Jeremiah Adetunji Otegbeye (1925 - 2009)
DR. Tunji Otegbeye who died recently aged 84 is one of the leading lights of the leftist movement in Nigeria; his life was marked by great credibility, consistency and clarity of focus. A medical doctor who trained in Russia and England, Otegbeye was a frontline nationalist, an elder statesman and an icon of the ideological socialist movement.
He was positively engaged with the public sphere for more than five decades in various capacities: students' movement leader, unionist, politician, community leader, author, social critic and activist. He remained till the very end in the forefront of progressive causes, including his pursuit of rapprochement among warring Yoruba elite groups and his support for the proposed zoning, by certain groups, of the 2011 Ogun state Gubernatorial slot to the Yewa area of Ogun state where he hailed from. He was a very oustpoken man, whose voice was well regarded till the end.
Born on July 14, 1925, Otegbeye trained as a medical doctor. As a student, he was very active, leading his colleagues regularly inj protests against unwholesome government polices, both colonial and post-colonial. He was a devoted and highly principled early President of the Nigerian Union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1957, he reportedly left his base in Lagos, where he worked as a medical officer for London, just to mobilise Nigerians of all groups to picket Nigerian leaders, then attending a political conference at Lancaster. He organised Nigerian students into a formidable anti-colonial rule coalition, and was an active member of the Zikist movement. Later, he joined Chief Obafemi Awolowo's Action Group and the Unity Party of Nigeria in the Second Republic.
Otegbeye was the founding President of the Nigerian Youth Congress (NYC) in 1961, with the critical input of former Nigerian Union members who, like Otegbeye, were mostly marxian-socialist in orientation. These included the late Alao Aka-Bashorun, Femi Okunnu, Ade Thomas, Tayo Akpata and the late Sobo Sowemimo.
As a politician, Otegbeye co-founded and served as general secretary of the Socialist Workers and the Farmers Party of Nigeria. He was instrumental to the training of many Nigerians in the former Soviet Union in pursuit of his ideological determination to contribute to the development of the country. He was a welfarist and a humanist, and in all things that he did he sought to promote the best ideals, always pitching his tent with the poor and the downtrodden and the efforts that can be made to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Not unexpectedly, the late Otegbeye has been described as one of the very last of whatever is remaining of the left movement in Nigeria. But the ideals, which he represented, particularly his people-focussed politics will continue to remain relevant and desirable. In 2001, Dr Otegbeye chose to retire from active politics. He was 76. But before then, he had made his mark in many ways. He was a member of the 1977 Constituent Assembly, and a Senator of the Second Republic under the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN).
He also took part in the 1979 UPN gubernatorial primaries of the party, which he lost to the late Bisi Onabanjo, but he showed no bitterness at all. He remained loyal to the party and the government that emerged. He also served as a member of the 2005 Constitution Review Conference even though he was 80 years old at the time. Until his death, he was a prominent member of the Ogun State Elders Consultative Forum and Secretary General of the Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE).
Being almost always in the opposition (to the central party in government), he was not accorded due recognition for a long time, as the government of the day invariably considered him a nuisance. He was nevertheless an outstanding and broad-minded person; a man of the people who staunchly believed that wealth is unjustly concentrated in the hands of only a few people, and that the best way to ensure social justice is to create a level playing field for all men and women to enjoy opportunities and realise their potentials to the fullest.
The intra-family, polygamy-inspired feud that has arisen following Dr Otegbeye's death does little credit to his public profile. His two wives and children owe him a duty not to bring his legacy into public ridicule on account of their own private differences.
