Remembering Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman
Before the sorrowful demise of the late Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman on the 24th September, 2005, his life had been overwhelmed by prolonged and enduring struggles for academic fulfilment and dismantling oppressive structures.
The two symbiotic tendencies constituted tremendous forces in his sustained devotion for academic greatness and strong obsession for injustice eradication. In other words, his deepened enthusiasm for wiping out pillars of oppression emanated from his intellectual power.
Biologically, he belonged to the royal dynasty. Nevertheless, he opted for deploying his deep feelings of compassion for the downtrodden. He held them in the highest esteem and uplifted their human essence to greater heights. This infinite love was displayed through his organized thoughts and persuasive expressions to redeem their deplorable status. We saw how he was psychologically depressed by their persecution in the hands of the reactionary elements. His insatiable desire for the enthronement of a masses’ oriented government was eventually abortive. This could have been his life greatest disenchantment.
Unconcerned with the comfort of worldly materials, Dr. Bala developed ideological attacks to dislodge the monster called class society. Indeed, it was a psychological war in which he brilliantly fixed issues firmly for our mind consumption. In his productive life, he nurtured a formidable front that was reckoned with. He was a radically indivisible, indefatigable and inspiring fighter for the masses. He was absolutely guided by the accumulation of sound ideology, prudent knowledge and transformed the pen into a revolutionary tool.
Dwelling in the turbulent nation bedeviled by crisis of class antagonism, he soberly reflected on its ailing system and clearly saw a two class dichotomy consuming our social being. It was the oppressed versus the oppressors. In romancing with the oppressed, he mastered the art of generating passion for them through vivid descriptions of their wretchedness. This was meant to restore their usurped dignity by the powers that be. In dealing with the oppressors, he was skillful in exposing their inadequacies as well as excesses. His primary motive here was soliciting necessary improvements and adjustments. He knew that he was endowed with the privilege of joining forces with the oppressors for selfaggrandizement, but he felt that he could not abandon the defenceless masses. When his faith in the persistent struggle reached its climax, he incurred the fury of the established order, accusing him of teaching what he was not paid to teach in the university.
Dr. Usman converted and elevated knowledge to a living organism that promoted human progress. He significantly occupied that intellectual vacuum created by the conservative elements on our campuses. The preferred knowledge of Dr. Bala was basically functional for overhauling the society. It was never the type that was myopic to recognize only its meal ticket value.
When the Bala Usman phenomenon was holding sway at the famous Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, a radical movement of the Socialist ideology assumed the new campus order. Spearheaded by his powerful political and intellectual will, he massively attracted like minds and disciples both within and outside the campus. They converged at an ideological point that seemed to the capitalism elements as a volcanic eruption.
To avert the escalation of the political catastrophe, the America Intelligence Unit conducted a rigorous research on our campuses in the mid-eighties with the theme: Political Risk Analysis. The main objective was to ascertain the campus radicals’ potentialities with the ABU as the focal point. To their greatest dismay, the result clearly revealed the possibility of a peasant’s revolution on the platform of the socialist ideals. The joint media of the Analyst and Fitila Magazines were effectively deployed by the Bala Usmans, Balarabe Musas, Sunusi Abubakars, Ayorchia Ayus, Richard Umarus, Hauwa Mahdis and a host of others and utilized by the general masses to unravel the hostilities of the capitalism oriented policies.
Distortions and misrepresentations of facts by some historians are driven by stubborn mischievousness. However, Dr. Bala was never a party to their moral bankruptcy. Rejecting them in absolute terms, he contextualized issues of national interest to foster unity and stability. He rendered this outstanding service to sharpen our psychological insight and boost our reflective capacity for sound evaluation and judgements of events. For the sake of posterity, it is imperative here to refer to one of his famous presentations on the theme: Violent Ethnic Conflicts in Nigeria: Beyond the Myths and Mystifications. The informative material was published in the Analysis Magazine of February 2003.
At a trying period when the nation was held captive by the Draconian Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) of the General Ibrahim Babangida regime, Dr. Usman explored all possibly required intellectual efforts to fight the economic bulldozer because of its chronic devastations on the masses. The persistent confrontation lasted till the end of IBB’s empire. Through his intellectual management of the crisis, Dr. Bala instigated a kind of national consciousness as well as a revolt against SAP. His articulate speeches and writings at different forum were always inspiring for the progressive world. For instance, in the Analyst of JanuaryFebruary 1989, he presented an essay titled, Going Beyond SAP. Part of it reads: “The Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) pursued by the government has clearly failed to bring about even the beginning of an economic recovery in this country. This failure of SAP is not due to failures in its implementation. It has to be traced to its basic foundation, from its formal inception when the World Bank started imposing it through its Structural Adjustment Lending to a number of Third World Countries”.
Remembering Dr. Bala Usman remains incomplete without a reference to his popular book, The Manipulation of Religion in Nigeria. It’s content is more relevant now because the fears he expressed more than thirty years back have been rearing their ugly heads.
Thirteen years after the departure of the late Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman to the Great Beyond, he will continue to be remembered for his selfless services to humanity. May his soul rest in peace!
Abdullahi wrote this piece from Ringim, Jigawa State