SEGUN SANGO (7 MAY, 1958-23 MAY 2022): FOUNDING NATIONAL CHAIRPERSON OF SPN, INDEFATIGABLE ORGANISER OF THE WORKING CLASS AND REVOLUTIONARY PER EXCELLENCE!
Comrade Segun Sango passed away on May 23, 2022, after an inspiring 64 years on earth and an adult life committed to ending the unjust capitalist system and for the socialist transformation of Nigeria and the world at large. In line with the idea of scientific socialism, Comrade Segun Sango opposed the exploitative and oppressive capitalist system that makes it possible for the use of the working class to create wealth only for a tiny privileged few and corrupt elite/bosses to control the distribution and exchange in their favour and put the lives of the working class in perpetual misery and poverty.
As a revolutionary leader, he believed in the organizations of the working class as a platform for mobilizing the masses towards the defeat of the self-serving ruling elite. After leaving university, where he was active in a socialist group and involved in the campaign of NANS against attacks on public education, Sango joined other socialists and activists to form and build the Labour Militant (LM) which later became the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM). Through this he was able to build generations of activists and socialists many of which are cadres and comrades that constitute the leadership of DSM and some other existing left organizations in the country today.
Some on the left do not believe that the working people can independently form and build a party as a vehicle to fight against anti-poor policies and challenge and defeat the exploitative capitalist class. But Segun Sango believed in the capacity of the working masses to build their own political party and movement to defeat the capitalist class and fundamentally change society in line with socialist programme. Segun Sango led a campaign for over three decades for this party to be built by the labour movement but this did not materialize. Together with his comrades in the Labour Militant, he was active in the building of Nigerian Labour Party in 1989 led by the NLC, which the Babangida military government did not register. He was the Lagos State Chairperson of the National Conscience Party (NCP) between 1999 and 2007 . But the DSM left the party in response to the emergence and consolidation of a rightwing shift in the leadership after the resignation of Gani Fawehinmi as the NCP national chair.
Following the exit from the NCP, Sango and DSM oriented towards the current Labour Party but met a hostile leadership who frustrated DSM members and other Socialists who were campaigning to build it as a mass-based party on a working people program from joining the party.
As a show of example and to build gradually from small membership and strength, Segun Sango led the DSM to form, along with other left activists, the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) in 2013, while at the same time calling on the wider labour movement to build a mass working people’s party. He also led the registration struggle after INEC illegally refused to register the SPN despite it meeting all the legal requirements until the Party was pronounced registered through a Federal High Court judgment in 2018. Although the reactionary Buhari government through INEC has unjustly deregistered SPN alongside many other political parties, we remain committed to our campaign for a mass working people’s political party in line with Segun Sango’s dream.
Segun Sango will be remembered for his opposition and resistance to the successive capitalist military and civilian governments including their anti-peoples policies and actions
Segun Sango believed in a global resistance and defeat of capitalism, hence, he was elected into the International Executive Committee (IEC) of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), the international socialist organization in which the DSM is an affiliate. He will be missed for his roles in the global working class struggles and resistance.
As the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) celebrates the life and time of Segun Sango, we appeal to the broader labour movement to begin the process of forming and building a pan Nigeria mass political party to challenge and defeat the self-serving bourgeois ruling elite and their exploitative and corrupt capitalist system.
SANGO LIVES ON!
Abiodun Bamigboye
Acting National Chairperson
Chinedu Bosah
National Secretary
E-mail: [email protected]