GODINI Gabriel Darah is a professor of oral literature, Folklores, and cultural sciences. He has no doubt distinguished himself in his chosen profession as an academic for over four decades, and I can claim to have known him since this period.
He started a lecturership job at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and later a pioneer lecturer at inception in the Department of English Literature, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Agowoye. He later taught at Delta State University, Abraka, up to the present period.
He was well prepared for the work of scholarship at the University of Ibadan, where he studied as an undergraduate and graduate student. He earned his PhD. (1982) in the same university.
The student union body at the national level organised under the platform of National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) was largely influenced by the Marxists on the choice of its leadership and its radical disposition. G. G. Darah’s role in the movement was exceptional, and this was accordingly confirmed as much by Ebenezer Babatope, an accomplished social historian who singled out G. G. Darah as unarguably the most committed student leader of his time. No wonder G. G. Darah was the one representing the interest of the students in the ad-hoc Committee constituted under the Murtala Muhammed regime meant to maintain cordial relationships between the two parties – students and the government.
His contact with Comrades Ola Oni and Omafume Onoge, two socialists and socially committed academics in the university influenced him along the body of the idea of Marxism. This did not only impact his academic proficiency, but he threw the whole of himself to this school of thought as one of its committed devotees (apology to Baba Omojola). He was charged with the responsibilities of organising and propagating Marxism as an idea that its time had arrived in addressing the problem confronting Nigeria like any other third world or neo-colonial countries.
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G. G. Darah belonged to the first generation of Marxist students on the platform of Marxist Youth Movement at the University of Ibadan. Their activities included holding regular ideological meeting every Sunday evening, holding regular public lectures and symposia for the purpose of educating the rest of the university community on contemporary issues within and beyond Nigeria. The group was well known for its press in propagating the idea they profess and to service their activities within the student and radical movement in the country. The student group at the time published “Militant’ and G. G. Darah was the editor. The tabloid also served as a training ground for members as this prepared them for their future career as a writer and journalist. The poem contributed to the paper by Darah, Niyi Osundare, and others were qualitative enough to show the best that the future had for them.
The group dwelt on the philosophy of combining theory with practice and this informed how they were involved in the activities of the student union body at the University, which they dominated and produced the best of the student union leadership of the period that has not been matched half of a century thereafter. The generation had unrepentant students’ union leaders such as Solomon Agunbiade, Laoye Sanda, G. G. Darah, Olu Adegboro, Jimi Adesina, Jonathan Zwingina, Father Rev. Murunba, Abdul Azeez, J. O. Osunkoya, Banji Adegboro, Femi Bamgboye, Ebenezer Babatope, Ben Oguntuase, V.I. Ozar, Segun Akinusi, Tunde Fatunde, Segun Okeowo, Wole Olanipekun, Paul (now Prof). They were responsible for organising inter-campus ideological group meant to serve as a united front for all ideological groups on the campuses to advance the cause of the student movement. The organisation was known as the Progressive Youth Movement of Nigeria (PYMN). The organisation existed to survive the pioneer organisers for the next two decades.
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The student union body at the national level organised under the platform of National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) was largely influenced by the Marxists on the choice of its leadership and its radical disposition. G. G. Darah’s role in the movement was exceptional, and this was accordingly confirmed as much by Ebenezer Babatope, an accomplished social historian who singled out G. G. Darah as unarguably the most committed student leader of his time. No wonder G. G. Darah was the one representing the interest of the students in the ad-hoc Committee constituted under the Murtala Muhammed regime meant to maintain cordial relationships between the two parties – students and the government.Such a relationship could not last beyond the death of the head of the military government, as his successor in person of Olusegun Obasanjo, a conservative military officer, could not sustain such a relationship.
Darah unarguably represents the unbroken trend of the tendency personified by Comrade Ola Oni as when the latter was no more active in the academic union, ASUU, G. G. Darah filled in the gap accordingly. Darah was one of the most active members of ASUU in his days while at the Obafemi Awolowo University in the 1980s. I am not unaware of how the work of the Union was being carried out as some were charged to care for organising, some for administration; some drawn from economics department were for collective bargaining and negotiation with the government.
Six months in power, Murtala Muhammed recorded progressive programmes, and this endeared him to the poor Nigerians. Murtala Muhammed led government cordial relationship with the student was reciprocated by the spontaneous militant action of the students against the Lt. Colonel Dimka led coup-de-tat that snuffed life from Murtala Muhammed before the coup was aborted and failed to topple the government.
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It was during the generation of G. G. Darah, at the University of Ibadan that the work of comrade Ola Oni to have a Marxist body in place received a boost. The organisation led by Ola Oni comprised of academics, non-academics and students and they were guided by the principle of Marxism in the way to conduct the affairs of the organisation both on the campuses and the labour movement in general. The organisation was able to influence events both on the campuses and beyond it. The establishment of more universities and polytechnics in the 1970s further enlarged the coast of the group thereby extended beyond University of Ibadan to other tertiary institutions including University of Ife, University of Benin, University of Lagos, Ahmadu Bello University, Bayero University, Kano, University of Ilorin, University of Calabar, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and The Polytechnic, Ibadan.
Not a few students and academics made enormous sacrifice and punished for their activities in pursuing the cause they believed in. Obasanjo and Babangida military junta were categorical in their estimation of the offence of the oppressed academics. This was associated with the aphorism that “they were teaching what they were not paid to teach.” Darah was a victim of such circumstance being harassed and intimidated and at other time arrested and detained by the security while being the chair of ASUU, OAU Branch.
Darah, as confirmed by his numerous graduate and undergraduate students, is a proficient scholar of high calibre in teaching and conducting research. As a public speaker, he held bound and earned the admiration of his audience on participation in public lectures and symposia. It is just impossible not to admire him in the way he channelled his arguments by reducing complex concepts to irreducible simple and understandable positions easy for even toddlers to comprehend.
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Darah unarguably represents the unbroken trend of the tendency personified by Comrade Ola Oni as when the latter was no more active in the academic union, ASUU, G. G. Darah filled in the gap accordingly. Darah was one of the most active members of ASUU in his days while at the Obafemi Awolowo University in the 1980s. I am not unaware of how the work of the Union was being carried out as some were charged to care for organising, some for administration; some drawn from economics department were for collective bargaining and negotiation with the government. Some others in the literary field were charged to perfect the resolutions, communiqués upon aftermath of meetings and conferences. It was in this regard that Darah exhibited his genius in the world of creativity in upstaging the propaganda machinery of the union ahead of that of the government.
OAU ASUU was one of the most vibrant branches of ASUU, while G. G. Darah was the chair of the Union at Ife. His exemplary leadership of the branch caused his colleagues from other branches making cases for him to gun for the leadership of the Union as president at the national level. But this was resisted and turned down by circumstances of the ideological group he belonged led by Ola Oni that did not buy this idea.
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As of 1980, when work had taken Omafume Onoge away from Ibadan, the editorial work of the organisation’s tabloid, Workers’ Vanguard passed on from Omafume Onoge to G. G. Darah. Before the end of the decade, Workers’ Vanguard became the most regular and important workers paper popular within the circle of the trade union and rank and file workers across the country. The Ola Oni group, Socialist Workers Party, was a force to be reckoned with in organising a left alternative to the politics of the elites towards the second republic. An appreciable intervention was made in this regard as mass followerships were recorded with branches established across the country. But the military regime that supervised its transition also bungled such a programme as it was only able to transfer power to the very old politicians that they took power from in 1966.
The point being made here is that the participation and the role of the Left in the struggle of June 12 movement could not have taken the direction of a classical Marxist line because of the setback brought about by the collapse of Soviet Union in 1989, four years before the June 12, 1993 debacle surfaced. Such singular events in Russia caused a setback to the world revolutionary process despite the known limitation of socialist movement in Russia before this period.
In the 1980s, Darah being the most active member of the group after Ola Oni, this was the reason he was positioned to travel on behalf of the organisation in responding to invitations to conferences and meetings by various socialist groups across the world. This was more so that Ola Oni had been banned from travelling out of the country. Darah made a success out of such trips in making many contacts that endure for long in the history of the organisation. Some of these contacts included the C. L. R. James group responsible for annual Black Book Fair in UK, the British Militant group led by Ted Grant that organised on Trotskyite Marxist principle, and other publishers – Zed Press, Bacon Press, Progress Publishers, etc.
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The group upon acquisition of publishing facilities was involved in publishing its own materials (Workers Vanguard) and for other unions that included National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS Charter of Demands), Academic Staff Union of Universities (Clarion), National Union of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions Employees (Forward), and Peoples Redemption Party. Darah played an important role in this regard as the extant editor of the group.
Darah served his sabbatical and thereafter worked in the most popular and well circulated press in the country, Daily Times and later Guardian Newspaper, where he was the chair of the editorial board and a weekly columnist. This time coincided with the June 12 movement that was thrown up to fight the military rule that annulled the best election ever conducted in the history of the country. Darah and the group he belonged played an active role in the struggle. But as Karl Marx would say, men and women make history, but this may not be in the manner in which it was contemplated by them. The point being made here is that the participation and the role of the Left in the struggle of June 12 movement could not have taken the direction of a classical Marxist line because of the setback brought about by the collapse of Soviet Union in 1989, four years before the June 12, 1993 debacle surfaced. Such singular events in Russia caused a setback to the world revolutionary process despite the known limitation of socialist movement in Russia before this period. It was for this reason that the struggle was fought on mass line, though, but on the pro-democracy platform, thereby divorced it of its ideological contents.
The state of bad governance as being experienced today cannot be separated from the unfinished struggle of the June 12 movement as the lesson of history is such that the ruling class have learnt nothing but continue to make the mistakes of the past. The present political situation now call for revolutionary change as the best antidote to address the challenges of insecurity, corruption, unemployment, poverty, social-inequality, disease, and poor leadership to steer the affairs of the country.
Comrade Olamosu is the National Coordinator, Centre for Social Policy & Labour Research (SOPLAR), 8, Signs & Wonders Shopping Complex, Ekotedo-Iyalobe Street (Opposite Central Hotel), Dugbe, Ibadan.
