The memorial bell rang today (June 25th, 2025) for the 2025 version of the annual anniversary of the death of Prof Abubakar Momoh and Dr Tajudeen Abdulraheem. While Prof Momoh died late night on May 29th, 2016 in Abuja, Nigeria; Dr. Tajudeen died early morning of May 25th, 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.
Prof Momoh
Momoh was the Director of The Electoral Institute (TEI) – the research arm of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the time of his death while Taju was a Nairobi based UN staffer and tightly connected to the Global Call for Action Against Poverty (GCAP). The two have remained impeccable stars of the struggle for democracy in Africa and have been remembered annually by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), sometimes alone and at other times along with other platforms.
It is debatable if the import of their own role or contributions, like most members of that generation, can be properly accounted for outside a more organised documentation of that struggle, the annual anniversary speaks to something to remember about each of them and serve as an irresistible reminder to all stakeholders.
Dr Taju
The 2025 edition would, for instance, be considered remarkable for its point of departure, particularly the performative implications of the word ‘reclaiming’ in the title of the anniversary: Reclaiming Democracy for Authentic African Development: Remembering Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem and Prof. Abubakar Momoh.
The title speaks to the imperative of reclaiming democracy from the most brazen reconstitution of the concept in the image of characters who imagine themselves as emperors, monarchs, autocrats and sundry illiberal temptations across the world.
Caught on the road for much of the duration of the event, Intervention could not attend the function nor access it in a manner that made note taking possible but heard voices of some of the most crucial signifiers of the tradition of struggle symbolised by Prof Momoh and Dr. Tajudeen in Nigeria in the 1980s. There were, of course, those like Prof Adele Junaid and Prof Okello Oculi who carried the memories from which the Momoh and Taju generation sprouted but whose presence at this point has panoptic import.
Powerful recollections of what it was like in those days across the campuses in Nigeria could be heard competing with lamentations, blame games, apologia and critical clarifications, the sort of competing trends and tendencies the duo of Taju and Momoh would have craved for. Unfortunately, the dead is never around to weep at his or her own funeral. But Aida Abdulraheem was in attendance, electronically just as Prof Momoh’s son might have also been too from somewhere in North America. The MC has no biological connection to the duo but a comforting presence as far as the possibility of a successor generation is concerned.
It would seem that Momoh and Taju have sketched the path and the task may have come to where to begin to simulate the struggle. Otherwise, what passes for the ruling class today would never be bothered that anyone is out there with any alternatives.
Simulation of democracy would have to begin from coming to terms with the wisdom that democracy is only possible with a contingent and specific meaning of it. Otherwise, a universal meaning approach to democracy will always be reconstituted and stolen by the smart Alecs in town and the rest of the population will be told to be patient.
Happily, not only the title of this year’s memorial but also one of the professors who spoke at today’s occasion moved brilliantly in this direction with his genealogical analytical move against liberty, property and such other conceptual checklist upon which democracy is innocently or naively hooked unto all over the place today.
