IN their beloved city of Oshogbo, Osun State, two indomitable African lions: Hassan Adebayo and Hussein Oyekanmi Sunmonu, are turning 80 this Thursday, January 7, 2021. Theirs is the story of restless pan African fighters whose stalking like tigers does not portray cowardice. The lives of the Sunmonu twins which began in Ghana, tell the collective story of resilience, vision, piety and an abiding faith in the ability of humans to turn their collective fortunes around for a better world built on social justice.
The twins who grew up in Ghana, returned to Nigeria on the hunch that the rhetoric of the post-Nkrumah leadership has an anti-African virus, and a mutating Nigerian strain. This turned out to be a correct assessment, as the revisionists in Ghana threw out all African liberation movements and fighters, and then expelled all Nigerians. Both went to the same schools, graduated as engineers from the Yaba College of Technology, worked in the same Federal Ministry of Works in Lagos and joined the Labour Movement as social engineers for social justice.
Although Hassan held various posts in the trade unions including as founding president of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and longest serving and most effective secretary general of the continental Labour Centre, the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity, OATUU, Hussein was always there to give him cover. This at times included putting his life at risk. In May, 1981 when Hassan led Nigerian workers in a crippling general strike and the desperate state menacingly pursued him through the streets of Lagos with vehicle loads of armed men, Hussein took the dangerous decision to distract the hunters. Given the fact that they are like-twins, he switched positions with Hassan by wearing the same type of dress and appearing to be the NLC President. So the security forces ended up chasing Hussein around while Hassan in safety, coordinated the strike which gave the country its first National Minimum Wage.
There were of course hilarious moments such as happened at the NLC inaugural conference on February 28, 1978. When Hassan emerged from a pack of six contestants as founding NLC president; the person carried shoulder high by jubilant workers and whose photographs were splashed in newspapers was Hussein! In 2010, I watched a television programme as Hassan was being honoured by the Michael Imoudu Institute of Labour Studies, MILS, in Ilorin, Nigeria. I called him in his Accra, Ghana base and said I was watching him delivering his address at the occasion. He laughed; we both knew that the person on television was not him, but Hussein who was covering up for his brother.
While Hussein remained in the public sector where he retired and later became the Nigerian leader of a major religious movement, Hassan remained in the trade unions where he eventually led African workers as the Secretary General of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity, OATUU. The twins made monumental achievements both in their public and private lives, but on this occasion, I will address their leadership principles which Comrade Hassan Sunmonu espoused and bequeathed to African workers. They are based on their shared conviction that the salvation of any people must have substantial workers inputs and that trade union organisations must be independent of employers and governments. In this wise, that all trade union leaders must be loyal to their members and dedicated to their interests. In other words, just as man cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time, so trade union leaders cannot serve workers and government or employers at the same time.
