My mind kept going back to our last conversation when he was with our mutual friend and brother, Napoleon Abdulai in Monrovia just ten days before the loss. And I kept asking myself, did he have a premonition this was about to happen? Was he sending a message when he kept imploring me to watch my security more tightly because the goons who had taken over the political landscape in Nigeria were capable of resorting to any means of retaining what had been stolen? Why, I kept ruminating, do bad things happen to good people? Why must we always lose our brightest and best to the pervasive evil machinations stalking Africa? Why, why, why?
But as the eulogies poured in through the specially-created Pambazuka webpage and several other online outlets, the palpable sense of despair and sadness turned into a celebration of a life in full. The tributes have come from far and near, remarking on Taju’s Pan-African internationalism, his obsession with the unity of the African peoples, his quest for institution building, his insistence on speaking truth to power and his refusal to be a cloistered academic and suffer fools gladly. And many of the tributes from Presidents to plebeians made this abundantly clear – Taju was a force of nature.
Taju deserved no less. An accomplished scholar, exceptional teacher, pan-African ideologue, democracy activist and military scourge, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem was supremely unstuffy and approachable, irreverent and impatient of protocol, gregarious and boisterous all at once. Taju was infectiously witty and at the same time deeply caring about people. Not for him the lazy intellectualism of cloistered academics. He was very much at home writing in The New Vision, Daily Trust as he was speaking flawless Hausa on the pro-democracy radio – Radio Kudirat or espousing political theory in the Review of African Political Economy, African World Review and African Marxist. His intellect remained public property to the very last, exemplified by his refusal to suffer Africa’s real and putative dictators and their multi-national collaborators gladly.
Born in Funtua, Katsina State on January 6, 1961, Tajudeen attended Government Secondary School in Funtua and Bayero University, Kano where he distinguished himself with a First Class honours degree in Political Science. He later broke new grounds by becoming the first Rhodes Scholar from the North of Nigeria at Oxford University where he earned his doctorate in Politics. Instead of pursuing the traditional route of academy followed by many of his friends and colleagues, he sought to bridge academy with activism. Not for him the pursuit of single issue agenda. He was always in search of solutions in a variety of ways. Taju was very much involved in the eighties debates on the Left, State, Class, Market and Imperialism and in the eighties/nineties debates on Democratisation and Development. He remained ever so critical of the tyranny of borrowed paradigms in social science research. Instead, he chose a life more dedicated to transformation of the African continent.
As an institution builder, Taju was instrumental to the establishment of several research bodies, activist institutions and associations in Africa. He was the Founder and First Coordinator of the Africa Research Information Bureau, Founding Chairperson of the Centre for Democracy & Development; General Secretary, Pan-African Movement Secretariat, Co-Director, Justice Africa, Director, PADEAP, Founder and Proprietor, Hauwa Community College and a major driving force behind the transformation of the OAU into AU. In between this, the doting father and loving husband that he was, he also served as a member of the Board of Governors of his daughters’ school in Haringey Borough, London.
Even as his ideas evolved with maturity, he never abandoned the goals of a socialist and United Africa even when conventional wisdom swung heavily against these ideals. The visionary leader that Taju was, his enduring legacy remained his courage of conviction and the clarity of his ideas through which he brilliantly and lucidly laid out the necessity of a united and socialist Africa. In several of his academic and newspaper writings, particularly Pan-Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the 21st Century (Zed Press, 1996) arguably his magnum opus and his postcard articles, Taju exposed and attacked the imperialism of western social science as a pernicious and yet subtle form of domination masquerading as the promotion of African division. He was a force of nature at social and intellectual gatherings, always ready to denounce so-called scientific objectivity of the social sciences as a screen for the pursuit of imperialistic interests. But even as he remained consistently critical of reactionary social science, his scholarship bore no malice as he always engaged the same scholars, activists and institutions on their own turf. That probably explained his last, and to many, somewhat inexplicable relationship with the United Nations Millennium Campaign.
Always sceptical of functioning within mainstream institutions, Taju was never cynical in his pursuit of change and transformation. As much as he recognised the flaws of the average African politician, especially in his troubled homeland, he never used their flaws as an excuse for justifying military intervention as several other colleagues of ours did unashamedly. Indeed, at a time many of his colleagues from his Bayero days were the ones haunting us in the UK and across the world either as military officers or security apparatchiks for perpetuating military domination, Taju stood respectably clear of such machinations, remained a scourge of military dictators and a huge source of hope and inspiration to younger academics and activists.
For Taju, the personal was always political. As someone close to him for two decades, he was infectious with his love and care. He doted over family and friends. He taught many of us what true friendship is. Although eclectic in his choice of friends, he would always ask after his friends and even casual acquaintances. As he traversed the length and breadth of the continent, Taju was always in touch with friends in every city. That booming voice on the phone was unmistakable even if you had not seen for years. Many of us are familiar with the hardliner Taju who was the uncompromising and dogged defender of the people, but my own abiding memory of the soft Taju was at his wedding in Tunis. I knew Mounira was special, but it was more than a leap of faith to give your daughter’s hand in marriage to our peri-pathetic brother. It was three days of revelry and fun in the Chaieb family home in Tunis.
Of course, Taju was not without foibles. He was human, after all. Many who knew him remarked over his less than organised lifestyle characterised by a penchant for missing his flights and driving rough (I even held myself responsible as the one who taught Taju how to drive). But these foibles paled into insignificance placed side-by-side with Taju’s extraordinary qualities. In all my years of knowing him, he always ruminated about how to make a fundamental difference in the lives of ordinary people. He was for the most part the conscience of ordinary people and a scourge of powerful people. Many who knew him can regale this hall with Taju’s irreverent treatment of so-called powerful people. I had encountered him having repartee with Obasanjo, Mbeki, Museveni, Kagame, Soyinka and Meles Zenawi and he was one African who never wavered in speaking truth to power, and often in the most undiplomatic manner.
The greatest tribute we can pay this African exemplar is to continue in his ways by building institutions and structures that will serve the purpose of our time and beyond. It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who once said, “Not to participate in the major events of one’s time is not to have lived”. Taju not only participated in the major events of his time, he charted and shaped the course of many events through his scholarship and activism. Africa has lost a gem; indeed, one of the brightest in our firmament. The democratic struggle in Nigeria has been short-changed by the loss of this consistent advocate of empowerment of the ordinary people. But the struggle must continue. And as he would have told all of us here: LET’S ORGANISE, DON’T AGONISE!!!
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