By Denja Yaqub
Until you touch his strong, fighting tail embedded in his clear, progressive intellect, you will mistake him for a very quiet “common labour leader” that can easily be swung in the direction of hollow arguments of the “impossibility” or “no alternative” stance of government officials who foist anti people neo liberal policies handed them by agents of the Breton Woods institutions to ensure our resources and peoples remain perpetually within their strings of expropriation.
Gentleman to the core, Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson is a man I have admired from a distance, over time when I was a student at both the defunct Kwara State College of Technology (now Kwara State Poliytechnic), Ilorin and the University of Ibadan when the student movement was at the peak of focused, ideologically driven, purposeful struggles. Then, he was a lecturer at the University of Jos, north central Nigeria.
Much later, during a private visit to the National Secretariat of the National Union of Textile, Tailoring and Garments Workers of Nigeria to keep a scheduled appointment with Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, then General Secretary of the union, I came across this firebrand but consummate gentleman who was doing his sabbaticals as a researcher with the union. We had a brief discussion, the first I got so close with him.
As the discussions progressed, I got convinced that we still have comrades who have not been snatched by the growing craze for imperialist funds as the bourgeoning number of Non-Governmental Organisations has deeply decimated the ranks of activists of left extraction. He sounded clear and committed to our struggles, which he correctly told me was beyond mere pro-democracy and human rights struggles that was unavoidably predominant at that period. We needed to deepen the struggles for a society that provides every citizen access to better life through equal access to education, rewarding and productive jobs, health care, housing and all that make a society more humane to those who live in it.
I left Kaduna with my head more swollen with thoughts of how we could recover those we have lost to the NGOs and form a wider mass movement to mobilise our people for the change we desired. We needed a system change.
Dr. Ozo-Eson was very active at the University of Jos as an officer and committed member of the Academic Staff Union of Universities. He was one of those lecturers the military regime led by General Ibrahim Babangida tagged as lecturers who were “teaching what they are paid not to teach”. Then, radical lecturers were constant targets of security agencies, some even attend lectures directly or get their informants among students report the content of the teachings of these progressive lecturers. Dr. Ozo-Eson, an Associate Professor, was several times picked up and clamped in detention by the secret police for “teaching what he’s not paid to teach”.
What they were not paid to teach is the delivery of anti-imperialist, progressive alternatives to the retinue of neo liberal anti people social science which refuses to accept the existence of alternatives that could make the world a better place for humanity. They didn’t want to be teachers of dumb students who would graduate into a society that is already captured and emasculated by a conflagration of neo colonial system that has proven worse than colonialism itself.
Together with his likes, Dr. Ozo-Eson developed a tight alliance with the student movement such that every struggle embarked on by ASUU will have full participation or support of the student movement under the aegis of the National Association of Nigerian Students or the institution’s Students Union (not government, as the Students Unions are now nauseatingly called). He was key to that alliance and together with other leaders of ASUU, an alliance was not only formed with the Nigeria Labour Congress, ASUU itself became an affiliate of NLC.
Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson’s activism was not limited within the confines of Nigeria, his country. He was a leader of the Nigerian Student Union as a post graduate student in Canada where he had his Master’s degree.
A family man in the true meaning and essence of the marriage institution whose wife is also a Professor at the University of Abuja and has recently joined the rank of grandparents.
He is an affable gentleman whose dispositions can sometimes be misunderstood, but as General Secretary of the NLC, I can testify that he is a meticulous administrator who is never in haste to append his signatures on any paper, until he fully understands the full import and essence of its content. On this, he has earned himself a nickname among staff of the NLC Secretariat as “Baba Go Slow”.
You won’t blame him, because the position of General Secretary of not just NLC but any industrial union is quite sensitive and every other position in the secretariat is not as monitored as that position. Some error others may consider as inconsequential can be used to send the General Secretary home. And besides, NLC itself is an organization with a major stake in the affairs of this country such that whatever document comes out of its secretariat or get signed on its behalf must not just be profound but be sure of adding to its integrity.
When you experience the depth of his compassion for people, you will discover that he carries the aura of a true comrade who lives, thinks and acts beyond his/her personal desires. He cares when there are genuine instances of personal challenges confronting staff. He takes personal interest on matters relating to health challenges and families of dead staff. He sometimes uses his personal money to assist staff with financial challenges.
Despite the legendary turbulence associated with such positions as the office of General Secretary, Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson carries on without grumbles or grudges against anyone.
This gentleman is of exceptional global essence to humanity; a very sound intellectual that can withstand any debate with the very best reactionary policy maker anywhere in the world and come out with the most convincing polemics on how society should run and why subsisting public policies are designed to annihilate the poor.
As he turns 70 this Friday, 29 June 2018, it is my prayers that God continues to keep him in sound health, long life and prosperity.
Yaqub is an Assistant Secretary at the headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Abuja.
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