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FUND RAISING

LAST Saturday, women of Asaba Development Union (ADU) Lagos Branch, were in their elements: well-dressed in their traditional attire. They gathered to raise funds for the development and empowerment of Asaba women, especially those in Lagos. In their traditional white attire with pink head ties to match, they performed several dances to the admiration of the guests. Venue of the event was the expansive banquet hall of the Lagoon Restaurant on Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue, Victoria Island, Lagos that was filled to capacity. Among the groups that showcased the rich cultural heritage of Asaba included Nwa Ama, Anioma and Egwu Alama. The day also featured fashion parade.

Dignitaries such as the General Ibrahim Babangida (retired), Asagba of Asaba, Obi Prof Chike Edozien, Chief and Mrs Tom Halim, Mr. Chevalier Imo and Bridget Itsueli, Chief Sonny Odogwu and Ogbueshi Izegbu.
The President of ADU women’s wing, Lagos branch, Mrs. Christy Nkechi Chizea said the civic center would serve as a multipurpose social center and venue for ADU women’s wing meetings. She added that the centre can also be hired out for functions as a means of earning funds for the developmental programmes for Asaba women.
‘The ADU women’s wing gather regularly to meet and discuss issues concerning the development of Asaba women in order to ensure that they continually join hands to accomplish development objectives that would have been difficult for one person,’ she said.
The building project started ten years ago under the administration of a former president of the ADU. Continuing, Chizea said: “As development grew, and the ideas took shape it was agreed that we name the building after a female role model, whose achievement is of great inspiration to others. The name of the late Mrs. Maryam Ndidi Babangida, wife of former General Ibrahim Babangida (retired) was unanimously chosen as an iconic role model’.
She disclosed that General Babangida received ADU women with great enthusiasm and encouragement and gave them the go ahead to name the civic center after his late wife.
“The civic center located in Amuwo Odofin in Lagos when completed will be named ‘The Maryam Ndidi Babangida Center’. In Maryam’s life time, she spent considerable time and effort thinking about the betterment of women. Her flagship project, ‘The Better Life for Rural Women’ revealed that her heart was especially in the economic and social empowerment of women in small businesses and cottage industries. Maryam, she noted, displayed a combination of style, carriage, diligence and stature on political, economic and social scenes.” To this end, ADU women’s wing will like to celebrate her achievements and keep it ever green in their memories by specially naming the center after her and continue to carry out ideas that would promote her vision.
Delta State Governor Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan represented by the Commissioner for Information, Barrister Chike Ogeah described the building project by the Asaba women as a wonderful idea, which would give an extra option about Delta State. He noted that the distinguishing factor about the building project is the fact that it is being dedicated to Mrs. Maryam Babangida.
The Governor stressed that the ADU women’s is committed to engaging women in developmental projects such as building small businesses and giving loans to meet their needs.
The Izoma of Asaba, Chief Philip Asiodu said the civic center would be a convenient center, which will also house activities that would be of benefit to Asaba and Lagos State. He urged the guests present to contribute generously for the completion of the project.

They were two of the sturdiest Baobab trees in the dense forest of Nigeria’s intellectual universe. They had razor sharp intellects and exuded great charisma even if in a largely understated manner. In their life time, the duo had so much in common. They were passionately committed to the academic endeavour. They respected intelligence because of their belief in their own intelligence. Rather than being scared of budding intellectual stars and trying to obscure their progress, they identified and mentored them to bring out the best in them. The two men were both progressive in orientation and utilized, in admittedly different ways, the Marxian political economy model as the theoretical handle with which they sought to understand and explicate the dark contours of exploitation, inequality and poverty in contemporary Africa. I speak here of those two veritable giants of social science scholarship in Nigeria, nay Africa – Professors Bade Onimode and Claude Ake. These two scholars epitomized what the late Marxist American political economist, Paul Baran, described in the 60s as genuine intellectuals pursuing truth with passion wherever it may lead. They were surely not just intellect workers intent on offering their knowledge and skills in defence of a corrupt and decadent social order. They were fighters for truth, justice and human dignity.
Professor Claude Ake was born on February 8th, 1999 and perished most tragically in a plane crash en route Lagos from Port Harcourt on November 8th, 1996 aged 52. None of the passengers on board the aircraft survived. Claude Ake attended Kings College, Lagos, before proceeding to the University of Ibadan where he obtained his first degree in Economics. Thereafter he proceeded to Columbia University for his post-graduate studies. Within a short period, Ake had established himself as one of the most rigorous and original scholars of our time. In the words of the late Professor Aaron Gana, “It was from the hallowed precincts of America’s establishment scholarship that Claude Ake imploded into the world of global scholarship”. A prolific thinker, writer and scholar Professor Ake wrote many highly acclaimed works of political economy. These include A Theory of Political Integration (1967); Revolutionary Pressures in Africa (1978); Social Science as Imperialism (1979); A Political Economy of Africa (1981) and a Political Economy of Nigeria (edited -1985). Although the eminent political scientist, Professor Adele Jinadu, in a collection of tributes to Ake was of the view that Revolutionary Pressures in Africa was his most original, even if highly controversial, work. However, the dominant view is that A Political Economy of Africa was a product of the zenith of Ake’s intellectual powers.
On his part, Professor Bade Onimode died at the National Hospital in Abuja on the 28th of November, 2001. He was born in 1944, studied Economics for his first degree at the University of Ibadan before going ahead to obtain his M.Sc and PhD degrees at the University of Chicago and Ohio State University respectively. Like Ake, Onimode has several outstanding books to his credit. Some of these are: Imperialism and underdevelopment of Nigeria (1983); A Political Economy of The African Crisis (1988); The IMF, World Bank and the African Debt (1989); A future for Africa – beyond the politics of Adjustment (1992) and Issues in African Development (1995). It is instructive that while Claude Ake, a political scientist often used the spring board of economic and material conditions to illuminate issues of power, politics and governamce in Africa, Bade Onimode, an economist, drew heavily from political and historical sources to shed light on the socio-economic structural deformities of contemporary Africa.
But what really do I mean by the last testaments of these two venerable and illustrious social scientists who rank among the best this country has ever produced? I refer to the last major books they wrote before their untimely transition. These books vividly illustrate the passionate concern of these two progressive and radical scholars about the African condition. They thus sat down to think deeply and vigorously about the continent’s challenges, offering critical diagnoses and also proffering solutions on the way forward. In his own ‘last testament’, titled ‘Africa In the World of the 21st Century’, Professor Onimode explains that “This book attempts to extend current debates and concerns about the African crisis to the status and prospects for Africa in the global system of the twenty-first century”. With this objective in mind, Onimode takes a panoramic view of the African socio-economic and political landscape and exhaustively examines the crisis of the present Global system, offers a trenchant critique of the present global order and debunks the defective assumptions underlying the IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment programmes imposed on Africa. In the manufacturing sector, for instance, he denounces the intellectual mystifications of Import-Substitution-Industrialization (ISI) as a means of industrial development pointing out that it “exaggerates the conspicuous effective demand of the elite minority for car assembly, brewery, lace, carpet and related products, while neglecting the essential commodities of the dispossessed’ Unlike the more doctrinaire and polemical submissions in his earlier books, Onimode settles for a more moderate ‘political programme for Africa’s World Participation in the 21st Century’. Aspects of this programme include mobilisation of social forces for change, a patriotic and committed intelligentsia, promotion of regional and later southern unity and the ultimate identification of core states with the resources and will to drive the process of Africa’s progress and transformation.
In his own last testament, titled ‘Democracy and Development in Africa’, Claude makes the submission that “…the assumption so readily made that there has been a failure of development is misleading. The problem is not so much that development has failed as that it was never really on the agenda in the first place. By all indications, political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development”. Ake then goes on to amplify this position by looking critically at the colonial legacy in Africa, examining various socio-economic agendas imposed on Africa over the years as well as failure of agriculture and industry. In spite of the harsh existential conditions prevalent on the continent, Ake is decidedly optimistic when he asserts that “Sub-Saharan Africa is mired in one of the deepest and protracted crises of modern history. This crisis has been phenomenally harsh, tragic, and demoralising. But it has also been an invaluable learning experience. It has taught Africa a great deal about how not to go about development and even a little about how to do it. Pushed to the brink, ordinary people in Africa have apparently realized that they must take their destiny into their own hands, and they are struggling for a ‘second business’. These then is the optimistic mood that radiates from the ‘last testaments’ of Ake and Onimode. Yes, they are no more with us. But their light shines on in darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it.

‘Sub-Saharan Africa is mired in one of the deepest and protracted crises of modern history. This crisis has been phenomenally harsh, tragic, and demoralising. But it has also been an invaluable learning experience. It has taught Africa a great deal about how not to go about development and even a little about how to do it’