By Sodiq Mojibola & Olanshile Akanho

It was as if they had a premonition of the impending end of an era when both Omotoye Olorode and Ropo Ewenla travelled to Ijebu-Ode on Thursday, 30 April, to spend the night with their beloved friend, mentor, and comrade- Segun Osoba.

Exactly two weeks after such a night described by Mr Ewenla as memorable, their host, one of Nigeria’s most principled socialists, historians, and revolutionaries, Mr Osoba, took his last breath.

The late scholar’s death was announced on Thursday in a broadcast message titled, “Transition of Comrade Dr Segun Osoba.”

“We were informed just a few minutes ago that our esteemed Comrade and friend, Dr Ṣẹ́gun Ọṣọbá, foremost patriot, social historian, committed socialist, exemplary teacher and humanist, passed on peacefully at his Ijẹbu-Ode residence at 11.35 a.m. this morning, aged 92 years,” the statement reads in part.

The message further noted, “We commiserate with Comrade Ọṣọbá’s family, community, comrades, friends and colleagues. Further information will be relayed as we obtain it from the family.”

About Osoba

Born on 9 January 1935 in Ijebu-Ode, Ọṣọbá was widely regarded as one of Nigeria’s foremost radical historians and Marxist intellectuals. 

In 2025, the scholar’s family members, associates and comrades gathered to mark his 90th birthday.

He studied at the then University College Ibadan before proceeding to the Moscow State University, where he obtained a doctorate in History between 1963 and 1967.

Upon his return to Nigeria in the late 1960s, he joined the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, where he became a central figure in radical intellectual movements on campus.

Alongside younger academics, including Professor Omotoye Olorode, he helped establish the Ife Collective and the Ife Dialogue Committee in the early 1970s, promoting socialist ideas and critical political engagement.

Ọṣọbá was also a member of the 1978 Constitution Drafting Committee inaugurated by the administration of former military ruler, Olusegun Obasanjo.

Together with the late historian, Yusuf Bala Usman, he co-authored the Minority Report, which challenged several provisions in the proposed constitution and advocated accountable governance. Though rejected at the time, parts of the report were later reflected in Chapter Two of the 1999 Constitution.

Throughout his career, Ọṣọbá remained a strong critic of imperialism, class oppression and the failures of Nigeria’s political elite, using historical analysis to interrogate governance, inequality and development.

He was sharp, interesting, but already getting repetitive -Olorode

Mr Olorode, an octogenarian professor of botany and former chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, and Mr Ewenla, a thespian and former President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), and now of the directorate at the University of Ibadan Media Centre, recalled their trip to Ijebu-Ode and a night well spent in the company of an icon, who was “sharp, interesting, and jovial, but already very frail.”

Speaking with DevReporting in a telephone interview, Mr Olorode described the late historian as intellectually vibrant and humorous until his final days.

“So, we all stayed with him. Very interesting, he was very alert,” he said.

“Although he was already getting repetitive about some issues, he was still quite alert. We had a lot of jokes.”

He recalled spending time with Osoba shortly before attending the burial of another nonagenarian Professor of Chemistry and former Acting Vice-Chancellor at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Layi Ogunkoya.

The late Ogunkoya, who had died in December 2025, was buried in Ijebu-Igbo on 1 May.

“We were with Segun Osoba overnight on 30 April. It was from his house that we went to the funeral of Professor Layi Ogunkoya at Ijebu-Igbo the following day,” he said.

“Very, very interesting person, very sharp.”

According to Olorode, their relationship dated back more than five decades to their days at the University of Ife, now OAU.

“I’ve known Segun now for about 50 years because I got back to Ife in 1970. I think he was already there by 1968,” he said.

“We started the Ife Dialogue Committee around 1971. We were publishing the Ife Dialogue magazine, which later transited into the Socialist Forum Collective.”

Mr Olorode also recounted how Ọṣọbá allegedly rejected attempts to pressure him into pursuing academic promotion under questionable circumstances.

“He wasn’t quite sold on all these rat races of professorship,” he said.

According to him, after submitting materials for promotion, the documents allegedly went missing and university officials requested another set.

“He refused. He said they must go and find the papers he submitted. If they could not find them, they should forget about the promotion,” Olorode stated.

He added that Ọṣọbá eventually retired from the university in 1992, citing exhaustion with the academic environment.

“He just told us he was tired of the whole situation,” he said.

When asked what he intended to do after retirement, Olorode said the historian replied that he would return to Ijebu-Ode and continue living there.

“He continued his professional engagement. He was writing, giving lectures and all of that,” Olorode added.

It was a night of harvest of memories- Ewenla

Mr Ewenla, who was on a trip outside the country when the news of the death of the activist broke, expressed surprise, noting; “To imagine that I was with him in the company of Professor Omotoye Olorode less than a month ago.”

Describing the night with the deceased as “a night harvest of memories,” he regretted that the whole experience has now “metamorphosed into a night of eternal farewell.”

In an emotional poetic manner, Mr Ewenla recalled; “It was nothing but a warm reunion of bodies and narratives. Right there on his bed, laid-out but not lame, sightless but all-seeing, was a mind as fecund as any of the brightest you could ever imagine. All through the discussion we had late into the night and in the early hours of the morning, I could have sworn the man’s sight was as bright as the midday sunshine. Over meals of amala and abula, bread and omelette, competing cups of coffee and Guinness stout, which the old man insisted must be served, Segun Osoba bore testimonies to truths about our search for a revolutionary path as a people. 

“Where we dared controvert him, he challenged us to documents of historical veracity. To him truth remains sacrosanct irrespective of any leaning. His sense of humour is as intellectually stimulating as it was amusing. A superb conversationalist to the last drop of the coffee. That last handshake still feels warm here. Adeiu, comrade. Travel light and Return IF Possible.” 

Osoba was a doyen- Uwasomba

One of the late Osoba’s distant mentees is another activist and Professor of Literature at OAU, Chijioke Uwasomba, who described the late scholar as “a doyen in all ramifications in the struggle to rescue Nigeria from the clutches of imperialism and the local pimps who have done everything to arrest the development of the country.” 

He said Mr Osoba was a jovial and clubbable personality. “He was a good man by all standards!”

Mr Uwasomba wrote; “He lived a life of sacrifice and confronted imperialism and its local perfects with all the informed knowledge at his disposal. His departure marks a big loss to Nigeria, the Socialist movement and the entire anti-hegemonic forces whose alternative ideas and conceptions of development are regrettably thinning out.”

Mahmud’s tribute

Meanwhile, a lawyer and former student leader in the ‘80s/’90s, Abdul Mahmud, has also recalled his early meeting with Mr Osoba, describing his experience as nostalgic.

In his tribute titled: “Goodnight, Prof Segun Osoba,” Mr Mahmud wrote: “At a personal level, I met Professor Osoba briefly in early 1991. I was a young student leader, still shaped by ideological fervour and the urgency of belief. He was already a figure spoken about with a kind of reverence that did not require exaggeration. The encounter was short, almost modest in its physical duration, but it left an impression that time did not erase. “I heard about you from Comrade YZ”, he said, adjusting his glasses at the bridge of his nose. I remember that moment not as one of introduction on my part, but of recognition coming from him. I met a scholar I already revered, yet he made the encounter feel less like an audition and more like a quiet affirmation. I was glad, and slightly unsettled in the way one is when a figure you place on a pedestal meets you at eye level rather than from above.

“A few months later, the students’ struggle took me into detention at Kirikiri prison alongside my late comrade, Bamidele Aturu. In those confined spaces where time becomes heavy and ideas become survival tools, we spoke often of Osoba and Bala Usman. Their writings were companions in our thoughts and evidence that intellectual resistance had a genealogy in our country. It was Bamidele, then a law student at Ife, who carried more intimate knowledge of Osoba’s world. Through him, Osoba became less a distant scholar and more a presence in our conversations about the Nigerian state. Even in detention, ideas refused to be imprisoned.”

Osoba’s legacy beyond academia

Beyond the classroom, Osoba’s works are said to have shaped debates on African historiography, governance and political economy.

Rejecting “great man” interpretations of history, he was said to have promoted a political economy approach that examined African societies through class relations, social contradictions and material conditions.

In a piece written on him to mark his 90th birthday in 2025, the DAWN Commission, His scholarship challenged orthodox narratives and influenced generations of African scholars, including notable intellectuals such as Walter Rodney, Claude Ake, Eskor Toyo and Bade Onimode.

Among his most influential writings was “The Deepening Crisis of the Nigerian National Bourgeoisie,” a critique of Nigeria’s ruling elite and the country’s stalled economic transformation.

He was also remembered for his principled stance against corruption and institutional compromise within academia, preferring to remain a ‘doctor’ rather than accept a professorship under conditions he reportedly considered unethical.

In 2023, some of his former students and associates organised a conference in his honour, with proceedings and scholarly works continuing to document his contributions to African historical thought and socialist scholarship.

Mr Osoba’s death marks the end of an era for Nigeria’s radical intellectual tradition and socialist movement.