Bene Madunagu: Tribute to an exceptional socialist class fighter, By Peluola Adewale

Comrade Bene Madunagu, who died recently and is being buried in Calabar today 17 January, was a striking example of a dedicated and committed socialist. As a working-class oriented class fighter, her monumental contributions to the struggles for the liberation of Nigerian working masses and the poor, and particularly that of women, are perhaps under-documented or not as highlighted as she richly deserves.

An academic and professor of Botany, she belonged to the rank of ivory tower intellectuals who, arising from their Marxian orientation and inclination towards the socialist transformation of Nigeria, believed that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) should serve as a veritable platform for waging joint struggles with the student movement and the larger working class movement.

Taking such a stance in an elite or perhaps bourgeois academic environment can be likened to committing class suicide. It was a choice that came with enormous sacrifices. Bene had more than enough dose of the pains that accompanied principled struggle as a socialist and later leader of ASUU of which, it must be stressed, she was also a foundational member. Indeed, her ascension to leadership role in ASUU bore all the hallmarks of courage, although it was also a product of the collective decision of the VANGUARD, as her long-time friend, comrade, soul mate and husband, Eddie Madunagu has repeatedly attested. She started off as the General Secretary of the University of Calabar branch of ASUU in 1982; but it was a position she assumed after her predecessor, the German-born Comrade Ingrid Essien-Obot, had been brutally murdered in her staff quarters residence in the University. She would thereafter serve as the Chairman for two-terms from 1986 to 1992.

The period of Bene’s active role in the leadership of ASUU coincided with significant developments in the student movement including the launch of the NANS Charter of Demands, the nationwide NANS led boycott of classes against commercialisation of education and another national protest of NANS against the killing of students at Ahmadu Bello University all between 1982 and1986 when NANS was respectively led by Chris Abashi, ‘Lanre Arogundade, Buba Joda and Emma Ezeazu. NANS and individual students’ unions benefited from the solidarity and support of ASUU leaders like Bene during the referenced period, with her base at UniCal also being one of the bastons of radical students’ unionism.

Another indication that her acceptance of the mantle of leadership of ASUU at UniCal was an act of revolutionary courage was the fact in the preceding period of students’ agitation and protests against increases in feeding and tuition fees on campuses in the late 1970s, Bene happened to have been one of the leftist lecturers that were victimised. This was precisely the case in the aftermath of the ‘Ali Must Go’ protests led by the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS), which was subsequently banned by the Obasanjo/Yar ‘Adua military junta. Comrade Eddie Madunagu’s recollection of this development offers valuable lessons on what it means to make revolutionary sacrifice. In the booklet, “Bene Madunagu at 70 – Tributes to Revolutionary Commitment, struggle and service,” he wrote: “For their actual and purported roles in the April 1978 national student action, called “Ali Must Go”, Bene and her husband, Edwin, who had joined the Mathematics Department of the University in August 1977, as well as 10 other University teachers and administrators across the country were summarily dismissed in September 1978. Although the military government’s order was nationwide, its execution at the University of Calabar was most inhuman and vicious. Bene was instantly recalled from the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, where she had just begun a PhD programme on a fellowship. The fellowship was withdrawn, her salary stopped and her official quarters in the University sealed up. She was left stranded in London and had to be repatriated back to Calabar by the Nigerian Embassy”. Eddie added however that she went to court, won and got reinstated. More instructive was that the travails did not discourage her from pursuing the struggle at higher levels of responsibility.

Another significant contribution of Comrade Bene to the struggles of Nigerian peoples was in conceptualizing and articulating the idea of feminism from a socialist point of view. In this regard, she was co-founder of Women In Nigeria (WIN), which had male students and working-class activists as members. She subsequently founded the Girls Power Initiative (GPI), which has over the years trained and mentored several young females on gender rights.

The array of public lectures, writings and publications and the formation and participation in left leaning mass organisations of the people to advance the cause of the socialist transformation of the Nigerian society, represent other forms of monumental contributions of Comrade Bene to the struggles of Nigerian peoples.

As we of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) celebrate her landmark contributions and mourn her passage, it is apposite to point out that although Comrade Bene is more celebrated as a feminist, her revolutionary trajectory showed a recognition of the linkage between the socialist transformation of the society through the unchaining of the shackles of capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination, and the solving of the collective and peculiar problems that confront the students, the youths, the women and the entire worksing class. The task of breaking the capitalist and imperialist yokes have become more daunting in view of the on-going unleashing of neo-liberal policies of education commercialisation, removal of petrol subsidy, excessive taxation of the poor masses and the devaluation of the currency, among others, by the Tinubu government, as did its predecessors.

However, if the memory of Comrade Bene is to be well served, it is a challenge that must be confronted through the rebuilding of the of the students’ unions, the trade unions and other mass organisations on the basis of a programme that supports the building of mass resistance against anti-poor capitalist policies, offers the socialist alternative to capitalism induced deprivation and poverty; and that also seeks to build an alternative political organisation of the workers, farmers and youths.

Peluola Adewale is the organising secretary of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM).