Growing up in his native Ilorin, capital of Kwara State, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Comrade (Alhaji) Issa Obalowu Aremu, mni, almost followed the mind of his friends who believed he was cut out for a career in the military. This was in deference to Aremu’s organisational and managerial skills which teachers and classmates from that era believed were necessary ingredients for anyone who desired a career in the military.

But young Issa (Yisa) had other plans: he had always wanted to touch lives! As a student at the pioneer community Ilorin Grammar School (IGS) from 1972 to 1977, Aremu realised that touching lives would remain a mirage if the unjust structure that bred inequality in society was not dismantled. Somehow, IGS became a training ground of sort. It was here that Comrade Aremu honed his writing skills as an active member of the Confidence Press Club.

Aside being an enthusiastic sportsman, Aremu was an active member of the school’s literary and debating society. Noted for his diligence, and academic excellence, Issa was one of the six products of IGS class of ’77 to be admitted for the rigorous one-year Interim Joint Matriculation Board (IJMB) course at the elite School of Basic Studies (SBS) of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Samaru, Zaria, preparatory to a three-year degree programme in Economics. It was at Zaria that I met Aremu.

It was also at Zaria that Comrade Aremu met and struck lifelong relationship with future prominent Nigerians such as Lamido Sanusi, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and Amir (Emir) of Kano, Sanusi Barkindo, current secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Ambassador Sola Enikanolaiye, former permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, current Minister of Finance Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, Chief Udeme Ufot, chieftain of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) Salamatu Hussaini Suleiman, a former cabinet minister and former Commissioner for Political Affairs of the Economic Community of west African States (ECOWAS), former federal permanent secretary, Nuratu Batagarawa, and Hassan Bello, Executive Secretary of the Shippers Council.

The ’70s and ’80s were years of ideas, underscored by a raging battle between international capitalism and incipient socialism. Understandably, they were years when undergraduates actively participated in the liberal educational environment that featured radical scholars like Yusufu Bala Usman, Mahmood Modibbo Tukur, (both of blessed memory) George and Michael Kwanashie, Shamsudeen Usman, Patrick Wilmot, Yusufu Bangura and several others. Given his disdain for inequality and opposition to military rule, Issa Aremu blossomed in Zaria’s progressive radical community.

In his first year, Comrade Aremu became an active member of the Movement for a Progressive Nigeria, (MPN), and the Youth Solidarity on Southern Africa, (YUSSAN) two left-leaning groups that campaigned for good governance at home and rallied global support to dismantle minority rule in Southern Africa. He was elected Secretary General two years later. Comrade Aremu played a pivotal role in the formation of the Patriotic Youth Movement of Nigeria, PYMN, an all-embracing student movement that offered leadership for Nigerian students through the National Association of Nigerian students, NANS. Not everyone was happy with the rising profile of Issa Aremu and his radical colleagues.

On January 31, 1981, a demonstration on the main campus of the Ahmadu Bello University offered the Professor Ango Abdullahi-led management a bald-faced excuse to expel Aremu without the semblance of a hearing. Expelled alongside Aremu were 10 others: Abdulrahman Black, Jibril Bala Muhammad (both of blessed memory), Chom Bagu, Lamis Shehu Dikko, Juliana Upah, some of who, like Aremu, were final year students. For Aremu, being expelled three weeks after his 20th birthday and barely four months away from graduation was a downside. But then, the act served a dual purpose: it exposed Aremu and his comrades to barefaced injustice and reinforced their resolve to take a stand against dictatorship and struggle for democracy and social justice. Paradoxically, the rot in ABU erupted into a national crisis in 1986 when a female student, Farida Mustapha, was shot dead by policemen on the order of the university. The General Emmanuel Abisoye panel which investigated the crisis recommended the removal of Professor Abdullahi.

In 1982, Aremu and others beat the notorious resolution of the Committee of Universities Vice Chancellors (CVC) not to accept expelled students. With the support of Professors Claude Ake and Ikenna Nzimiro, Aremu got enrolled at the University of Port Harcourt where he eventually graduated in 1985 with Second Class Upper Degree in Economics. Five years later, he was at The Hague, Netherlands, for a second Master degree in labour and Development studies. Aremu also worked with progressive radical Kano state-owned Triumph Newspapers where he served under the ace journalist, Dr. Haroun Adamu.

Comrade Aremu was literally drafted into the Labour Movement by Alhaji Hassan Sunmonu, pioneer president of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in 1987. It was at behest of Comrade Sunmonu that Aremu was made Head of Economic and Research department of the Congress from 1987 and 1989. Aremu counted among the intellectual power base of NLC that campaigned against fuel price increases, privatization and mass layoffs that characterized the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the 80’s. He has not looked back since he joined the vibrant textile and garment union, an affiliate union of the NLC.

Today, Issa Aremu is the voice for and, luminary to millions of a multinational organized global workforce. As the sitting Vice President (Africa) of the octopoid IndustriALL Global Union, made up of more than 600 industrial unions, and 50 million workforce, he is in the thick of global campaign to defend workers’ rights and promote sustainable industrial policy in 140 countries in Africa, Europe, America and the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific. He was elected at the 2nd Congress of the Union in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in October, 2016.

It is not surprising that textile and garment excited Comrade Aremu. Up to the early 1980’s, when he was in ABU Nigeria, with more than 180 operational textile mills, Nigeria was the home to Africa’s largest textile industry. The sector solely contributed over 25% to the workforce in the manufacturing sector and as much to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, with remittances from textile mills contributing hugely to the internally generated revenue for defunct regional governments and their successor-states. Clearly, the unorganised workers in such an important sector of the economy deserve the best deal but, first, they have to be organised.

Up to the ’80s, the textile industry provided about 500,000 direct jobs, second highest after the Federal Government, with more than 250 functional factories. Union membership was over 190,000 with great potentials for more membership. But, in 1997 Nigeria became a signatory to the World Trade Organization (WTO) which mean a total liberalization of textile trade. It was a catastrophic decision which resulted into the worst factory closures in the country. By the time Comrade Aremu became General Secretary, National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, NUTGTWN, in succession to Comrade Oshiomhole in 2008, the union was on its deathbed and membership had shrunk to a mere 12,000 from an all-time high of 190,000.

Comrade Aremu realised that the formal and informal sectors of the union must be reorganized if it was to survive the paralytic blow dealt by the WTO. To do this, he crisscrossed the length and breadth of Nigeria to organise and unionise self-employed tailors and tie and die (Kampala) makers. At the end of his tenure in 2020, membership of the union has appreciated to potential paid up 60,000 mostly informal sector tailors. To Aremu’s credit is the subsisting basic monthly minimum wage of N38,000 for workers in the textile and garment sector.

Best known as Professor of Textile in labour circles, Comrade Aremu is a passionate voice for the revival of the textile industry as a percussor to economic diversification and sustainable development. Last July, he took the campaign to the doorstep of the presidency when he led a union delegation that included Comrade John Adaji, president of Nigeria Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA) on a courtesy visit to President Muhammadu Buhari (GCFR) where he made a strong case for the establishment of a federal ministry to be solely responsible for textile as is the case in China, India and Pakistan. It was also at the event that President Buhari unveiled a cotton, textile and garment (CTG) policy. Comrade Aremu had facilitated a similar courtesy call on Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in August 2015.

The hard-nosed activist knew early in the day that his mantra of “organising the unorganised” would remain unfulfilled if education for workers was not prioritised. Today, textile and garment workers enjoy generous foreign scholarships in addition to regular local trainings made possible by Issa Aremu’s wide international connections with prestigious unions in Africa, Europe and the United States of America. Top on the list is the influential National Union Metal Workers of South Africa, NUMSA, which admits Nigerian textile and garment workers to its Political Education Course at the Kwame Nkrumah Pan African School in Johannesburg.

Nigeria’s return to participatory democracy in 1999 was an important milestone in the life of Comrade Aremu who, for years, was in the trenches with progressives to campaign for an end to military rule. But the politicians who inherited political power were either befuddled or overwhelmed by the challenges of governance. The situation was particularly tragic in Aremu’s home state of Kwara which fell into the hands of an oligarchy of local businessmen. Soon, disharmony pervaded Kwara, the famed ‘State of Harmony’, and residents of the state became the butt of derisive and corrosive jokes among their neighbours. In July, 2018 Comrade Aremu declared his interest in contesting the governorship election and instantly changed the political narrative as he did so.

For a man who had made his mark on the national and international scenes, many considered Comrade Aremu’s decision a harbinger of hope. He was soon dubbed “The Game-Changer’’ by analysts and several press reviews referred to him as the best among the pack. Expectedly, he chose to pursue his ambition under the Labour Party of Nigeria, a party he served as deputy national secretary between 2010 and 2014 but which enjoyed a near-zero presence in Kwara state. But, within months of picking the party’s governorship ticket, Comrade Aremu literally built the party from scratch and positioned it for the one grueling task of de-capturing the state from wholesale personalisation. By the end of 2018, he had whistlestopped the state to cement old alliances and seek new allies. Not a man given to be flippancy, Comrade Aremu’s pledge to transform Kwara state into a ‘haven of prosperity’ endeared him to many. Overnight, “The Game Changer’ turned a little-known party into a mass movement. Before he opted out of the race, apparently to enhance the chances of the eventual winner of the election, Comrade Aremu’s had become a permanent fixture in the “O TO GE” (Enough is enough!) movement that terminated years of freeloading in Kwara State.

Aremu’s formative years were at Ijagbo, some 50 kilometres south of Ilorin where he had his early education at the Ansar-ud-Deen Primary School. In 2005, he was inducted into the Senior Executive Course 27 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, and served as two-term Secretary-General of the Alumni Association of the Institute. Aremu was labour delegate to the 2014 National Conference where he served as deputy chairman of the Conference’s committee on civil society, labour, youth and sports.

Comrade Aremu father, grandfather, teacher, activist and unionist par excellence has been married to Hajiya Nana Khadija after the death of his first wife, Hajiya Nana Hamdalat in December, 2015. For his service to humanity, Comrade Aremu is the worthy recipient of several national and international awards. Among them are the Abdulqadir Balarabe Musa Legacy Award for service to humanity in May 2018; National Productivity Order of Merit, NPOM, Award (August, 2014); the Mustapha Akanbi Foundation Leadership Award in July, 2010. He was inducted in New York as a Fellow of American Bloomberg African Leadership Initiative, A.L.I, Media Fellowship Programme in 2016.

As he turns 60 and exits the textile union, Comrade Aremu is shifting his gaze to global unionism. As he does so, Comrade Aremu has cause to celebrate and be celebrated. Here is one African passionate about the African project and continues to do his bit in its actualisation even as many despair. His suggestions on taking his home country, Nigeria, and Africa to greater heights, just as his antidote to the high cost of governance, are as revolutionary as they are realistic. For instance, Comrade Aremu believes that divesting the centre of most of its powers, part-time legislative duties and remunerations and reserving legislative seats for professionals are necessary ingredients to deepen budding democracies.

Like other days in his normally-tight schedule, Friday, January 8, promises to be typically loaded. A cycling exercise to his alma mater in Ilorin, a birthday lecture, a Juma’at service, to be conducted in strict compliance with Covid-19 protocols, are part of activities to welcome Comrade Aremu into the senior citizens’ club. On the card is a presentation of books at Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, on January 28, 2021. A get-together caps events to celebrate an uncommon activist and labour luminary as he opens another golden chapter in his well-crafted book of life.

•Magaji <magaji778@gmail.com> is based in Abuja.

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