BIODUN JEYIFO AND THE WASTED GENERATION

WEST AFRICA REVIEW

ISSN: 1525-4488

Issue 9 (2006)

Wale Ajao

Let me start by introducing them. I am referring to those I want to describe as members of the wasted generation. This introduction is by their fruits a tiny group of individuals. They go by the appellation, “Marxists.” Sometimes they are called activists! In recent times some of them are better known as human rights activists. They are found all around the nation. Their main habitation is the campuses of tertiary institutions. They have since the colonial days been peddling revolution. Quite a few of them believed that capitalism would collapse under its weight of contradictions! Yet a few others think that a closely knit organisation can bring down the capitalist state.

This would be replaced with the socialist state. This is expected to be a fulfillment of the prophecy of Karl Marx. In the communist manifesto of 1848 Marx had declared: “Workers of all countries unite”. He said workers had nothing to loose except their chains of exploitation put around them by the capitalist production process. Marx and Engels, in various publications, showed how Europe would become socialist. Their analysis did not come true. Vladimir Lenin, a Russian legal practitioner, made Marxism come true in 1917. The first socialist revolution succeeded in Russia, (a backward part of Europe). In the fifties, sixties and seventies, various versions of Marxism–Leninism spread around the world.

The world was divided into two hostile ideological camps. By 1986, the first “socialist state” was on its way to collapse. That year also marked the gradual penetration of currency devaluation in Nigeria. One year after, in 1987 precisely, BJ emigrated to the United States where he had earlier studied at graduate level. In his interview in The Guardian on Sunday, January 8, 2006, he explained the genesis of his departure to the United States. It had to do with the alleged denial of his right to a form of leave during the tenure of Professor Wande Abimbola as Vice-Chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University OAU. That emigration forms the main point of this commentary. Biodun Jeyifo as a Marxist-Leninist has declared in 1980 that capitalism was doomed to inevitable collapse! In any case even if it does not collapse on its own, he and his comrades would bring it down. They were working to achieve this through an organic linkage with the oppressed classes – the workers, students, peasants and the lumpen-proletariat.

He spoke at Oduduwa Hall at the then University of Ife. The occasion was a memorial lecture organised in remembrance of the Guyanese Marxist historian, Walter Rodney. He had been assassinated by agents of the military dictator, Forbes Burham.

At that point in time Biodun Jeyifo’s credentials and stature had become very high. It was around that time he became the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Uzodimma Nwala was his Secretary-General. Later BJ and Edwin Madunagu formed Action Centre for Information and Documentation (ACID). Essentially, ACID was to document the struggles of the oppressed. It provided ideological direction. it also put debate in perspective. In those days, Professor Wole Soyinka was the one all the Marxist loved to hit hard. He never, and up to date has never, professed Marxism. And for not being Marxist, Professor Wole Soyinka received quite a lot of hostile reviews and comments in various Marxist publications.

In the height of the popularity of their view points it was ironical that the Marxists emigrated. They ran out of the country in search of greener pastures. One by one they went in different directions. BJ headed for the States. Femi Taiwo left for the States, Julius Ihovbere left for Canada. Kole Omotosho headed for South Africa. And so on. As BJ himself said in the interview mentioned above explanations abound for their emigration. This piece will not say it was right or wrong for those who emigrated to have done so. It is their personal right to do whatever they wanted with their lives. But they cannot deny the negative effects of emigration on their political activism.

By emigrating, the activists can be accused of collaboration with capitalism. This is the argument. What they did means that they could not beat the capitalist system. They consequently decided to join it. If capitalism would not collapse on its own contradiction. If all your efforts to bring it down in your own country would not work. And you have mobilised peasants and students.

You have co-operated with the Labour Congress and the students movement. You have played all available cards. Instead of the system collapsing, one military President was even imposing currency devaluation, dubiously packaged as Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). Yet all of these were happening when with your qualification and experience you could get better pay in America where capitalism was relatively working well, wouldn’t it make sense for you to leave? In any case, you could always justify your emigration with the self imposed declaration that you could always continue your revolutionary activism wherever you were. Whatever they may say, the Nigerian Marxist intellectual who had emigrated inevitably created a wide gap in the revolutionary struggle. They had, by emigrating, lost touch with the masses.

They had further paved way for capitalism in Nigeria to keep wobbling and fumbling. The Nigerian Marxist intellectual who had emigrated had reinforced the malaise of Nigerian activists. They have never at any point been able to create a national political platform to confront the Nigerian state. It is interesting to note that Professor Wole Soyinka never went abroad to work for seventeen years! He was regarded as “unclear,” “confused,” “too liberal,” “obscurantist” and so on. Those intellectuals like BJ and others who were “clear” “Marxist,” chose to emigrate. They lost touch with the masses. They lost an opportunity for effective linkage with the oppressed. Can anybody imagine Lenin leaving Moscow to stay in Zurich for seventeen years! Would the first socialist state have been born? Even a business mogul like the late Chief Moshood Abiola went abroad briefly. He quickly returned to carry his cross. He of course paid the supreme sacrifice for his belief in the need to actualise his mandate. Of course, Leon Trotsky had faced a similar ordeal. He was assassinated in Mexico. Walter Rodney left Dar es-Salaam and returned home. Regrettably Forbes Burham snuffed life out of Walter Rodney. But at least Rodney had demonstrated that he was not a run-away revolutionist.

Enough of emigration and its effects on revolutionary activism. Yet another trade mark of Nigerian activists is gross incapacity for effective organisation. From my observation of Nigerian activists, they are not able to establish an effective national political platform. They always operate in “collectives” or “cells” made up of five or ten individuals. They often peddle rumour among themselves. They cannot conceive, adopt and implement a rule of procedure. They do not have a rallying point. And whether they like it or not they have confirmed what Leon Trotsky said.

He affirmed that “the crisis of contemporary civilisation invariably boils down to the crisis of the left.” In the case of Nigeria, the leftist is not a better alternative to the rightist. Similarly, the Nigerian rightist is not better than his leftist counterpart. It is easy to see the confusion of those who are advocating, practising and running capitalist system in Nigeria. They are as muddled as sand at the sea shore.! They think that by using state power to loot the treasury they are running free market economy!

The Nigerian political elite who believes in free enterprise, capitalist economy, still thinks he should be talking about rotational of presidency along geopolitical zones. They forget that capitalism had superseded ethnic boundaries, long, long, time ago! They forget that as far back as 1914 the British colonial capitalists amalgamated North and South to create a large market.

Instead of the Nigerian apostles of free enterprise economy finding a power sharing formula among national political parties, they are talking about power sharing among zones. Yet as bad as things are for the political advocates of capitalism, the revolutionary Marxists and other activists are in the same blind alley. The leftists carry their identity for a while. take up appointment as minister of this or that and they never return to the fold of the masses. The Nigerian Marxist will emigrate for a long while. He would gather a few dollars. He would return home and retire in a fine mansion and forget about the masses. Do you want to blame him? Doesn’t it he deserve a home? If the Nigerian university system cannot get required facilities, doesn’t it make sense to go to America and work where the facilities are? Good points! But if all revolutionaries keep to that, who will change the society? Nobody in Nigeria now talks about Marxism-Leninism! Every activist wants to be seen as human rights activist.

This is because the Abacha junta made it compulsory for western countries to finance the struggle for capitalist democracy. This inevitably entails struggle for human rights. But people seem to forget that we started by saying we are struggling for a socialist society. If that is correct, the struggle for human rights is not the end of the struggle. It is a means to an end. Why then do we abandon the end we proclaimed? Can we achieve socialism by residing abroad? Can we achieve socialism by serving as Presidential adviser for solid minerals? Then later we cap it up with service as Governor of XYZ state? Would Lenin had taken up appointment under the provisional government of Kevensky? You see the truth is that Nigerian revolutionists have so much intimidated everyone that they do not get criticised. Yet they must face the logic of their own action. As Karl Marx said, “the educator must be educated.”

The critic must expect criticism. By their obvious lapses. Because they have failed to change the system they confronted. For the fact that capitalism in Nigeria is not collapsing. Precisely, because the activists that can replace Nigerian capitalism with a better alternative are either emigrating or joining the same system I humbly borrow Professor Wole Soyinka’s description to assert that Nigerian Marxists constitute the wasted generation. Except for Edwin Madunagu’s warning theories in The Guardian, the Nigerian Marxist is as emasculated as a toothless bulldog!

So, as Professor Biodun Jeyifo celebrates his sixtieth birthday, I can only affirm that he is a solid intellectual. But whether he and members of the wasted generation like it or not they have failed in their quest for the fall of Nigerian capitalism. Just as the protagonists of Nigerian capitalism have been unable to make it work.

Nevertheless, I salute Comrade Professor Biodun Jeyifo a.k.a. Bamako Jeji. Many, many, happy and revolutionary returns! Long and peaceful stay at Cornell University.

Originally published in Vanguard January 26, 2006.

Citation Format:

Wale Ajao. “Biodun Jeyifo and the Wasted Generation,” West Africa Review: Issue 9, 2006.