Dapo Olorunyomi. Photo by Ayodele Efunla

Tony Iyare

By Tony Iyare

The history of the flourish of many revolutionary cadres of our generation at Ife Varsity can hardly be written without the imprints of one of our acclaimed grandmasters, Dapo Olorunyomi, now Publisher Premium Times. But for his more resourceful and amiable intervention, perhaps many of us who enlisted in the Alliance for Progressive Students (ALPS) in the last quarter of 1980 may have drifted away.

Thanks to the Wole Olaoye led Students’ Union Exco which reached for Akin Oyebode, then a budding scholar of International Law and Jurisprudence at the University of Lagos to deliver a brilliant and highly thoughtful Matriculation Lecture bordering on revolutionary developments of many societies.

As he reeled out epic quotes from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, Che Gueverra, Paul O’Friere at the capacity filled Oduduwa Hall, many were roaring to go on how to tackle the wobbling Nigerian question. Unknown to Oyebode, who recently retired as a professor after 44 years of service, he had ignited revolutionary thirst virtually everywhere on campus and particularly amongst the Jambites who had just enlisted into the university.

Organisations like ALPS and many others that were there to harness the products of the fiery lecture immediately invited us to their usual Sunday diet where we were greeted to what then looked like Greek as many of its leading cadres angled to outdo each other in their contributions to radical discourse. Some radiated intellectualism of the high horse. I wonder whether any of us took anything away at the end as the day’s engagement was too grandiose.

However that was where our path first crossed with Dapo Olorunyomi, Femi Taiwo, Femi Falana, Femi Fatonade, Wale Adekunle, Owei Lakemfa, Akin Akingbulu, Duro Onoviron, Shenge Rahman, Deolu Ademoyo, Awam Ankpa, Wale Olajire (now Ajao), Uyi Usuanele and many others that I can’t readily recall.

No doubt the Ife students’ revolutionary movement was thick. It was a pool of some of the country’s well bred revolutionary cadres who had struck a chord with the struggles outside the campus in a rich dialectical construct. There was also a nexus between those comrades who had left like Idowu Obasa, Ola Fajemisi, Last Eguavon, Kola Olufemi, Julius Ihonvbere and many others who were always around to contribute to discourses anytime they visited. Some like Femi Taiwo and Kola Olufemi who had also taken up post graduate studies provided some lubrication to the movement.

ALPS also benefited greatly from a rich pool of revolutionary scholars in the Ife Collective: Segun Osoba, Biodun Jeyifo, Omotoye Olorode, Idowu Awopetu, Godini Darah, Kayode Adetugbo, Dipo Fashina, Folabo Ajayi, Ropo Sekoni, Joe Erumeba, Bayo Ademodi, Segun Adewoye, Sope Oyelaran, Tosho Eluyemi, Eileen Wilson Oyelaran, Yetunde Oladimeji and so on who are now mostly professors. Former Lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Seinde Arigbede who had left the university at that time to work on the peasantry also provided some support from his base in Ode Omu.

We also had a compliment of many a ‘little to the left’ and foreign radical scholars who provided elixirs to the students’ movement. Many times we had to resolve which public lecture, symposia or debates to attend as ALPS and many other organisations would lace their events with the parade of hordes of brilliant speakers.

That’s why cultism was far from our thoughts. Our hands were always full with compelling discourses from dawn to sunset. Even though there were also members of Pirate Confraternity, many of the organisations including those on the right spectrum, related largely at the intellectual plain underscored by the contestation of varying ideas. At room 62 Fajuyi Hall where I had my berth, the discourses usually continued till late into the night.

Unfortunately, some of the leading cadres of the students’ movement also became too aloof to the process of nurturing the new entrants almost occasioning the near exit of some of us. One of the culprits, Femi Taiwo, now a professor of Philosophy at Cornel University, Ithaca, New York was simply unreachable. Taiwo, then a Masters student will present his treatise bordering on some toast of intellectual sophistry and arrogance. He seems to savour his rich scholarship in a lone world and was hardly able to come down to our level.

But Dapo Olorunyomi stood out. In spite of his deep scholarship, he was amiable, friendly, brotherly, humanistic and was readily accessible to explain grey areas. He was a master of pedagogy. He virtually saved the day for the movement through his mentorship of the newly enlisted members. His room at Fajuyi Hall was a Mecca for many who desire additional brushing up. He also made friends for the movement at a time its image was tottering amongst many students. While many leading cadres became intellectual terrorists, virtually alienating the movement from other students, Olorunyomi became their darling.

I had enlisted in the movement about the same time with Muyiwa Oshunkoya, Akin Ladipo, Taiye Abiodun, Segun Aderemi (more popularly called Sango) and Lanre Arogundade. We were later joined by Olumide Akanmu, Tunde Ademoyo, Wole Iyamu, Isi Momodu, Gerald Iyamabo, Peter Wanogho, Wale Ajayi, Funmi Soyewo and many others. We all enjoyed a great deal of mentorship from Olorunyomi who later came back after his service year for post graduate studies.

We were also inflicted with his avid love for books. It is an understatement to say that Dapo Olorunyomi lives in his books which informs his rich discourse of almost any subjects. Both our entry into the umbrella radical students ‘movement, the Patriotic Youth Movement of Nigeria (PYMN) and by extension, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) was at his instance.

On my first trip to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1981, I easily got linked to Jibrin Ibrahim, Rauf Mustapha, Itiem Kongwai and other members of the Movement for Progressive Nigeria (MPN). Same for my link to Jonathan Ihonde, Festus Iyayi, Tunde Fatunde, Ehi Eboigbe, Osagie Obayuwana and many members of the Benin movement which was further reinforced by a former Greek student activist, Chris Theoderopolos who had joined the then fledgling Faculty of Law, at the University of Benin from Ife. This bond of comradeship not only facilitated revolutionary work around campuses across the country but outside their walls.

The period of our enlistment coincided with a raging debate amongst members of the movement on whether its frontline cadres should actively intervene in the Students’ Union which many had hitherto considered “bourgeois”. There was also the fear of exposing the movement’s leading cadres to potential back clash that may ultimately ossify its growth.

Incidentally the same debate was also taking place amongst members of the Ife Collective about this time on its relationship with the then newly formed Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which was equally perceived as “bourgeois”. ASUU had arisen from the ashes of the National Association of University Teachers (NAUT) perceived as too conservative. Sometimes these debates and disagreements on theory and praxis become very heated leading to factional groupings.

It’s the reason why the election of Biodun Jeyifo, now professor of African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard University as ASUU President was not only regarded as a “non-event” but he had to wade through what amounted to a near guillotine before some of the comrades grudgingly opted to work with him.

Recalling this episode in his tribute to Dipo Fashina at 70, Jeyifo narrates his predicament. “Back at Ife, the news of my election as ASUU president was received almost as an anti-climax or non-event, especially by many members of our group, the Socialist Forum Collective. There were three factions: one neutral or indifferent; one supportive but only mildly and cautiously so; one very vigorous in its opposition. This last group was numerically and vocally the most dominant”.

“Its leading proponent …..poured his scorn and disapprobation, not on me, but on the Union and its entire membership. Quite correctly at that time, he said that NAUT/ASUU was a union without backbone or spine, a union that had constantly betrayed its members in the past and would do so again, regardless of its leadership under me/us. Of me this comrade asked what had happened to our longstanding practice of maintaining a distance to conservative, bourgeois organsations that we knew we could never change from within. Why had I unilaterally departed from this practice and had gone and accepted to be ASUU’s national president?”

Eventually when the students’ movement resolved to end the passive intervention on the Students’ Union both at the local and national level, Dapo Olorunyomi who was more generally accepted, was the natural choice for the chairmanship of the Electoral Commission while all others were asked to go to the Students’ Parliament. He performed this role to the admiration of the different strands on campus. Lanre Arogunade and this writer were then presented for the position of General Secretary and Public Relations Officer respectively. Arogundade won while I lost. Arogundade later also won the NANS Presidency at the convention in Jos where he took over from Chris Abashi while Wale Adekunle became the Secretary General.

When the university in 1984 clamped down on some radical students which included this writer, Segun Aderemi, Bolaji Adebiyi and some others over our purported role in a demonstration on campus, the lot fell on Olorunyomi and other comrades to rally professors like Wole Soyinka, Omotoye Olorode, Kunle Wahab and many other pro-students scholars to defend our case at the university’s Senate. Although we eventually got a reprieve, Adebiyi whose rustication had to be converted to suspension, had to carry over an academic year in spite of his enviable academic records.

When we all got drifted to Lagos, we naturally became members of the Forward Group floated by Obasa, Fajemisi, Falana, Olorunyomi, and others. This group later threw up many splinters in the ensuing crisis of praxis. Segun Aderemi, Muyiwa Oshunkoya and Lanre Arogundade teamed up with other younger members of the Ife students’ movement and some others to join Comrade Ola Oni’s Workers Vanguard. They later withdrew to float the Labour Militant which metamorphosed into the Democratic Socialist Movement. (DSM). Some others including this writer, also teamed up with some comrades across the country to form the Patriotic Labour Movement of Nigeria (PLMN) which later dissolved into the Socialist Revolutionary Vanguard (SRV)

The drift of Olorunyomi and later, Lakemfa into The Guardian also opened the floodgates to many PYMN cadres who followed suit. The media became a platform for radical elements who posed alternative radical views to conscientise the populace. The media had the likes of Eddie Madunagu, Lanre (now Ishaq Moddibo) Kawu, Ola Fajemisi, Kayode Komolafe, Abdurahman Black, Issa Aremu, Okey Ekeocha, Okey Ndiribe, Bolade Omonijo, Joe Ajaero, Bagauda Kaltho, Lanre Arogundade, this writer and many other comrades from the north who were now galvanizing editorial thoughts in favour of the country’s working and oppressed people.

From The Guardian to African Concord, back to the African Guardian and later The News which he founded with Bayo Onanuga, Babafemi Ojudu, Kunle Ajibade, Seye Kehinde, Dapo Olorunyomi had established himself as the fulcrum of the editorial operations. He was never tired of one innovation and another. His knack for investigative journalism proved resourceful.

To check the rapacious attack on its anti-military stance by the Abacha government which had then ordered its Gestapo to regularly invade the magazine’s offices, Olorunyomi and other editors of The News had to adopt a guerrilla style to ensure production and circulation of the popular magazine, thereby ushering the era of the guerrilla genre. This style was also adopted by Tell founded by Nosa Igiebor, Dare Babarinsa, Dele Omotunde, Kola Ilori and Onome Osifo-Whiskey.

When matters got too hot, he retreated to exile in the US. Not done with new ventures tears after he got back, he teamed up with Pulitzer Award Winner, Dele Olojede to float The Next newspaper before he founded his online medium, Premium Times.

I’ve always marvel why Dapo Olorunyomi who comes across more as a professor’s professor has not opted for the deep recess of intellectual scholarship at the university. Why is he not enamoured by the title of professorship being paraded by even those who do not come close to his brilliance? Should such a brilliant intellectual icon not have been lured to the campus to take a chair? Why has he decided to swim or sink with the media?

His response may be forlorn. What’s clear is that the Nigerian media undoubtedly has benefitted greatly from his rich and dogged engagement and scholarship. So to our beloved grandmaster who has turned 60, I say Happy Three Scores.

• Iyare, Editor-in-Chief, The Gleaner News Online is an International Relations Analyst and Communications & Development Consultant.