On Monday, 14 July 2025, Peter Adejobi, better known as Peekay in the movement, slumped at Gudu, Abuja. Peter, who was a Labour Party stalwart and special assistant on transport to Joshua Chinedu Obika, the member of the house of representatives representing AMAC/Bwari federal constituency, was on his way back home from work. He was not immediately taken to any hospital. Passersby used his phone to call his wife. But they declined to heed her request that they take him to a hospital, out of fear. She arrived to still meet him alive, albeit foaming in the mouth and nose. She immediately rushed him to the Garki Hospital. But by then, it was too late. He was confirmed dead on arrival.
Peekay was the paid organising secretary of the Socialist Workers League for Abuja for a period of about six years. He started a few months after he joined the organisation at the end of 2014. In this period he showed a tireless commitment to SWL’s work within the trade union movement and working class. This was despite the fact that the trajectory of partisan politics for him started from grassroots work in bourgeois parties.
The different sides of this reality remained within the contradictory flux of his politics till the end. On one hand, there was a faith in electoralism which his practice as an SWLer challenged but which he never fully overcame, even when he was a member and organiser of the League. On the other hand, his feel for the grassroots and the sincerity of his heart also meant that he was at home with the rank-and-file worker as much as, and possibly more than, with the trade union bureaucrat. This was invaluable for an organiser of a socialist organisation such as the SWL.
I met “Peekay” (an organisational name derived from his initials i.e., “PK” for Peter Kayode) for the first time in 2007. This was around the period of that year’s general elections. He had earlier been active in the Alliance for Democracy (AD) before the collapse of the old AD. His caucus in the Abuja AD was seeking a home where they would still wield relevance.
Meanwhile, Labour Party did not have much in the way of grassroots organisers, as the National Chair and National Secretary of the party argued. So, this team of politicians with “practical experience and no be just only grammar” as Alhaji Abdulsalam Abdulkadir, the National Secretary (who later also became National Chair) used to say, was invited to steer the ship of the Abuja branch under the supervision of the national secretariat. An old Alhaji from Gwagwalada, who was at the head of that caucus, was made Chair of the Abuja LP and Peekay secretary. Unfortunately, whilst the Alhaji was a grassroots mobiliser, he was also illiterate. It became increasingly difficult for him to meet some of the demands of the office. Peekay, who by then had also become special assistant to the LP National Chair, Dan Nwuanyanwu eventually replaced him as FCT chair.
When I met Peekay, he had drawn my attention to having met me earlier in the early-1990s. This was when I spoke at a public meeting organised by comrades like Francis Abayomi and Musa at the University of Agriculture Abeokuta (UNAAB). I can’t remember the year, but I know it was before June 12. It turned out, from what he said, that even at that time, Peekay had been sympathetic to our politics, even though he also felt that there was something utopian about the idea of a socialist transformation of society.
We were not very enthusiastic about the entry of the ex-AD folks into the party, including Peekay. But on an interpersonal level, we saw Peekay as someone we could relate with, to some extent. He radiated humility, a readiness to learn and a good heart.
Our concern with the party then was, however much more than the entrance of the ex-ADists. The right-wing of the party had come out stronger after an ill-advised and amateurishly pursued internal party struggle, which some leading trade union bureaucrats in the National Working Committee waged in 2005/2006, with the support of some key leaders of the union bureaucracy outside the party’s NWC. Their position was further reinforced when in 2009, Dr Olusegun Mimiko was declared winner of the Ondo state governorship election by the court, which overturned the rigged 2007 gubernatorial election in the state. The December 2009 Convention of the party sealed this ascendancy of the party’s politico-ideological descent.
Things started to somewhat change in late 2013 when I challenged the sight-tight politics of the then party chair. By October 2014, the party had split in another ill-advised and once again mismanaged internal struggle. In relation to the 2006 drama it was like that timeworn phrase of first a tragedy, the second time a farce. It was partly driven by ex-union bureaucrats in the party’s national leadership, who tried to use the NLC as crutches for winning power in the party structures. Anyway, while the national contention was building up, elections took place in the FCT chapter of the party.
Peekay contested to be re-elected as FCT party chair. Felix Oyimnatumba, who was at the time a leading member of the SWL in Abuja, and who had worked closely a few years earlier with Peekay at the party secretariat, ran against him and won. While this would have elicited bitterness in some other people, there was nothing of the sort with Peekay. In fact, he worked more with the SWL, joining us almost immediately after that, in time to attend our third National Convention which took place at the end of October in Ibadan.
In his quintessential organising style, he helped organise two quite successful symposiums in quick succession. He also helped raise funds for our short-lived Abuja Workers Voice newspaper. The organising secretary of the SWL in Abuja at the time was Alex Ogbu, whom the dastardly police murdered on 21 January 2020. To support his work, an Organising and Mobilisation Committee was constituted. Alex was chair and Peekay secretary.
Later that year, Alex took over as National Administrative Secretary of the National Automobile Technicians Association (NATA) when Sola Olorunfemi, the SWLer hitherto playing that role took up duties as General Secretary of AUTOBATE, the automobiles, boatyard, transport etc union affiliated to the TUC. It was a no-brainer that Peekay would then step into the role of paid Organising Secretary of the League. He also joined the Editorial Board, anchoring the logistics of production and distribution of the paper.
He was not very happy with the League’s decision to work in the National Conscience Party (NCP) for the 2015 elections. He always insisted that the LP had more electoral value and constantly expressed the view that it was winning elections that made a party worthy of being called one. This was, of course, something we never agreed upon. But he was nonetheless very active in our NCP political work that year, especially as a member of the League, Fisayo Makanjuola ran on the NCP platform for Senate.
Looking back, I would say that 2015 and 2016 were the years we worked closely together the most. We would meet almost every day of the week. He would visit me in the office or at home. And I would at times also visit him at his place in Lugbe. We would go, often times just the two of us, and at times with one or two other SWLers for paper sales at the industrial estate in Idu or the Federal Secretariat annexe in Area 1.
We also travelled together to political programmes in Osogbo, Kano and Nasarawa, stopping on the way to have a drink or buy stuff like bushmeat or mortars for pounding yam and such like. A close friendship developed between us. Of course, not all comrades are friends, even if comradeship does in a sense have its own deeper ties. To paraphrase Amilcar Cabral here, it is good we are friends, it is better we are comrades, it is best we are both friends and comrades.
There was a little party SWLers organised for me in 2016 before I took up a full-time job in the global trade union movement. A little bird whispered in my ear later that it was initiated by Peekay and seconded by Isaac Botti, the branch chair. Anyway, I still came back at the end of that year to conduct the 10th United Action for Democracy (UAD) National Convention on 3 December. Peekay was elected UAD PRO at the Convention.
For years after that, he was one of the people I would always spend significant time with whenever I was in the country. Despite the physical distance, things went well until the 2019/2020 period. Friction with our co-travellers from the old SL that had joined us to form the SWL in 2011 deepened. And in August 2020, they pulled out without any clearly stated ideological differences, but with a campaign of calumny, directed largely at me. They were far fewer than us when they came in 2011, and even fewer still when they left in 2020. But they, or at least one of them, contributed a substantial amount to Peekay’s remuneration as paid organiser.
It became impossible to sustain Peekay’s salary. In principle, our paid organiser was never meant to be full-time. And this was not only because of our limited resources. When Alex started at the beginning of 2014, he was obliged to work for not more than three days a week. It was supposed to be the same with Peekay. In fact, he pointed out that he might not be available for more than such a part-time arrangement in the first place, because he was also into supplying laboratory materials to schools. However, that business appeared not to have been going well over the years, and he ended up devoting his time to work as an organiser, which was in sync with his spirit.
With his regular remuneration reduced to just over a third of what it used to be, his morale, not surprisingly, dampened. He actually stopped doing what he loved – organising, for almost a year before the work relationship was formally ended. But we did not have the heart to take him up on that. There were intermittent support both from the organisation and several leading members. But this could not be the same thing as a sustained monthly income. Efforts were also made to help him secure a job in the trade unions. This did not work either. And gradually, he drifted away from the League. The obidients upbeat of the LP saw him return full swing into the newfangled reformism of the LP. And as usual, he went with his heart and organising dexterity.
Several things have gone through my mind since I learnt of Peekay’s death yesterday, including as I spoke with his wife, a strong woman who has been a devoted partner to him for decades. One of these was the irredeemable nature of the system of capitalism, which puts profit before people. Another is how today’s Nigeria has become rife with suffering-induced paranoia.
The system once again failed a Nigerian who toiled, one who was not one of the high and mighty who have plundered our resources and could still access the best medical attention in the finest facilities anywhere in the world, at our cost. In death as in life, the capitalist system failed Peekay. Fare thee well, friend.
by Bàbá AYÉ
