Tribute To Dr. Bekolari Ransome Kuti

By

Ogbeni Lanre Banjo

The exit of Dr. Bekolari Ransome Kuti (Beko), the youngest son of the great Kutis and immediate younger brother of Fela, from this wicked world partly under the claws of General Olusegun Obasanjo is tragic.  It is more so lamentable at this stage when all hands are expected to be on deck to chase General Obasanjo, who started the destruction of Nigeria, out of our lives.

Beko was born at the General Hospital, Abeokuta, Ogun State in 1940.  After completing secondary school at Abeokuta Grammar School, he attended Coventry Technical College in England and then studied medicine at the University of Manchester, where he got his degree in 1963.  Unlike many Nigerians aging, dying and loosing their children in foreign lands because of dimwitted rulers in Nigeria and because of their own passivity, he returned to Nigeria in 1964 and opened a private medical practice. He later became involved in human rights activism because he realized that education is more than the passport to decent economic positions.  He was convinced that education without social action is a one-sided ideal and lacks when it does not lead to actions for justice. Thus, Beko fought the devilish rulers of Nigeria on the street and from various prisons.

While a student at the University of Manchester, Beko at the age of twenty fell in love with Brenda, an Irish woman who was four years older than him.  He wrote to his mother, Mama, Mrs. Olufunmilayo Anikulapo-Kuti to inform her of his intention to marry.  Mama immediately wrote to Brenda, saying in part, “I am not opposed to my sons marrying women from any nation, but Beko is too young now to think either of engagement or marriage.   He is only twenty years old and away from home and those who could give good advice.  You are older than him – use that to give him good advice.” Beko and Brenda married anyway but were separated in 1967. 

On February 18, 1977 when the Kalakuta Republic was raided, Beko was with his brother, Fela. The attack dogs of this same Obasanjo bayoneted him in the forehead and hand, tossed him from a window, and beat him to hollow.  He was forced to match on a broken foot from the burnt Kalakuta to the army barracks nearby, and his medical clinic in the compound was completely destroyed.  It is noteworthy to mention that General Olusegun Obasanjo was born in Abeokuta as well as the Kuti family, yet his lust for power knows no bounds since the day he has laid his hands on the lives of Nigerians. His is to destroy!  

Beko later became the national vice president of the Nigerian Medical Association.  In 1988, he was appointed by the Commonwealth Medical Association to serve in the Eminent Persons Advisory Group on Human Rights and was the chairman of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights.  On August 26, 1989, the Nigerian Guardian published his lengthy letter entitled “Open Letter to President Babangida” which decried what he saw as the lengthening shadow of government of oppression of the free expression of ideas, among other things.  Several months later, on April 10, 1990 an article appeared in the Daily Times reporting that Professor Wole Soyinka held a press conference calling for an open inquiry into an alleged attempt by government security forces to abduct Beko and another human rights activist.  During the May 1992 disturbances in Nigeria, Beko chaired a coalition of pro-democracy groups concerned about whether the military government headed by General Ibrahim Babangida was making serious attempts to abide by its promise to hold civilian elections.  (New York Times, May 23 and 31, 1992).  The despotic authorities detained him shortly thereafter.  Between 1992 and 1995, Beko was in and out of jail due to his activities as the chairman of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), which was organized in Jos in May 1992.  In July 1994, Beko was charged with treason for faxing the proceeding of the trial of General Obasanjo outside the country. The same Obasanjo that ruined his members of family!  What a forgiven soul?  In a trial by the Kangaroo Tribunal set up by the then butcher in Abuja, General Sani Abacha, Beko was sentenced for life.  The sentencing was later commuted to 15 years after public outcry.  Over the years, his sojourn in several Nigerian prisons caused his health to be precarious and was even rumored dead when he was in the Abacha’s gulag. 

In August 1994, a bomb was thrown at his home, which at that time was serving as headquarters for CD.  Yet Beko did not give up.  Despite constant annihilation of resistance movements, he joined with Papa Anthony Eronsele Enahoro to form PRONACO in 2005 to check mate the brute now considering to treat the supreme law of the land he swore to uphold with disregard by imposing himself as the president of the country for the third time.   The Ransome Kuti children inherited from both parents a keen sense of social justice, a generosity of the spirit that accepts the problems of others as their own, and dedication to involvement in public life even at the expense of their comfort and personal lives.  

Irrespective of the wicked maneuvers of ambitious political wolves in sheep clothing, Beko continued to do good and speak fearlessly, as God gave him the spiritual strength, the wisdom and the foresight to do so.  Beko fought to ensure that man’s inhumanity to man must cease.  The Kuti’s family understood early that freedom is not won by a passive acceptance of suffering.  Freedom is won by a struggle against suffering, and majority of them pursued the struggle for freedom until they breathed their last. Undoubtedly, great men of history must reap the fruits of greatness, for as the holy book says, what you sow, you shall reap. Your family’s contribution to our liberation shall one day be fully recognized. 

Beko, your sufferings for Nigeria would one day yield great benefits.  When suffering is understood from God’s perspective, it becomes a source of eternal joy.  Therefore rejoice, that you partook in the sufferings of Jesus the Christ, Prophet Muhammed, Dr. Martin Luther King, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, your brother, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and many others who suffered in this hell on earth where the black race suffers and smiles.  You certainly understood that true pacifism is a courageous confrontation with evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it.  Rest in perfect peace and be waiting to direct General Olusegun Obasanjo to his deserved place, where no well fed dog like Femi Fani-Kayode would run his foul mouth on Obasanjo’s behalf.  Direct Obasanjo to his reserved place where no Inspector General of Police would allow those campaigning for a third term, while those against it would be harassed.  Obasanjo would have to stand before the Judge of Judge to account for the destructions of our lives.

To this end, I request General Olusegun Obasanjo to profit from the lesson of history and not allow his heart to be hardened like Pharaoh Ramses who did not budge in his decision to flout all the laws of decency and impose a dictatorship upon the people of Israel, only to have his formidable army perish in the Red Sea and rewrite the history of the Middle East with the blood of the oppressed and downtrodden hoi polloi.  I am supremely convinced that the Almighty God will frustrate the knavery of all the third term campaigners, including anyone planning to serve Obasanjo during the third term, and ultimately expose their machinations and consign them to the heap of forgotten tyrants.  Those at the forefront of non-violence struggle in Nigeria are gradually passing away, you may have no choice but to deal with their replacements who would be blowing everybody away, if you don’t leave us alone and retire to Ota “jeje” (quietly). 

Behold General and his third term campaigners, a Red Sea passage in history ultimately brings the forces of goodness to victory, and the closing of the same waters marks the doom and destruction of the forces of evil.  Evil always carries the seed of its own destruction.  It can go a long way, it can even dedicate the dog that would be eaten by Joshua Dariye of Plateau State to run his opponent to the ground, but then, Baba Iyabo, evil reaches its limit.  The Hitlers and the Mussolinis have their days, and for a period they may wield great power, spreading themselves like a green bay tree with the Southwest governors saying “carry go Baba” all of you would soon be cut down like the grass wither as the green herb.

Ogbeni Lanre Banjo