‎Trade unionist Sunmonu: Why we rejected IMF structural adjustment

‎‎A veteran Nigerian trade unionist, Hassan Sunmonu, has resisted the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. ‎ ‎Sunmonu, who chaired a symposium titled “The Historian as Public Intellectual: Segun Osoba, Radical Historiography and the Defence of the Common People” held in Ogun State on Friday, said […]

‎‎A veteran Nigerian trade unionist, Hassan Sunmonu, has resisted the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
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‎Sunmonu, who chaired a symposium titled “The Historian as Public Intellectual: Segun Osoba, Radical Historiography and the Defence of the Common People” held in Ogun State on Friday, said Osoba and other progressive intellectuals equipped labour leaders with the ideas that enabled them to oppose what he described as the “orthodox SAP” agenda of the IMF and World Bank.
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‎”When IMF world bank were imposing their orthodox structural adjustment programmes on many countries, Nigeria and other African countries but thanks to our intellectuals Dr. Segun Osoba and others who educated us to counter the orthodox SAP of the world bank that wanted to enslave not only our economies but also ourselves and our countries,” Sunmonu said.
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‎”When we were well tutorred by our Nigerian intellectuals of the danger of IMF World bank, we became the apostles of anti-SAP and when the opportunity came for me to lead the African Trade Union Movement, I took the message there and no African Trade Union accepted the orthodox SAP of the IMF world bank.”
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‎Sunmonu, who led the Nigeria Labour Congress between 1978 and 1984 and later served as General Secretary of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity, credited Osoba with building enduring ties between labour activists and progressive academics.
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‎”I brought the synergy between workers and trade unions of Nigeria and Nigerian progressive intellectuals,” he said.
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‎According to him, intellectuals such as Osoba dedicated their scholarship to the interests of ordinary Nigerians.
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‎”There are intellectuals that actually work for and plea for the course of the ordinary people of this country,” he said.
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‎Sunmonu described Osoba as a central figure in the radical intellectual tradition associated with the former University of Ife.
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‎”When we were all younger, we heard of the Ife Coop, He Dr. Osoba, is the pillar of the Ife Coop that made the alliance of lecturers and students within the university campus, possible, not adversaries but friends who are mentoring students,” he said.
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‎He added that his invitation to chair the event reflected the historical relationship between labour unions and progressive scholars.
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‎”I consider it a great honour not to me but the Nigerian Trade Union Movement and I want to plead again that those bygone days should come back again,” he said.
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‎Also speaking at the symposium, prominent African social historian Ibrahim Abdullahi described Osoba as a scholar who embodied the role of the historian as a defender of the oppressed and custodian of popular memory.
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‎”In that tradition, the historian is not a court prison. The historian is a witness,” Abdullahi said.
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‎”The critic, teacher, organizer, and custodian of the people’s memory. The historian remembers what power was once forgotten.”
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‎He argued that the event was larger than the celebration of an individual scholar and represented “a movement of reckoning for the university, for labour, for the left, and for all who claim to care about Nigeria and Africa.”
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‎Abdullahi urged scholars and activists to continue Osoba’s intellectual and political legacy.
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‎”The best tribute to Comrade Osoba is not silence, ceremony or nostalgia alone. It is continuation,” he said.
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‎”It is to return to the classroom with greater courage. It is to return to the labor history with the workers, the artisan, the peasant, the underpaid, and the upper poor at the center.”
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‎He noted that social justice must remain central to democratic politics.
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‎”It is to return the constitutional politics, with insistence that social justice is not an appendix for democracy, but it’s foundation,” he said.
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‎Abdullahi described Osoba as “a teacher, historian, humanist, Marxist, patriot, Pan-African, and current,” adding that he belonged to a generation of intellectuals who viewed scholarship as inseparable from social transformation.
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‎”We salute him as one who chose the side of the oppressed. We salute him as one who taught us that history is not merely what happened yesterday. It is also the field of which the living contest the future,” he said.
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‎Popularly known among colleagues and students as “Baba Ijebu”, Abdullahi said Osoba “was more than a scholar” and that “his life joined the Gown to the town.”
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‎Osoba, one of Nigeria’s foremost radical historians and political economists, taught for decades at the former University of Ife, now the Obafemi Awolowo University, where he became widely known for his work on economic history, political economy and social justice.

His scholarship influenced generations of academics, labour activists and pro-democracy campaigners in Nigeria and across Africa. He died in 2026 at the age of 92 after a long career devoted to teaching, research and progressive politics.