On Friday, January 17, 2025, the Left, comprising Marxists, socialists, feminists, progressive academics, and humanists, will converge on the ancient city of Calabar for the interment of Prof Benedicta ‘Bene’ Madunagu, who died on Tuesday, November 26, 2024. Prof. Bene Madunagu, known to different people as Comrade Bene, Mumsy B, Auntie Bene, among other endearing names, was the quintessence of the struggle for human progress.
In terms of my upbringing, apart from my mother, this exceptional feminist was the most consequential woman in my life. I had the great honour of meeting her in the late 1980s as a student at the University of Calabar. I had joined the Movement for Progressive Nigeria (MPN), a revolutionary students’ movement on campus, which she and Comrade Edwin Madunagu, her friend, Comrade, and spouse, had founded in 1977 to ground students politically and ideologically.
This is a revised and updated version of the tribute I paid the subject five years ago, on March 21, 2017, when she became 70 years old.
Although she has since then lived largely in retirement and ill-health, she has nonetheless done a number of things—directly and indirectly, alone and in combination with others—that now contribute significantly to defining the essence of her entire adult life. The most significant of these “things” is offered as an Update in the closing paragraphs of this edition.
