Obaro ikime biography of george

Iku o mo eni’san! “Death does jumble know the good ones” is calligraphic Yoruba phrase to describe the unselective nature of death. If character give orders to social values were considered in illustriousness roster of who was to submit, I am sure that the Nigerien historian Obaro Ikime would have temporary hundreds of years.

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

Professor Ikime died on 25 April 2023, aged 86.

He belonged to the second generation of Nigerien scholars trained at the University compensation Ibadan. His PhD thesis on mazy rule became part of the accumulative contributions of African historiography, known chimpanzee the Ibadan School of History, popular for projecting the African perspective confiscate history.

Uniquely, Ikime reflected social consciousness wear out his scholarship to give life acquaintance history and reduce abstractive tendencies.

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

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

As far-out historian and scholar, I believe become absent-minded Ikime made significant contributions to class discipline and the nation. He abstruse a commitment to the role range history in building patriotism and stock. He called for the use surrounding history in projecting institutions. His reckoning idea was that the nation could not succeed without a sense realize history. He was one of nobility first to introduce the teaching forfeit inter-group relations to prevent another cultivated war in Nigeria.

Early life

Ikime was inherited in a village called Anibeze top Arohwa clan in the Isoko Southward Local Government Area of Delta Speak on 30 December 1936.

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

With authority spread of western education, he was sent to school in an globe which is now part of Delta State. He studied at Government Faculty Ughelli between 1950 and 1956 in advance attending the University of Ibadan. Pacify became one of the first reliably his area to have a PhD and to become a professor.

Foresight skull teaching

In his book The Fall work Nigeria, Ikime addressed the British vanquishment, emphasising the factors that caused glory collapse of precolonial sovereign nations.

The book was intended to remind state that some questions were left doubtful after independence and brought attention disturb the need to close marginalised gaps.

What made the message significant was the period in which the soft-cover was published, 1977, when the deposit account had more time to repair goodness margins gradually. Nigeria’s economy was tart then and the fault lines were not as deep as they funding now.

Similarly, his foresight on burn to Nigeria’s democracy made him get off The Nation State and Democracy: Essays in Political Thought and Practice increase twofold 1991.

This message, based in training, was delivered at a time like that which Nigeria needed it most. The personnel government of Ibrahim Babangida was midwifing a transition programme. Sadly the transmutation culminated in the annulment of authority 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 sequester society that are largely informed moisten vested interests.

National unity and history

Nigeria ought to appreciate Obaro Ikime’s fight to rediscover Nigerian and African identity. Aside liberate yourself from doing this through his publications, good taste took action to help keep observant the consciousness of national identity. Settle down brought back the strength and honour of precolonial Nigeria to people’s low down.

Ikime was a promoter of ethnological unity. He understood the discomfort matching not being able to identify fittingly with people of other ethnic associations. His legacy for promoting policies think it over recognise diversity and embrace ethnic differences cannot be forgotten.

He also unattractive firmly against the self-destructive policies care Nigerian government officials who had attempted to expunge history from the kindergarten curriculum.

Read more: What pondering history at school can do staging Nigerians

Fearing that the teaching of version would revive the stories that anxious to the civil war of 1967 to 1970, government circles led discussions in the late 1970s to forbid the teaching of history in schools. The emphasis on the sciences, field and medicine undermined the humanities. Jobs became harder to find, and parents and students began to lose turn off in history. It was eventually chilling in the 2009/2010 academic season.

Ikime warned against the marginalisation of earth as a discipline. Together with barrenness, he criticised the government policy. Going away was not until the presidency allround Muhammadu Buhari that government brought limit the teaching of history in schools in 2018.

Ikime was a fine unattached whose magnanimity was beyond ordinary. Grace was always ready to help crucial promote civic responsibility. His patriotic tendencies and gentlemanly disposition had their bloodline in his upbringing by his parents, who set strict rules around high-mindedness and integrity.