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Venue: Cyprian Ekwensi Cultural Centre, Garki, Abuja
Date: 25th May 2011

MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

THEME: “Linking Elections to Good Governance – Don’t Agonise,
TIME: 9:00am to 1:00pm
PANEL CHAIR: Mallam Kabiru Yusuf
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Governor of Ekiti State

SPEAKERS: Dr. Chidi Odinkalu (Open Society Justice Justice Initiative), Dr. Hussaini Abdu (ActionAid Nigeria), Hajiya Saudatu Mahdi (Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative), Dr. Siddique Abubakar (A. B. U. Zaria), Amb. (Hon). Nkoyo Toyo (Member House of Representatives), Dr. Otive Igbuzor (African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development), Oronto Douglas (Presidency), Dr. Mohammed Kuna (INEC) and Dr. Abubakar Momoh (Lagos State University). Chair Organising Committee: Dr Kole Shettima

MEMORIAL DANCE DRAMA

A Feast of Return, a dance drama by Odia Ofeimun and sponsored by the Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem Educational Trust Fund, will be staged at the Cyprian Ekwensi Cultural Centre, Garki, Abuja from 6:30pm.

A Feast of Return is a masterpiece dance drama written by Odia Ofeimun. It draws from the anti-colonial struggle as well as the struggle against apartheid and on to the fight against military rule in Africa to tell the story of perseverance, unity and hope with so much energy and zest. The play also combines the themes of good governance, women emancipation, participation of the youth and calls for mass action as a means to demand accountable and transparent governance and the delivery of public goods. The play could indeed be described as the literary rendition of Tajudeen Abdul- Raheem’s call of ‘Don’t Agonise, Organise”!

The play will be rendered from 6:30pm; it is a play Tajudeen wouldn’t have wanted to miss and he would have graced it with his thunderous and infectious laughter. A Feast of Return is indeed a fitting tribute to the late activist in whose Brixton flat in London, the text of the dance drama was actually written.

ABOUT TAJUDEEN ABDUL-RAHEEM

Dr. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (1961-2009) was born in Funtua, Katsina State. He graduated with First Class Honours in Political Science from the Bayero University Kano and went on to win the Rhodes Scholarship to the Oxford University where he earned his Ph.D in Political Science.

Over the years, he worked in many organisations; serving as the Secretary to the Organising Committee of the Seventh Pan African Congress in which was held in Kampala, Uganda in 1994. Although Tajudeen was a prolific writer; journalist and columnist to leading African dailies; social critique; human rights activist; political scientist and a civil society activist among others; he will perhaps be remembered first and foremost as a husband to his wife, Mounira, a father to his two daughters and indeed a friend to the thousands of his friends. Until his death in a traffic accident in Nairobi on Africa Day, May 25, 2009, he was the Africa Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign – the MDGs campaign organ of the United Nations.