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On February 10, 2006, we all woke up to the news of the death of Dr Beko Ransome Kuti. It was indeed unbelievable at first but as the day wore on and as we began to make contacts and visit, the news began to sink in and it dawned on most of us that this unrepentant humanist, terror to terrible people in public life, avid organiser and mobiliser and chronic pursuer of justice at all levels of our social life and a man in whose eyes a corrupt person remained odious, no matter their stature in life, had gone. It is like yesterday but years have truly gone by since the exit of Dr Beko. The vacuum which his exit has created within the progressive movement in Nigeria, of which he was one of the leading lights and in which he played crucial roles has, as we write, remained unfilled. He built bridges across the different divides within the family and was a strong pillar of unity around which the peoples’ movement coalesced. A man that never gave the smallest space for policies he considered negative to the yearnings and aspirations of the majority of Nigerians to go unchallenged and a stickler for agreements, believing that the building of consensus within the movement was at the heart of the struggle against the oppressors of the Nigerian people.