By Owei Lakemfa
The 1990s were the deadliest for change agents in Nigeria. We lost hundreds. In 1994, some political elites decided to join us. This led to the establishment of the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO. One day, one of these elites brought a parcel to the leader of the Campaign for Democracy, CD, Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, to be kept. Beko, who led the movement that eventually ousted the military, mentioned the package to Abiodun Aremu and I.
The former, who was quite security conscious, asked Beko what was inside the package. He didn’t know. But since he had been told it was top secret and being sent for safe keeping, he had not opened it. Aremu asked Beko to produce the package, and he carefully opened it. It contained two explosive devices! Aremu explained that they had not been primed to go off, so it wasn’t intended to kill Beko. It must be a security plant. He collected the package and left to dispose it. Later, security agents invaded Beko’s home and carried out a thorough search. They first seemed sure, then confused.
They were there to ‘discover’ bombs in Beko’s house, but found none. This was at a time the regime was bombing public places, including buses carrying soldiers. So, Aremu saved us. We had a dilemma when a young man came to us claiming to know who bombed Dele Giwa back in 1986. There was also a man who came to us with plans to end coups. He wanted us to work together. But the consensus was to distance ourselves from him.
Some months later, his group, the Movement for the Advancement of Democracy, MAD, on October 25, 1993 hijacked a Nigeria Airways aircraft with 159 passengers to Niamey. So, on matters of security, we came to defer to Aremu. He had aliases. This might have saved his life because security agents traced a ‘dangerous’ shadowy figure around, including outside the country, unable to connect the figure to Aremu. In 2004, after the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, suspended an anti-fuel price increase protest, armed militias seized the NLC sub-office in Lagos, shooting widely in protest against the Congress decision.
We were at a meeting in a union secretariat when I received the news. I decided to go meet them as the area had been deserted as a result of the shootings. Only Aremu agreed to join me in what others thought was a dangerous mission. So, my closeness with him was forged in the furnace of struggle. Our closeness became somewhat telepathic. On December 19, 2011, the Labour Movement met President Goodluck Jonathan and his government in the Presidential Villa over planned increases in fuel price. The government asked for an adjournment until after the New Year holidays.
While it appeared we had a good meeting and should prepare for the adjourned meeting, Aremu and I were convinced the administration had something up its sleeves. We decided to begin mobilisation. I was Acting General Secretary of the NLC and he asked that I release workers in Lagos for a dress rehearsal by marching from the NLC offices in Yaba to the Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota which we agreed will be the epicenter of protests were the government to increase prices. We fixed January 3, 2012 for the sensitisation march. I directed the NLC Lagos State Council to mobilise workers for the march alongside Aremu. Some NLC leaders called to say I had no powers to turn out workers, more so under Aremu. I asked them to take their complains to Congress organs.
As it turned out, government made the increases on New Year Day, January 1, 2012. It was holiday period and virtually all labour leaders had travelled. The only preparation on ground was the Aremu one! After nine days of what might be the most massive street protests in our history, labour and its allies agreed to suspend the strike in the face of the government’s directives to the armed forces and security agencies to retake the cities by force of arms. Despite protests by some of us, including Dr Dipo Fashina and Chris Uyot to delay the announcement, the labour leadership announced the suspension at 2 am.
I called Aremu in Lagos and he asked that I allowed him lead out the workers that morning to test the resolve of the soldiers and let the government know the Nigerian people could not be intimidated. I agreed, provided he would avoid direct confrontation with the soldiers who had already been deployed to the streets. So, it came to pass. Aremu was a strong link between some of us and the international change movement, including those in Benin, Ghana, South Africa, Venezuela, Cuba and Guinea Bissau. He loved the praxis of Amilcar Cabral and named the centre for young revolutionaries he created, as the Amilcar Cabral Ideological School, ACIS-M. He also established the Kolagbodi Memorial Foundation in honour of Mayirue Eyeniegi Kolagbodi, the outstanding labour educator. The foundation carried out mass workers education, including 25 annual lectures, and published books.
Aremu had so high respect internationally that the Cuban Government awarded him its Friendship Medal, given only to outstanding internationalists. When he fell ill in 2024, the Cubans were so concerned that they gave him specialist treatment in Havana. In November 2011, he and I were part of the international observers at the Venezuelan elections. While almost all of us foreign observers did our work in Caracas, he decided to travel some six hours from the capital. He told me he wanted to see the countryside, feel the pulse of the rural populace, and observe their agricultural methods.
By the way, did I tell you Aremu was a farmer who was also into fisheries? He was ever a practical man.He imbibed politics from his dear father who was known as a rock (Okuta) in the Action Group and Unity Party of Nigeria days. But despite his love and respect of his father, his mother was the centre of his life as he grew. So, his intensely pro-women world view was not just forged in ideological struggles but in those of his mother.
Aremu since the mid-1980s, had been involved in all the major struggles I know of in the country: students, lecturers, labour, Maroko, Makoko, Okada (Commercial motorcylists) market people. On September 18, 2025 he was in Abuja for the commencement of the Fidel Castro Centenary. Next day, he was in Lagos for the opening of the Cabral-Kolagbodi Centre. On Sunday, October 10, 2025, he was returning from the centre when he was killed at 65. As he often said about his life struggles: “What is at stake is the Destiny of Humanity”
