GOODNIGHT KABO!

GOODNIGHT KABO!

By Dr. Youpele Banigo

Professor Kimse Amaebi Biye Okoko (or KABO as I fondly called him after his initials) was one of the most recognizable figures at the University of Port Harcourt when I began my undergrad studies in 1993. He was manifestly Marxist in scholarship, unapologetic in his convictions and decidedly committed to actionable agendas that would obliterate the inhumanity of the oppressed and the underclass. His semester lectures attracted throngs of enthusiastic students across the university who eagerly filled every available space in the large lecture halls to listen to him. He was indeed an articulate, charismatic and vibrant speaker with ingenious theatrics which he methodically deployed to lampoon the ruling class for the deteriorating living conditions of the subalterns. The frenzy in those halls was always impregnable as students gave him standing ovation.

The Abacha military junta, like the previous regimes, continued the despoliation of the university system in Nigeria, provoking widespread rot, anomie and despondency. But as alutarized students, who had imbued high doses of revolutionary ideology, it was the right opportunity to transit from theory to praxis; conscious of the inimical risks associated with confronting the juntas. When things turned vinegary, and it often did, Okoko was amongst the first responders, readily available to defend the voiceless in the high corridors of power; and protecting the vulnerable from brigands. His battle cry was the triumph of humanism and the predominance of the common good over accumulation by dispossession. He was distinctively pan-Nigerian on the basis of equality, equity and fairness.

In 2000 I came under his direct influence when I began a Master’s program in International Relations at the Department of Political Science, where he had assumed a sort of academic titan. A thoroughbred Akean (a neo-Marxian intellectual scholarship under the aegis of the foremost political philosopher, Professor Claude Ake), Okoko was perhaps the most vocal voice of the leftist tradition on campus during this time. He was more than a regular lecturer; he was a teacher, a mentor and a father. Also during this time, his ethnic group, the Ijo people, in search of a credible and patriotic leader approached him to rescue their socio-cultural organization, Ijaw National Congress (INC), from total collapse, occasioned by centrifugal pressures. He accepted the gauntlet and carried out series of ideological reforms that signaled out the body as the foremost organization that advocated for the restructuring of the Nigerian polity along fiscal federalism. As one of his aides during this period, I witnessed, firsthand, his passion, commitment in the defense of the Niger Delta region.

In 2002 he honored me by accepting to be the chairman of my wedding reception, and he was extremely gracious with his time, patience and resources. I consider myself as one the beneficiaries of this great patriot, intellectual and mentor.

Goodnight, KABO!

October 6, 2020