By Abdul Mahmud
Omoyele Sowore’s response to Ajibola Basiru’s description of him as a “skit maker” and “comedian” on Channels Television’s Politics Today, anchored by Seun Okinbaloye, raises questions that reach beyond the personal exchanges of two men whose journeys intersected in the trenches of resistance to military dictatorship. Sowore’s recollection of his photograph with Basiru in 1998, when he led the Congress of Progressive Youths (COPY), is a reminder of a political past in which the struggle against tyranny demanded courage, solidarity and a willingness to confront the consequences of dissent. His account of how he received Basiru and Kunle Adegoke SAN, popularly known as K-Rad, at the University of Lagos after their expulsion from the University of Ilorin in 1992 for student activism adds a deeply personal dimension to his argument, for it recalls a time when the bonds of comradeship were expressed through practical acts of solidarity rather than the pursuit of political advantage.
Sowore’s indignation is understandable, especially when a man who once stood within the ranks of resistance appears to ridicule the struggle from which he himself benefited. His argument is that the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the disputed 2023 presidential election cannot confer retrospective legitimacy on every aspect of the electoral process, nor can it turn those who challenged the outcome into objects of ridicule. The right to challenge political authority is inseparable from the democratic struggles through which that right was secured. No political office can confer legitimacy on the erasure of that history, least of all when those who occupy such offices benefit from freedoms won by others.
Omoniyi Ibietan’s response to Sowore’s account introduces a different but equally compelling dimension to this controversy. His acknowledgement that there are people he would hesitate to confront publicly, despite his disagreement with their social conduct, because of the roles they played in his life or the struggles they shared, speaks to the complicated moral obligations that grow out of political friendship. His list of former comrades evokes a generation whose members were shaped by the experience of collective resistance and whose subsequent journeys have taken them in different directions, some into the corridors of official power and others into continued opposition.
Ibietan’s reluctance to denounce those whose histories are intertwined with his own is human and understandable, but his observation that it is too late to rewrite history opens a more difficult question about the relationship between personal loyalty and public accountability. Shared history deserves recognition, but it cannot become a permanent exemption from scrutiny, especially when former comrades occupy positions from which they defend policies and political conduct that contradict the principles they once professed. The memories of past solidarity should enrich our understanding of political change rather than prevent us from examining its consequences.
The central issue, therefore, is larger than the apparent ideological somersault of Ajibola Basiru or the discomfort of confronting former comrades who have embraced the establishment they once opposed. We must examine the ideological movements that produced these activists and ask whether they possessed the intellectual depth, political discipline and moral coherence required to sustain a lifetime of principled engagement. This inquiry may be uncomfortable for those of us who participated in the student and pro-democracy movements of the 1980s and 1990s, but it is necessary if we are to understand why some of yesterday’s radical activists have become enthusiastic defenders of the political order they once denounced.
Our generation was formed in an atmosphere of intense confrontation with military authoritarianism, when student unions, labour movement, underground ideological cells, human rights organisations and pro-democracy coalitions provided spaces for dissent and collective action. The struggle against military rule produced men and women of remarkable courage, many of whom endured detention, expulsion, harassment and the destruction of promising careers because they refused to surrender their convictions to the demands of authoritarian power. The sacrifices were real, and the historical record deserves to preserve them without embellishment. However, the experience of repression does not, by itself, establish the ideological character of a movement, just as the history of confrontation with an oppressive state does not guarantee that its participants possess the intellectual resources to resist the seductions of power when their circumstances change. The radical movement that described itself as revolutionary or radical may have been held together by the intensity of infantile rebellion rather than a coherent ideology, sustained intellectual engagement or a clear understanding of the social transformation they sought to achieve. Its members could identify the enemy of the moment without necessarily agreeing on the society they intended to build after that enemy had been defeated.
This weakness has consequences.
An ideological cum political movement that places greater emphasis on confrontation than on political education may produce activists who become skilled at denouncing authority without developing a durable framework for evaluating power itself. Radical language can then become an instrument of identity rather than an expression of deeply held convictions, useful when challenging an unfriendly government but easily abandoned when the opportunity for personal advancement presents itself. The individual who has learnt to oppose power without understanding its ideological foundations may discover that entering the establishment requires little more than changing political patrons and acquiring a new vocabulary of justification. Such a transition should not automatically be condemned as betrayal. Political beliefs can evolve, and experience may persuade an activist to abandon positions once held with conviction. Democratic politics must allow room for intellectual growth, ideological revision and the honest acknowledgement of past errors. The question is whether the change has emerged from a reasoned reassessment of political principles or from the attractions of office, patronage and proximity to those who control the state. A former radical activist who explains why experience has altered his convictions deserves to be heard; one who substitutes ridicule for argument while defending the excesses of a government deserves to be challenged.
The distinction between ideological evolution and political opportunism is essential to any serious examination of the turncoat. A change of political affiliation is not sufficient evidence of intellectual dishonesty, just as continued membership of an opposition movement does not necessarily establish ideological integrity. What matters is the consistency between professed principles and political conduct, the willingness to apply the same standards to allies and adversaries, and the capacity to criticise abuses of power even when doing so threatens access to privilege. Without such standards, radicalism becomes a temporary posture, abandoned when its personal costs exceed its perceived benefits.
The Nigerian political establishment has long demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to absorb its former adversaries, transforming yesterday’s critics into today’s officeholders, advisers, party functionaries and defenders of the status quo. The process is not confined to those who emerged from student activism, but their transitions are particularly revealing because their political identities were once built around the promise of resistance. When former activists become participants in the machinery they previously condemned, the public is entitled to ask what changed, what principles survived the transition and what price, if any, was paid for admission into the establishment. Our responsibility is not to preserve an idealised portrait of our generation or to use old friendships as a shield against uncomfortable truths. We must be willing to examine the political traditions that shaped us, acknowledge their intellectual limitations and distinguish the achievements of the democratic struggle from the failures of the organisations and individuals that participated in it. Such an examination would also help younger activists understand that courage in confrontation, however indispensable, must be accompanied by intellectual discipline and a political ethic capable of surviving the arrival of power.
Basiru’s encounter with Sowore has brought these issues into public view, but the argument should not end with the exchange between two former comrades. The deeper task is to understand how a generation that fought against military authoritarianism has accommodated itself to the realities of civilian power, and why some who once understood the dangers of unaccountable authority now appear willing to defend its excesses. The struggle for democracy was never intended to produce a succession of new custodians of the privileges once reserved for military rulers. Its promise was the establishment of a political order in which public power would be accountable to citizens and the dignity of the individual would not depend on proximity to the ruling party. Anyone who participated in that struggle should be judged by the principles they uphold today.
Our history cannot be rewritten, as Ibietan rightly observes, but it can be examined honestly. The comradeship of our younger years deserves remembrance, and the sacrifices of those years deserve honour; but neither should demand silence when former comrades abandon the principles that once brought us together. The most meaningful tribute to our shared past is not the preservation of friendships at all costs; it is the defence of the ideals that made those friendships politically significant in the first place.
