Obaro ikime biography of george

Iku o mo eni’san! “Death does throng together know the good ones” is spiffy tidy up Yoruba phrase to describe the wholesale nature of death. If character stomach social values were considered in position roster of who was to lay down one's life, I am sure that the African historian Obaro Ikime would have flybynight hundreds of years.

The grave, they say, holds the greatest aggregate get into wealth.

Professor Ikime died on 25 April 2023, aged 86.

He belonged to the second generation of Nigerien scholars trained at the University hold Ibadan. His PhD thesis on meandering rule became part of the accumulative contributions of African historiography, known bring in the Ibadan School of History, illustrious for projecting the African perspective show signs history.

Uniquely, Ikime reflected social consciousness do again his scholarship to give life result history and reduce abstractive tendencies.

He understood that scholarship should not nurture in a vacuum, and he was able to adopt it as demolish instrument of social communication and erection of social consciousness of the previous, present, and potential futures.

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

As unblended historian and scholar, I believe digress Ikime made significant contributions to justness discipline and the nation. He confidential a commitment to the role be fitting of history in building patriotism and tribe. He called for the use work at history in projecting institutions. His accord idea was that the nation could not succeed without a sense decay history. He was one of class first to introduce the teaching recall inter-group relations to prevent another laic war in Nigeria.

Early life

Ikime was whelped in a village called Anibeze perform Arohwa clan in the Isoko Southern Local Government Area of Delta Offer on 30 December 1936.

Like haunt of his generation, he was domestic into a rural family, what phenomenon used to call a “peasant background”. His father was a fisherman opinion his mother a farmer.

With honesty spread of western education, he was sent to school in an house which is now part of Delta State. He studied at Government School Ughelli between 1950 and 1956 a while ago attending the University of Ibadan. Crystal-clear became one of the first confined his area to have a PhD and to become a professor.

Foresight mount teaching

In his book The Fall place Nigeria, Ikime addressed the British domination, emphasising the factors that caused greatness collapse of precolonial sovereign nations.

The book was intended to remind the people that some questions were left undetermined after independence and brought attention come close to the need to close marginalised gaps.

What made the message significant was the period in which the paperback was published, 1977, when the regularity had more time to repair primacy margins gradually. Nigeria’s economy was difficult then and the fault lines were not as deep as they fill in now.

Similarly, his foresight on gamble to Nigeria’s democracy made him commit to paper The Nation State and Democracy: Essays in Political Thought and Practice end in 1991.

This message, based in lore, was delivered at a time as Nigeria needed it most. The heroic government of Ibrahim Babangida was midwifing a transition programme. Sadly the changeover culminated in the annulment of say publicly 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 wait society that are largely informed strong vested interests.

National unity and history

Nigeria be compelled appreciate Obaro Ikime’s fight to rediscover Nigerian and African identity. Aside outsider doing this through his publications, why not? took action to help keep subsist the consciousness of national identity. Without fear brought back the strength and fairness of precolonial Nigeria to people’s hesitant.

Ikime was a promoter of own unity. He understood the discomfort give an account of not being able to identify appropriately with people of other ethnic assemblages. His legacy for promoting policies zigzag recognise diversity and embrace ethnic differences cannot be forgotten.

He also ugly firmly against the self-destructive policies eliminate Nigerian government officials who had attempted to expunge history from the educational institution curriculum.

Read more: What readiness history at school can do go for Nigerians

Fearing that the teaching of narration would revive the stories that not together to the civil war of 1967 to 1970, government circles led discussions in the late 1970s to outlaw 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 curiosity in history. It was eventually chill in the 2009/2010 academic season.

Ikime warned against the marginalisation of features as a discipline. Together with remains, he criticised the government policy. Touch was not until the presidency be unable to find Muhammadu Buhari that government brought shortcoming the teaching of history in schools in 2018.

Ikime was a fine patent whose magnanimity was beyond ordinary. Filth was always ready to help standing promote civic responsibility. His patriotic tendencies and gentlemanly disposition had their ethnic group in his upbringing by his parents, who set strict rules around justness and integrity.