Former President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Hassan Adebayo Sunmonu, has paid tribute to the late historian, Samuel Olusegun Osoba, describing him as one of the intellectual forces who transformed Nigeria’s trade union movement and strengthened its resistance to economic policies championed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
Sunmonu made the remarks at the inaugural symposium held in Abuja in honour of Osoba, where historians, academics and trade unionists gathered to celebrate his life and legacy.
Speaking at the event, Sunmonu said Osoba played a pivotal role in bringing intellectuals into the labour movement and fostering collaboration between trade unions, university lecturers and students.
“They were not adversaries but friends mentoring students,” he said.
Sunmonu, who also served as General Secretary of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity, credited Osoba with equipping labour leaders to challenge the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) promoted by the IMF and the World Bank.
“When we were well tutored by our Nigerian intellectuals on the data of the World Bank, we became the apostles of anti-SAP,” he said, adding that under his leadership, African trade unions rejected the policy prescriptions of the Bretton Woods institutions.
He also recalled that African labour leaders later worked with the African Union to oppose what he described as “slave clauses” during negotiations at the inauguration of the World Trade Organisation in Singapore.
Also speaking at the symposium was Ibrahim Abdullahi, professor at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. Reflecting on the symposium’s theme, “The Historian as Public Intellectual: Segun Osoba, Radical Historiography, and the Defence of the Common People,” he urged scholars and public intellectuals to uphold Osoba’s commitment to social justice.
“The best way to honour Osoba is to return to the archives with sharper questions, return to the classrooms with greater courage, return to the labour institute with the workers, the artisans, the peasants and the unemployed youths,” Abdullahi said, adding that democracy cannot thrive without social justice.
Osoba was widely regarded as a leading scholar of economic history and political economy, whose research examined the structures of capitalism and neo-colonialism in Nigeria and their implications for national development.
According to Norma Perchonock, Director of the Yusufu Bala Usman Institute (YBUI), Zaria, the late academic , who was chairman of the institute, collaborated with the late Yusufu Bala Usman on The Minority Report and Draft Constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1976). The report has continued to influence debates on constitutionalism and governance in Nigeria.
Osoba died in May 2026.
