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Omafume Onoge: Tribute
and Reminiscence
By Onigu Otite
Retired
Professor of Sociology, University of Ibadan
IT
requires a heavy heart to write about a departed close friend and
colleague. Omafume Onoge
and I came to
Ibadan together in 1969 without a fore-knowledge that we both belong to
the
same ethnoterritory.
We
also both shared in the rigourous training
and specialisation
in the social anthropological field of scholarship, but with different
traditions and perspectives, he from Harvard and I from London. We
respected
and regarded each other highly in what we had to say or what we wrote.
It ended
there academically, for although he studied partly under the influence
of Talcott Parsons, a
structural-functionalist in the broad
area of equilibrium theoretical perspective, Onoge
broke the academic chains through extremely wide reading and became
thoroughly Marxist in outlook. He got
committed to socialist-Marxist
explanatory models for theorising and
changing
Nigeria towards a better state of affairs.
In
this, Omafume
went beyond academics to prefer a socialist way of life, growing a
luxuriant
beard and purchasing artifacts made in the Soviet Union, including a
red "muskovich" car which had a devastating
toll on his
time and limited financial resources; this forced him out of that
technology.
Omafume had
a huge body with a likeable impressive personality.
However, he was, and is, more important to us as an idea, an idea which
has
continued through his academic and professional descendants, thus
making his
physical departure to eternity less painful. Like our sociological
ancestors he
embraced and laboured to uphold the point
that ideas
are the ruling forces in life.
It is
inconceivable that Omafume's sharply
perceptive brain lies silent, grabbed by
the irresistible and non-discriminating cold hands of the inevitable
phenomenon
of death. Both of us can no longer engage in tireless controversies
arguing
different perspectives over the same thing.
We
have lost his intellectual
wealth. Indeed, I always referred to him as an intellectual powerhouse,
a solid
and consolidated fountain of knowledge. His writings, including two
chapters in
two of my edited books, testify to this fact, in addition to his
stimulating
contributions elsewhere and during symposia, intellectual debates and
lectures.
Anytime Omafume Onoge
was
scheduled to speak at a symposium or give a lecture, it was enough guarantee for a full house with attendants
overflowing
outside. This was mainly because he was always ready to dish out new
forms of radicalising and intellectually
stimulating ideas
essentially in a thorough Marxist sense.
Though
with a Parsonian
background, he radicalised sociology at
Ibadan and
elsewhere as a committed Marxist thinker and analyst. He gave a Marxist
content
to whatever he handled. He taught Sociology and Social Anthropology,
not only
at Ibadan and Jos, but also at Harvard, Macallester College, his Alma Mater for his
first degree,
and Dar-es-Salaam. He presented even such
neutral
courses as Sociology of Belief Systems, and Sociology of Literature
with a
Marxist orientation.
Professor
Onoge
linked us with other Departments of Sociology including that of the
University
of Nigeria where our common friend, late Professor Ikenna
Nzimiro was a leading Marxist scholar.
Although Omafume was mentally alert even
during the moment of
sickness, it was painful to watch him physically wasting away to
eternity.
Onoge
despised the institutions of Kingship and Chieftaincy as
feudal and exploitative, yet he later earned the position of a High
Chief, and
membership of the King's Council in Ugborikoko
in Uvwie Kingdom, Uvwie
LGA in Delta
State. In his later life, he was not keen on contesting this
contradiction and
new position which most of us, Professor-Chiefs or Kings earned long
ago.
Omafume Onoge's influence on some of his
mentees at Ibadan and many of his enthusiastic followers was
near-total. Some
of his male students and admirers even learned to grow luxuriant beard
like
him, during his early life at Ibadan, following their glorified
socialist-Marxist thinkers and mobilisers
in the old
USSR and China, with big conference bags hanging from their shoulders.
He
was not alone on U.I staff in
interpreting things from a Marxist angle. Akin Ojo
(Physics) and the late Ola Oni and Bade Onimode
(Economics) were Onoge's Marxist angelic
scholars who
pulled crowds at public and normal class lectures. Regrettably,
enthusiasm in
Marxist scholarship dwindled with the departure of three of these men
of
outstanding knowledge. Even shining Faculty academic giants and mentors
like
Professor Mabogunje and late Essien-Udom,
Billy Dudley and Ojetunji Aboyade,
admired the worth of these Marxist members of staff in the Faculty of
the
Social Sciences. They understood what the Marxist scholars said.
When Onoge
and I arrived at Ibadan, we met Professor Okediji
and
Imoagene, and, soon afterwards, Ogionwo,
Soleye, Sofola
and Akeredolu-Ale: and others such as Erinosho,
Arowolo, and Oke
joined us.
We became a mixed group with various backgrounds and specialisations
assembled from various overseas highbrow institutions,
the most formidable Department of Sociology in English-speaking West
Africa at
that time, Omafume Onoge
was the strong intellectual challenger with his completely Marxist
arguments.
Some analysts referred to this period as the golden age of the
Department.
He
was a thoroughly
Marxist-socialist oriented social critic and with his friends, Ola Oni,
Bade Onimode and Akin Ojo,
they were
misunderstood and tossed out of the University by an ignorant regime
which
refused to understand the nature of academic disputation as the
hallmark of
alternative innovative ideas of how malfunctioning failed states and
their
societies may be x-rayed and reconstructed to leave a better deal for
the masses,
the unemployed, and the vulnerable, including women and children. But
he had no
political power to back-up his theoretical postulations. He died as the
best
Senator or governor that we never had in Nigeria. We pray for his soul
to rest
in perfect peace.
- Professor Otite lives in Warri, Delta State.