When Comrade Bene died, By Edwin Madunagu

Bene Madunagu

In my eulogy, I faced Bene and rededicated myself to the joint commitment we had made as we grew up in our relationship, a union that had begun in 1973 at the University of Lagos. With time the commitment had split and expanded into at least five distinct but connected parts. These are Marxism; Socialist Revolution; Socialist Humanism; Revolutionary Feminism; and Revolutionary Internationalism.

In the afternoon of Tuesday, 26 November, 2024, the following announcement appeared on the Internet: “With profound gratitude for her life, her achievements and her contributions to the struggles for equality, justice and dignity for all, I hereby announce the transition early this morning of Comrade Benedicta A. Madunagu, known universally and affectionately simply as ‘Bene’. She was aged 77 years and passed away peacefully at the Madunagu residence in Calabar. Although this is not a tribute but a formal announcement made on behalf of the family and the Nigerian Left, I wish to state here that my sense of profound loss in Bene’s passing is matched by an equally profound celebration of her life and achievements. Further details to be announced later. Biodun Jeyifo, Chair, BOT-SOLAR”. The announcement was titled “Comrade Benedicta A. Madunagu (1947-2024)”.

The person who made the announcement and signed simply as “Biodun Jeyifo” is Comrade Professor Biodun Jeyifo, chair of the Board of Advisers (BOA) and Board of Trustees (BOT) of Socialist Library and Archives (SOLAR). The deceased herself was Comrade Professor Mrs Bene Edwin Madunagu (nee Afangide) who was a member of the Board of Advisers (BOA) and one of the founders of SOLAR. Biodun Jeyifo is known universally – in the Left as well as in the Right – as BJ. Before 26 November, 2024, Bene and BJ, and I, were the three surviving founding members of the Revolutionary Directorate (RD), a tendency in the Nigerian Left, formed in Lagos on Christmas Day, 25 December, 1975. Now, only two of us are Left.

The Nigerian Left is the aggregate of Nigerian Marxists and socialists and their movement; radical feminists and their movements; progressive workers’ and middle-class movements, and generally those who see the necessity and possibility of radical social change along the interests of the presently exploited, oppressed, dominated and humiliated classes and segments of the Nigerian society. At the root of this iniquitous social inequality and injustice are feudalism, capitalism, imperialism and various forms of patriarchy.

We return to BJ’s announcement. In May 2021, as I turned 75, I said in an essay “Looking back: forty-five years ago”: “My life as a professional revolutionary since 1976 has been tough. Inevitably, life has also been tough for that person who, in addition to having to share my life as a wife, a comrade and a lover, also has to live her life as an academic, a mother, a social activist, a Leftist-Feminist, a revolutionary socialist and a Leftist Internationalist. If there is any one person who, since 1977, has kept me on my feet, stood with me as equal, pointing out what can be done today in anticipation of tomorrow, and helping to correct my frequent tactical and strategic errors, that person is Comrade Professor Bene Madunagu.”

Ten months later, in March 2022, as Bene also turned 75, I said: “It is my fervent hope, as well as that of Bene’s numerous comrades, compatriots, collaborators, colleagues, students, friends and family members – in Nigeria and outside Nigeria – and, in particular, her colleagues and students at the University of Calabar, an institution that she joined in 1976 as a lecturer, at the age of 29, and the Girls’ Power Initiative (GPI), Nigeria, that she co-founded in 1993/1994 and thereafter led for 20 years, that she recovers fully from her current ill-health to continue her selfless, productive, happy and inspiring life and revolutionary work”. Unfortunately, Comrade Bene did not oblige us. She died on Tuesday, 26 November, 2024, 32 months after our publicly expressed wish.

What can I remember of the afternoon of that “Black Tuesday”? Oh, I remember that a member of Bene’s “Nursing Team” had come into the living room to rouse me from a state that was between sleep and dream – after a sleepless night. She told me that Bene was “gasping.” I did not understand what she meant by “gasping”, but I followed her to the bed I had shared with Bene until a couple of hours earlier. I sat at the edge of the bed and held Bene’s right hand with my two hands. She opened her eyes, and looked at me. She then turned her head to the right, then to the left, again to the right and the left. Then she turned no more. I knelt down beside the bed, still holding her hand. I wept; the first time I did so in so many, many years.

There was the fear in close circles of our comrades that I might not be able to go through the emotional tortures of seeing Comrade Bene interred, and leaving her there, forever! I have to admit that I entertained the fear myself, “which did not help matters”, as the saying goes. To help myself, as another saying goes, I had to choose two individuals to stay close to me during the funeral, up to and including the actual interment.

When I recovered from the initial shock of seeing Comrade Bene dying with me holding her right hand with my two hands, I was led away from the bed we had shared until that morning. We moved from the bedroom to the living room. I was led by a team comprising the doctor, the lead nurse, my close comrades, and some members of our household. Thereafter, this team was also not far from me till Comrade Bene was interred in the grounds of Girls’ Power Initiative (GPI), Nigeria, in Calabar, on Friday, 17 January. I was closely guarded.

The interment, together with the events and activities in the period before it, after Comrade Bene’s departure, is a separate story, to be told separately later. I may mention, however, that the last act before the actual lowering into the ground was what was called the “Eulogy,” where three representatives of the congregation of mourners – our oldest child (a female), our oldest comrade (a male), and myself – in that order, addressed Comrade Bene and the congregation who had gathered to bury her.