Once again, in this blasted year of deaths, we have been robbed of a frontline intellectual of leftist bent. Prof Yima Sen, the journalism teacher, Marxist and minority rights activist had bowed out last Tuesday at an age rather too early for his robust physique. He was 69 years old.- Yima was my kindred brother from the Jeechira lineage of Tiv and a professional colleague who through several years of public service greatly inspired me and many others who were concerned with the idea of the philosopher king in Nigerian politics. He was deeply intelligent and expressed himself so eloquently in the best of British phonetics and diction acquired from the ivy universities he attended in three different continents.
- Yima wrote books and published several papers in international journals on Globalization and the world media with particular attention to the unjust portrayal of minority tribes, poor nations and the marginalized communities across the world.
- Those who announced his death on social media emphasized his Marxist orientation, having been part of the clan of intellectuals inspired by the 19th century Jewish – German philosopher, Karl Marx. The marxists believe that our world runs purely on materialist conditions and nothing else, not even spiritual beliefs. Scholarship itself, all through the ages has been concerned with knowing the truth about nature or life, and harnessing it for the purpose of enhancing life. By the 1970s and 80s, Marxism had become a fad on university campuses all over Africa and the 3rd world seeking to counterbalance the western liberal world view.
- As an undergraduate then I must admit, I was persuaded by their logic, but offended by their deliberate impolite verbal missiles and name calling. Some of them looked unkempt or wore funny goatees and conducted themselves as those least interested in the luxuries of life. Theirs was another religion committing to raise the downtrodden after the the capitalist would have overthrown in a violent revolution.
- That the political experiments of the Soviet Union and other countries in the Eastern Europe, China and Cuba based on marxist principles, sooner or later collapsed, exemplifies the fact that no matter how convincing an idea might be, it cannot last forever or be applicable to everyone. The Marxist option was therefore as limited in scope as any other dogma especially in the interpretation of a complex universe like ours.
- The late Yima Sen was a Marxist with a difference. His understanding of the principles of class antagonism derived from Marxism helped him greatly in his study of marginalized ethnic groups in the middle belt especially the Tiv in relation to the imperialist tendencies of the Hausa Fulani majority group. He got these insights largely from his foremost hero and political leader, the late Senator JS Tarka and late boss , Gov Aper Aku, in their ingenious efforts to mobilize the minority groups of Nigeria as the fourth force in the Nigerian political equation.
- This is really what made Yima Sen stand out as a consummate leftist scholar whose work appears to me more enduring. He transcended the narrow canvas of dialectical materialism by recognizing other critical intersectional factors in class relationship. We appreciate this more when we understand that there is something disruptive about knowledge. It keeps rising, or falling, or contradicting itself, reappearing in other guises or proliferating in several other fragments.
- A sound intellectual cannot afford to be dogmatic. He must think about the various possible ideas not yet explored outside the box. We certainly must accord Yima Sen his rightful place as one of the few intersectionalist intellectual icons that deftly sustained the life of Marxist discourse three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
- We owe him thanks for being part of those that elevated and extended the idiom of domination from the limited class materialist relationship to the feminist, ecological, racial, demographic and sundry other categories.
- Adieu, my amiable brother, Professor Yima Sen. Rest in peace.
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