Province. The event
which was held
at Abraka combined that of the 60th anniversary of the death
of
Chief Mukoro Mowoe of Urhobo, the venerated Nelson Mandela of the
western Niger
Delta in the 1940s. Onoge chaired the presentations and dance display
sessions
that lasted for nearly six hours.
His very
last memorable academic engagement
was in the first quarter of 2009. The Uvwie King, His Royal Majesty,
Abe I and
the Uvwie Traditional Council of which Onoge was a member requested him
to
prepare a prospectus on how to safeguard Uvwie culture and language
from
extinction in the face of overwhelming migrant pressure and neocolonial
modernisation. Though weak and handicapped in ambulation, Professor
Onoge held
the audience spell-bound for over four hours during which he provided
scientific analysis and multi-media remedies for the preservation of
Uvwie
culture and civilization. In retrospect, that presentation and the
thunderous
applause that greeted it would serve as a fitting farewell to one of
Africa�s most
distinguished Marxist intellectuals.
Although
his condition did not improve with medication, Onoge kept on the
struggle to
liberate the Niger Delta and Nigeria. He had hoped that he would regain
his
health and write his memoirs. But this was not to be. After fruitless
visits to
several hospitals and clinics in Nigeria financial assistance came from
the
Government of Delta State for treatment overseas. He was to flown India
to seek
a cure for a malignant ailment apparently caused by a spine injury he
had in
Jos many years before. On July 12, 2009, Professor Comrade Omafume
Friday Onoge
passed on into blissful Elysium of haloed ancestors. As Urhobo
dialectics puts
it, �AKPO RE-E: Life is an endless
continuum and renewal�. And so it will be with our Onoge.
Omafume Onoge in his
last days
Professor Darah and Dr..Awhefeada
are of the Department
of English and Literary Studies, Delta State University, Abraka, Delta
State,
Nigeria.