Good governance is when you can see progress; when you can see things improving from the general disorder, when you can see less corruption, when you can see less impunity, when people can go about their daily business without being harassed by officials…and, maybe, when there is a general increase in prosperity.
Good governance is when you can see progress; when you can see things improving from the general disorder, when you can see less corruption, when you can see less impunity, when people can go about their daily business without being harassed by officials…and, maybe, when there is a general increase in prosperity.
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Basically, when people can live a more settled life -- when you are driving on the street and all that is required is that you have your driver’s license on you; a policeman will not ask for your fire extinguisher in order to extort money from you. ------Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti (in an interview with Pini Jason for the Chinua Achebe Foundation Interview Series) The day was Saturday, May 15, 2004; the venue was somewhere in the Sandgrouse area of Lagos Island, a stone throw from Campos Square. Teargas fumes pervaded everywhere, people were running helter-skelter to escape the charging policemen and someone had just fallen into a ditch and injured himself, his glasses broken, the teargas fumes disorientating him. In fact, he’d actually collapsed unconscious and it took the intervention of Nigerians still on the scene and several buckets of cold water to revive him and get him to the hospital. But when he came to, typically, he was more concerned about the fate of other leaders of the aborted rally, oblivious of the fact that he himself was amongst the worst casualties of the day.
In the life of Bekololari Ransome-Kuti, the fighting doctor whose frail physique and gentle mien belies the iron will within, this was just a normal day. After countless arrests, detentions and imprisonments in the hands of the posse of bad governments Nigeria has always produced, Beko’s record as prison guest of the Nigerian state is only second to that of the man who was also suffering by his side on that fateful day, the irrepressible lawyer, politician and human rights advocate, Gani Fawehinmi. Gani himself was revived with cold water by concerned Nigerians and taken along with Beko to the hospital after this brutal police action that disrupted what was otherwise a peaceful rally which was organized by the Citizens Forum to protest the inhumane policies of the supposed democratic government of Olusegun Obasanjo, Beko’s kinsman. Born on August 2, 1940 into the famous Ransome-Kuti family of Abeokuta, not many thought Beko was carved out to follow the activist path of his famous parents. His father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, a foremost educationist, was the founder and first national president of the Nigerian Union of Teachers. He was also for many years the principal of Abeokuta Grammar School. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was an indefatigable leader of the women’s movement in Nigeria. Both were practical people who organized others to fight for their rights and take charge of their affairs in colonial Nigeria. In fact, Beko’s mum was well known as one of the leaders of the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) and the key mobilizer of the 20,000-strong Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU) against the Egba Native Authority and the dictatorial rule of Oba Ademola, the then Alake of Abeokuta in a hugely successful anti-tax protest which came to be known in history as the Egba Women’s War of 1947.
Unlike his elder brother, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the famous musician, Pan-Africanist and social activist who died in 1997, Beko was a studious fellow who qualified as a medical doctor in England at the tender age of 22. In fact, his first involvement in activism came with being a students’ leader in Manchester University and via his work as a medical doctor. In trying to secure better working conditions for his fellow professionals and better investments in the health sector, Beko became a leading figure in the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). However, his real baptism of fire came on February 18, 1977 when the Obasanjo military government ordered the invasion and the torching of Kalakuta Republik, the residence of Fela, which also housed Beko’s clinic. The brutality the family and other Nigerians on the scene suffered in the hands of the soldiers and the impunity of the whole exercise, including the obvious cover-up initiated by the Obasanjo military government touched something in Beko. He became from then on an open advocate of civil and human rights and had remained since then a rallying influence for young men and women who hoped to bring positive change to their nation, first by fearlessly confronting the excesses of military rule and then advocating its replacement with genuine democratic rule. Pursuant to this, Beko became a founder and facilitator of several pro-democracy and civil society groups around the country and with Gani Fawehinmi and Wole Soyinka, became a totemic figure in the Nigerian people’s’ struggle against bad governance. The climax of Beko’s activism came in 1993 when the Babangida military government criminally annulled the June 12 election of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola as Nigeria’s president in a process overwhelmingly adjudged as the freest and fairest in the nation’s history. Beko became a major figure in the struggle to reverse this unjust and nation-crippling decision through the formation of a coalition of pro-democracy organizations known as Campaign for Democracy (CD).
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In constant running battles with General Sani Abacha’s security goons, Beko’s leadership of CD managed to keep the national outlook of the struggle even as the ethnic jingoists and paid agents of Abacha within the movement attempted to hijack it to serve their selfish ends. The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which later grew out of this effort owed so much to Beko’s organizational genius. It was that genius that saw the struggle snowball into a real fearsome opposition to Abacha as he incarcerated Beko on trumped-up charges relating to the phantom coup. Beko was secretly tried by the Major-General Patrick Aziza Special Military Tribunal which on August 2, 1995, Beko’s 55th birthday, convicted him of being an accessory to treason after the fact and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Due to worldwide outrage that greeted the trial and the sentencing, the otherwise deaf Abacha regime commuted the sentence to 15 years. Beko’s real ‘crime’ was that he made available to the world the defence statement of Col Bello-Fadile, one of the accused officers in the coup saga. He was placed in solitary confinement in Katsina prison in the northern part of the country and deprived of much-needed medical attention. Here he was, languishing, when on his 57th birthday, August 2, 1997 he lost his iconic brother, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Beko spent a total of three years there, until he was released along with the others by General Abdulsalami Abubakar on June 16, 1998, shortly after the latter assumed office on Abacha’s sudden death. However, as the Abdulsalami Abubakar regime stampeded the nation towards supposed democratic rule, Beko was not celebrating. He asked questions about the systemic entrenchment of those same persons and things that were bound to make the democratic effort fail in real terms. In one famous interview with Phil Ponce on America’s PBS on July 21, 1998, after Abubakar Abdulsalami’s announcement to hand over government to a democratic civilian government in May 1999, Beko took on Prof Ibrahim Gambari, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations and exposed the charade of the military continuing in a different guise by installing their own nominee because of the weak institutional framework for the supposed succession. For us today, having witnessed the horrid debacle of the Obasanjo regime, Beko’s words on that day have proved prophetic. Of course, it wasn’t that Beko was a compulsive contrarian or incapable of working with the establishment, it’s just that his standards were necessarily high as he showed with his successful but short tenure as Chairman of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital board.
Beko did indeed make himself available to work with Obasanjo, but when after a stint at the Abuja Kuje prison in 1993, a meeting was facilitated by one of the latter’s wife, all Beko heard Obasanjo talk about was himself and how he is the best thing that’s happened to Nigeria since sliced bread. Beko, despite his gentle nature, wasn’t one to suffer fools gladly. He knew Obasanjo wasn’t and still isn’t the person to discuss real progress with when it comes to national affairs. And, it is in this context of reservation that one must analyze Beko’s latter years as an activist. While Obasanjo is indeed a kinsman, Beko knew that he represents only the interest of a particular class of Nigerians, the industrial-military complex. In a sense, it is appropriate to say Nigeria failed him, just like it failed his mother, who, in genuine belief of the future of one nation, opted for the NCNC, which was the only party with such a national platform and outlook at the time. The June 12 struggle and the aftermath revealed to Beko the farce that was Nigeria. He increasingly began to believe that you cannot, for instance, divorce the whole Niger-Delta struggle from the structural defects prevalent in every aspect of the country’s tottering edifice. He believed that the only fair thing to do was to return to the drawing board to redefine Nigeria and our individual and group relationship with it through the mechanism of the Sovereign National Conference. While he genuinely believed no one would actively propagate for the balkanization of the country if genuine dialogue is allowed, he insisted that the process must be democratic, open and free and devoid of no ‘no-go areas’. Even in CD, he began to encourage other activists to take a local perspective to the issue, because of his belief that there need to be a new strategic engagement with the Nigerian state, based on settled negotiations between every part of the union. When Obasanjo cynically proclaimed his intention to hold a national conference of his own appointees, Beko was one of the leaders of civil society that formed the Pro-National Conference Organization (PRONACO) which declared its intention to hold a parallel national conference along the lines advocated since 1990 by the Nigerian people. At 65, some may say he wasn’t that young; but to those who knew him closely and who’d come to work with and learn from him at close quarters, he’s immortal. Things won’t really change much for these ones even with his death, because the ideals Beko lived for and died for are supreme and eternal. Beko refused to accept personal and social injustice, he refused to take his reserved place in the establishment gravy train; he simply refused to have a life of his own as far as Nigerians remain in the pit of despair. His power of concentration, uncanny coherence and result-driven resolve only added to the myth of Beko. In fact, many of those who’ve sat through lengthy strategic meetings with him often wondered where he got his energy. While younger and more able-bodied men fell asleep at his side after one punishing schedule too many, Beko would be there attentive and alert, listening to who is still talking and asking the most important question of all: “What is to be done?” But now he’s fallen! A lean, wispy man with a mighty pair of shoes is resting! But he’s left us a legacy, a dream that we must realize, so that when he turns in his grave, the smile Nigeria deprived him would be there for posterity to see. Adieu, Bekololari! You died on your feet, but your baton is safe in the hands of the millions who drank from your fountain. Noble Warrior, rest on perfect peace. -Omoyele Sowore New York,US -Kennedy Emetulu United Kingdom For and on behalf of Saharareporters © www.saharareporters.com
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