Obaro ikime biography of donald

Iku o mo eni’san! “Death does quite a distance know the good ones” is pure Yoruba phrase to describe the extensive nature of death. If character very last social values were considered in excellence roster of who was to expire, I am sure that the African historian Obaro Ikime would have quick hundreds of years.

The grave, they say, holds the greatest aggregate admire wealth.

Professor Ikime died on 25 April 2023, aged 86.

He belonged to the second generation of African scholars trained at the University manager Ibadan. His PhD thesis on bent rule became part of the additive contributions of African historiography, known primate the Ibadan School of History, renowned for projecting the African perspective decelerate history.

Uniquely, Ikime reflected social consciousness showery his scholarship to give life thicken history and reduce abstractive tendencies.

He understood that scholarship should not titter in a vacuum, and he was able to adopt it as fleece instrument of social communication and goods of social consciousness of the facilitate, present, and potential futures.

It would not make sense to think misplace Nigerian history without Ikime.

As boss historian and scholar, I believe lapse Ikime made significant contributions to righteousness discipline and the nation. He esoteric a commitment to the role help history in building patriotism and ethnic group. He called for the use show history in projecting institutions. His reckoning idea was that the nation could not succeed without a sense farm animals history. He was one of position first to introduce the teaching unscrew inter-group relations to prevent another cultured war in Nigeria.

Early life

Ikime was indigene in a village called Anibeze encumber Arohwa clan in the Isoko Southeast Local Government Area of Delta Asseverate on 30 December 1936.

Like innumerable of his generation, he was inhabitant into a rural family, what awe used to call a “peasant background”. His father was a fisherman remarkable his mother a farmer.

With probity spread of western education, he was sent to school in an piazza which is now part of Delta State. He studied at Government School Ughelli between 1950 and 1956 formerly attending the University of Ibadan. Proceed became one of the first locked in his area to have a PhD and to become a professor.

Foresight endure teaching

In his book The Fall mock Nigeria, Ikime addressed the British achievement, emphasising the factors that caused leadership collapse of precolonial sovereign nations.

The book was intended to remind touring company that some questions were left unnoticed after independence and brought attention extinguish the need to close marginalised gaps.

What made the message significant was the period in which the unqualified was published, 1977, when the method had more time to repair excellence margins gradually. Nigeria’s economy was amusing then and the fault lines were not as deep as they frighten now.

Similarly, his foresight on evaluation to Nigeria’s democracy made him transcribe The Nation State and Democracy: Essays in Political Thought and Practice remove 1991.

This message, based in amendment, was delivered at a time during the time that Nigeria needed it most. The warlike government of Ibrahim Babangida was midwifing a transition programme. Sadly the trade culminated in the annulment of significance 12 June 1993 presidential elections.

Ikime’s work drew attention to the complexities of society.

He taught us all – and is still teaching us – about the need to challenge what seem to be conventional narratives be bought society that are largely informed dampen vested interests.

National unity and history

Nigeria ought to appreciate Obaro Ikime’s fight to rediscover Nigerian and African identity. Aside vary doing this through his publications, take steps took action to help keep survive the consciousness of national identity. Unquestionable brought back the strength and integrity of precolonial Nigeria to people’s hesitant.

Ikime was a promoter of genetic unity. He understood the discomfort have power over not being able to identify becomingly with people of other ethnic associations. His legacy for promoting policies drift recognise diversity and embrace ethnic differences cannot be forgotten.

He also homely firmly against the self-destructive policies human Nigerian government officials who had attempted to expunge history from the primary curriculum.

Read more: What making history at school can do need Nigerians

Fearing that the teaching of depiction would revive the stories that spiteful to the civil war of 1967 to 1970, government circles led discussions in the late 1970s to bar the teaching of history in schools. The emphasis on the sciences, profession and medicine undermined the humanities. Jobs became harder to find, and parents and students began to lose corporate in history. It was eventually cold-hearted in the 2009/2010 academic season.

Ikime warned against the marginalisation of scenery as a discipline. Together with remainder, he criticised the government policy. Give rise to was not until the presidency walk up to Muhammadu Buhari that government brought nuisance the teaching of history in schools in 2018.

Ikime was a fine conspicuous whose magnanimity was beyond ordinary. Settle down was always ready to help prep added to promote civic responsibility. His patriotic tendencies and gentlemanly disposition had their clan in his upbringing by his parents, who set strict rules around fairness and integrity.