The death of Tajudeen Abdul Raheem in a car crash on the way to Nairobi airport in the early hours of Africa Day, 25 May, deprives the continent of one of its bravest and wittiest spirits. A rousing public speaker and a brilliant polemicist, Tajudeen had the ability to tell uncomfortable truths to the rich and powerful, and even to his own comrades.
Born in Funtua, Nigeria, in 1961, he attended government schools in Katsina and then graduated with a first class honours degree from Kano University. He won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford despite complaining to the academic authorities about its association with that arch imperialist. He used his time in Oxford to launch an array of political projects and fire up a generation of African activists, many joining the campaign against Nigeria's military rulers. He was the founding Chairman of the Centre for Democracy and Development, which has helped several countries move from military rule to multi-party democracy.
His friend, the former Finance Minister of Zanzibar, Abdulrahman Babu, recommended Tajudeen to the post of General Secretary of the revived Pan-African Congress in Kampala. Two years ago, Tajudeen was appointed Deputy Director of the United Nations' campaign to promote its Millennium Development Goals in Africa; he persuaded the bureaucracy that he should be allowed to continue his iconoclastic public speaking and journalism, which regularly lambasted UN agencies. Somehow, he charmed them into acquiescence.
In 2000, Africa Confidential invited him to speak at its 40th anniversary conference alongside Britain's then Africa Minister Peter Hain and the United States' then Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Susan Rice. After Hain and Rice had given the official line, Tajudeen lit up the conference hall with a dissection of Western policy, alternating between humorous anecdote and cutting analysis. A trenchant critic of the doings of the rich West and its aid industry in Africa, Tajudeen did not spare African governments, political ideologues or religious zealots. Raised as a Muslim, he espoused a uniquely African form of Marxism.
In a piece headlined 'Islamist bigots' in late 2001, Tajudeen attacked the application of Sharia law in northern Nigeria, where a woman called Safiya Hussaini had been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. 'Elite official Islamists want to control the masses using extreme sanctions. At a time when Muslims are the butt of all kinds of prejudice, it may be difficult for many to come out to debate, let alone condemn some of the abuses of Islam by powerful vested interests. One risks being called a traitor to the faith. However, being truthful should not be considered a weakness. In the name of all that is decent, Safiya should not die.' Such forthright reactions in Tajudeen's weekly postcards, syndicated in newspapers across Africa, will be hugely missed like their hyperactive author and his winning smile.
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