Dr Segun Osoba
Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, who spoke on “Comrade Segun Osoba: The Radical Historian Who Stood with the People”, stated that the deceased “was deeply patriotic, committed to Nigeria and had a clear socialist ideological orientation.”.. He pointed out that Osoba became nationally known for the Minority Report & Draft Constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1976, which he co-authored with Dr Yusuf Bala Usman. It was a Report which the Obasanjo-led military administration dismissed with the wave of a hand; yet, deployed the police to tear-gass and beat up students and radical activists who wanted to launch it in Zaria.
Dr Samuel Olusegun Osoba, in his residence in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, on Thursday, 14 May, joined his ancestors at the age of 92.
He obtained his first degree in History at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and a doctoral degree at the Moscow State University. He taught History for a quarter of a century at Ife from 1967.
Professor Toyin Falola, an ex-student of Osoba, wrote that his “distinctive intellectual and human attributes” and his “love for history was contagious, and his ability to make complicated historical events comprehensible to his students, despite the embedded convolutions of philosophy, appeared to many a gift of nature.”
