Ordinarily, no ruling class listens to any other classes unless there is a ‘hegemonic block’ in the Gramscian sense compelling it to listen through ‘war of position’. But does a ruling class which has failed so disastrously such as the one in Nigeria need a ‘hegemonic block’ to discipline it? Isn’t the embarrassment of Nigeria’s permanent potentiality enough to make a ruling class rethink?
Well, Dr. Segun Osoba, a credible Marxist scholar, historian, activist and former academic at what is today known as Obafemi Awolowo University is taking time to draw the ears of the ruling class to its class juvenility, development wise. The report below is an abridged version of PM News reporting of when Marxists and collaborators gathered with the family to celebrate Osoba @ 90 in Ijebu-Ode in Southwest of Nigeria on January 9th, 2025.
The gist of Osoba’s ‘hardtalk’ is his lambasting of the Nigerian ruling class on the ground that it is the cause of the hardship Nigerians are currently facing. By that, he meant that if it were a thinking class, it should have anticipated blow back for the flashes of radical nationalism of the mid-1970s and planned thoughtful counter-strategies rather than caught unaware by where its others have pushed it to through so-called economic reforms.
Instead of that, he said specifically that the ruling class has, over the years, robbed Nigerians of their resources while making themselves millionaires and billionaires.
Nigerians, he said, inherited a thieving nation from the British. “Our country inherited from the British a thieving nation. Our nation is essentially a thieving nation, where the ruling class robs the people of all the resources that they need to make progress. “And as a result if you want to help the people, the ruling class would try as much as possible to grind you to dust,” Osoba lamented according to PM News
But he doesn’t want Nigerians to relent in their efforts to fight for a better Nigeria. “So my appeal to the people is not to relent. Those who believe in fighting for the people should never relent. Because if they relent, the thieves would thrive the more and the nation would decline the more.
Osoba who used the event to thank family, friends and colleagues for celebrating him on his 90th birthday wishing everyone and the country the best. The event was well attended by academics, Marxists, socialist, activists, friends and family who came from far and wide to pay tributes to a man they fondly call ‘Comrade Doctor’ and who they believed has sacrificed so much for the betterment of the masses.
Osoba, together with fellow historian and activist, Dr. Bala Usman of the ABU, Zaria wrote a minority report on the 1977 Draft Constitution as members of the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) constituted by the Murtala regime in 1976. The duo of Dr. Segun Osoba and the now late Dr. Bala Usman have the legacy of declining professorship because they all interrogated the integrity of the process. Some would say the process has degenerated even further since then.
