TAJU: IT IS DIFFICULT, DON’T AGONISE BY Y.Z YAU
June 8th, 2009TAJU: IT IS DIFFICULT, DON’T AGONISE
BY Y.Z YAU
Three weeks to an official visit by the staff of the United Nations
Millennium Campaign – Africa Office in Nairobi to Nigeria, Dr.
Tajudeen Abdulraheem as Deputy Director of the Millennium Campaign -
Africa Office, had, working with a number of civil society
organisations, arranged a series of meetings with members of the
National and State Assemblies to canvass their support and commitment
to actions that could ensure the attainment of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) targets in Nigeria. His reason was that given
that legislators have to appropriate funds and to monitor the
effective utilisation of the funds, they were better placed to perform
an oversight role in ensuring that both state and federal governments
were committed to achieving the targets of the MDGs.
His last trip to Nigeria was in early March this year, during which he
also worked with many other groups to organise a series of events to
mark the International Women’s Day in several cities, focusing on the
two MDGs specifically relating to women. These are equality and
empowerment of women (Goal 3) and improving maternal health (Goal 5).
Drawing from its pan-African perspective, the events were tagged Piga
Debe, which in Swahili literarily means to make noise or shout.
Certainly we need to make as much noise as possible to stop mothers
from dying as a result of pregnancy and child birth.
I dragged him to Dutse in Jigawa State where he not only addressed the
International Women’s Day celebration held on 11th March but also paid
a courtesy call on the governor of the state. A humble Taju, he
apologised for his inability to attend the Talakawa Summit of which he
was one of the architects and offered useful suggestions on how the
state government could strengthen its anti-poverty strategy, but not
without pointing out what he thought was not right with the strategy.
Since the return to civil rule, which made it easier for him to come
to the country (in the beginning his passport had been seized by the
government), we had developed a routine. Each time he visited his home
town Funtua in Katsina State, he would come to Kano where we would
either have a talking lunch, for him to return to Funtua, or a dinner
(in which case he could spend the night in Kano. On this last
occasion, he travelled to Kano after the engagements in Dutse and we
had a late dinner along with other friends and spent the night
discussing, as usual, the state of things in Nigeria and Africa and
what needed to be done to ensure that the geography of poverty was
altered.
Taju’s commitment to the fight against poverty was not informed by the
Washington Consensus’ reading of fighting poverty as a means to ensure
system stability, but one borne of total commitment to social justice.
He believed that democracy was not possible in a society where many
people live in abject poverty. It was this commitment to fighting
poverty as part of the wider agenda for social justice that made Taju,
who had for all his life never worked for government, to join the UN
system as an anti-poverty crusader on the African continent. I recall
a friend who chided Taju, for taking the UN job, as having sold out.
But Taju thought otherwise. It gave him a wider African platform to
carry on his campaign for a united democratic Africa without poverty.
For him the slogan that another Africa is possible was to be
operationalised through another slogan he had popularised, “Don’t
Agonise, Organise!”
For the May trip we had planned our usual rendezvous to take place in
Funtua on the 28th May. I was therefore rudely shocked when at 6 a.m.
on Monday 25th May a friend telephoned to tell me that Taju had an
accident and had died as a result. I was devastated. I had known Taju
as friend, classmate, comrade and collaborator in a number of
community projects since 1978 when we entered Bayero University Kano.
I could not believe that this was the end of such a life-long
relationship.
Highly principled, outspoken, Taju, who had long-running battles with
the security both locally in Nigeria and abroad (in Europe and
Africa), knew he could not afford to be distracted by minor
infractions of the law such as not wearing seatbelts. As he was
someone who did not like driving, I could not remember ever seeing
Taju driving himself and never saw him alone in a vehicle.
This therefore places posers on the circumstances of his death. It was
reported that he drove alone to the airport early on Monday morning.
When the accident happened, the vehicle threw him out, meaning that he
was not wearing his seatbelt. It was also reported that the accident
was not discovered in time even though airport roads anywhere are
supposed to be busy, more so as there should be other travellers who,
like Taju, wanted to catch that same flight.
Taju touched so many lives. In Funtua he had built both primary and
secondary schools where children of the poor had access to free
qualitative education that was not available in state schools. I had
helped Taju to establish perhaps the first rural internet access point
in the country at Funtua in 2000. Today that internet centre is still
serving several communities in the Funtua, Bakori and Danja local
governments of Katsina State. He built a library around it where
people had access to books not available anywhere in public libraries
in Nigeria. Thousands of people have acquired computer literacy in the
computer centre attached to the PADEAP office in Funtua. The centre
also runs many other courses raging from adult literacy to preventive
healthcare.
Taju’s community service offerings were not just limited to Funtua. He
set up similar outfits and centres in Uganda, UK and even Kenya more
recently. In each of these countries, he set up schools, cybercafes
and community resource centres where ordinary people have a chance to
access education, life skills and civic education. He was a founding
member of several organisations such as the African Research and
Information Bureau (ARIB) in the UK, Centre for Democracy and
Development (CDD), Justice Africa, Pan African Development Education
Advocacy Project (PADEAP), and the New Nigerian Movement. Taju’s role
in the establishment of Radio Kudirat and in the struggle against
military rule in general in Nigeria is yet to be documented. It is a
challenge to those of us who worked with him in those heady days to
set the record straight.
His deep commitment to pan Africanism saw him working hard to revive
the Pan African Movement, to which he devoted himself full time for
many years. This led to the holding of the 7th Pan African Congress in
Kampala, Uganda in 1994. He was at home in any African country. As an
intellectual, he saw this gift as a tool to be used to liberate
Africa. He never allowed his intellect to be used in the service of
any dictatorial government but allowed individuals and organisations
of all kinds to freely draw from it in the making of a new world that
is grounded in social justice.
Taju knew virtually all African heads of state and was outspoken in
his condemnation of their dictatorial tendencies. In spite of having
worked with Musaveni for many years at the level of the pan African
movement, he fiercely criticised his autocratic rule in Uganda. He did
the same to Mbeki whom he saw as having deviated from the founding
principles of the ANC. Here in Nigeria, he did not spare our
rudderless leaderships of various hues.
The Taju we loved so much was a Taju many heads of state and political
leaders in Africa hated. Would the unusual circumstances of his death
be an indication of some political foul play? The Nigerian government
has a responsibility to help his family, friends and indeed the global
community to know truly what happened to this patriot,
scholar-activist and a great pan-African hero.
