It is sad that we lost you, Comrade Abiodun Fidelista Aremu. You were exceptional in your generation of the Nigerian left. You fought many battles against neocolonial forces and their local collaborators. We who were in the trenches with you on all the fronts know these facts about your life.

In the worldwide decline of left forces, you exuded unparalleled optimism. As a consequence, you sought to sow new seeds by building structures of socialisation, the Amilcar Cabral ideological school, where I taught at your invitation.  You envisioned the triumph of socialism in Nigeria, a new society free from the exploitation of man by man.

How will I forget your company through the dark alleys of the NADECO route when we fought a rabid military dictatorship?  How will I forget those heady days of sorrow, tears and blood when death was a common currency and our country was headed on the road to Mogadishu or Kigali, as Professor Adebayo Williams had put it?

Comrade, how will I forget the journey we made through Accra in the company of Rasta Kamuko, who gave us shelter? Can I forget the alternative dwellings in Nima where our meagre fund could take us? Can I forget our mingling with Liberian sojourners in Ghana, forced out of their country by fratricidal wars of booty by free riders?

Comrade, how will I forget the interception between Atan and Owode on Idiroko? After a hike to Europe, you came to keep me company in Benin and escort me home. Yet, I was intercepted at one of the checkpoints by the operatives of the military goons who took me to their hut for interrogation. Though you were not caught, you forsook your security and alighted, followed me, until we negotiated our way out of the mix.

Comrade, how I will forget  May Day in Havana and the early rise to join the human train, through the revolutionary square, and give salute to workers’ power and solidarity with the struggles of our Cuban brothers and sisters against the behemoth of North America? I remember our reminiscences over the travails of Cuba. I remember the lines quoted in Nicanor Leon Cotayo’s Beleaguered Hope on the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba.

Here is the quote: “Neither our people nor the world will forget this, on which a powerful imperialist country initiated an economic war against a small free nation whose people prefer death to putting their chains back on and who believe that their righteous cause will triumph”.  It is a duel between David and Goliath, the asphyxiating hold of capital in quest of a Riviera for casinos and the Eros of Sodom and Gomorra over which Jose Marti said no, Echeverra said no, Fidel said no, Che Guevara said no and Camilo Cienfuegos said no, and we who are locked in solidarity with Cuba and the struggling peoples of Latin America, said no.

Comrade, remember that morning in 1999, your house was raided by state vermin seeking to snuff life out of you. And you appeared suddenly in my Dopemu abode, wheezing and in search of a refuge, which I was duty-bound to offer. Earlier in the course of the fight against military rule, I had been hounded by the goons of the military junta and sought refuge in your Mushin abode in Lagos.

Comrade, how will I forget the Benin effort to unite all socialists? Can I forget the effort, driven by Comrade Baba Omojola, Abayomi Ferreira and Jonathan Ihonde, among others, and in which Festus Iyayi played such a good host? Can I forget our labour as scribes of the process?

Comrade, how will I forget your company and the moral boost when I tied my nuptial knots in faraway Ososo, where I caught a daisy in the rock and, as a consequence, buried the innocence of adolescence? Even more, you were with me when my mother, Mama Victoria, journeyed to immorality, and we earthmen gathered to pay the last respect and consecrate her memory, forever and forever.

Comrade, how will I forget that morning you woke me up with a call to inform me of the sudden transition of Comrade Abiodun Kolawole and Cecilia, his spouse? They were a family and compatriots in our struggles to free our country and make life meaningful. How can I forget our instant departure as revolutionaries to Ekiti to see their remains at the Federal Medical Centre, the air of finality beholding the rigor mortis bodies of our dear comrade and wife. Our collective resolve to see his son through university and bear jointly the burden of fees cannot be forgotten.

It is hard to come to terms with your mortal passage. I am consoled by the words of Commandante Che Guevara to the effect that “Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms”.
Dear Comrade, fight on. Aluta Continua!

Professor Akhaine is a former General Secretary of the Campaign for Democracy in Nigeria during military rule.