We have received the following letter from Baba Oluwide:
This is with deep sorrow that we have to announce the death ene remy Marxist, leader of workers and peasants, J.0.B. Omotosho who die a om eneously at the age of 48 in a motor accident on the Ibadan-Lagos r Saturday, 20th March 1967. His funeral will be witnessed by a large number of farmers, eat “re representatives of people's organizations on Saturday, 27th May a ie Ekiti where he was inspirer and organizer of a gigantic collective farm and development project because as he said: "We must build our pee in the countryside", and his programme of peasant organization was jus és gathering momentum in the Western Region.... J.0.B, Omotosho was an : orney by profession; always to be found defending poor peasants, workers, and those under the attack of State forces. He was an advocate for Dr. Victor Allen and others against sedition and treason and was the attorney who saved the life of the Cameroun U.P.C. fighter, Celestine Bassong, who would have been sent to a firing squad in the Camerouns Republic. J.0.B. Omotosho was, before his return to Nigeria, in the Pan-African Movement and in the anti-colonial struggle in the West African Students Union and was associated with the then Daily Worker. In Nigeria, he had for two decades, been a principal financier of left and progressive causes and a philanthropist to many youths from pauperised homes, who were anxious for an education. J.0.B., as we fondly knew him, was a founder and first editor of Advance, the Nigerian workers! newspaper. He was on the editorial board of Nigerian Socialist. He was President of the Nigerian Union of Democratic Journalists; legal adviser to many trade unions, the Nigerian Tenants Association and other people's organizations; a member of the Nigerian Academy of Scientific and Technical Workers. His last paper for the bourgeois Seminar of Law Teachers, under the auspices of the Attorney General, was a brilliant piece of Merxist's attitude to law in developing nations. J.0.B.'s death was a tragic loss to the peoples and socialists movements whose place as theoretician and organizer in the field, will be hard to fill. Publications about the life and death of this singular West African fighter should be sent to me at the following address:
P.O. Box 151,
Ibadan,