Bode:
You might recall, the powerful Emir Sanusi of Kano too was deposed and exiled by an NPC government of the North. The NPC's northern program was also modernization - but as for "radical change" - that's taking it too far. The question has been thrown here, about how many northerners benefited from a Northern education program. The fact is every Northerner that went to school in the North had free education and generous scholarships. All we need to do is look at the range of Northerners that emerged in the national stage between 1954 and the postwar years, and you will begin to understand the extent of the northernization program in public education. As at 1959, Judith Safinat Attah was the first Northern Nigerian woman to attain a university degree. She went to school in Readings under a Northern Nigerian program on women's education. She returned as Education officer to the North managing and establishing Girls Secondary schools in Ilorin, Kano, Yola, and many cites where a new generation of Northern women were being educated. I point this out to cut through these rather unfounded assumptions, borne largely of misinformation, that the Awoist love very much, that no other regions were investing in education as did the Action Group government with its "Free education" program. Indeed, if you read Awolowo himself, he did say pointedly that his free education was necessary "in order to catch up with the East!" in much the same way as he also very clearly argued that the reason for progress in the East of his time, was because of the established "fidelity" between the East and its leaders. I'd like Awoists to read a lot of Awo. Bode, AG's political philosophy and its organogram was built on maintaining a traditional, conservative, power infrastructure. That was why, when Awo finally realized the limits of that program, and took the plunge with the so-called "young turks" in 1962 following their Jos Conference, intent on reforming the party and expanding its mission, the Action Group swooned into a massive crisis . The ideological cracks widened the internal power divisions that emerged in the party circa 1959/60.
Ayo Turton: "Zikism" - the philosophical and ideological constructions derived from the political writings and organizing principles of Nnamdi Azikiwe - is the ideology that Azikiwe left behind. Zikism is rooted on the idea of the "new African" and of an African renaissance based on five clear ethical foundations. Azikiwe coherently theorized this in 1937 in his
Renascent Africa, for years considered the most important book on African political philosophy in one generation. As Walinmu Julius Nyerere, himself a Zikist, said while giving the Nnamdi Azikiwe lectures at Lincoln, "until my generation read
Renascent Africa we did not know of the Africa that exists..." I personally had the great pleasure in 1997 at a private dinner organized for him at the home of his late friend, the distinguished economist Pius Okigbo, on Sanusi Fafunwa street in Victoria Island to meet Nyerere; and in my snatch discussions with him on the subject of Zik, he said, and I remember this clearly: "Azikiwe's ideas charted the course, and we all followed... ." So, for those who question the legacy of Zikist philosophy, they should excavate it in the works and writings of those who were driven by Zikist thought: Nkrumah, Ako Adjei, even the old intellectual nationalists like Kobina Sekyi, whose meeting with Zik in the Gold Coast in 1934/5 with Akunna Wallace-Johnson, changed the course of political discourse and action in Ghana; and in Nigeria many more; and across Africa many more.
There is only one truth which I am bound to concede here: Nigeria, as it is today, is the failure of the Zikist project and the triumph Awo's and Sarduana's ideas about nation. We can acknowledge this. As a political philosophy Zikism, as Zik himself clearly articulated it, is drawn from a hybrid of three methods: aspects of Fabianism, Garveyite Pan-Africanism, and Whitehead's pragmatism - drawn essentially from the influence of his teacher, Alain Locke, for whom he had been research assistant at Howard, and who himself had bee a student of James Whitehead's at Harvard. So, what is the ideology of Zikism: it is based on the idealist philosophy of Zik, that the renewal and modernity of Africa constitutes a moral and historical imperative, based on a method of sublate engagement, and anchored on five ethical foundations: mental freedom, economic determinism, spiritual balance, etc. Azikiwe's organizational principle is based on the "Ekumeku" method: to engage an unequal power, you must learn the slipperiness of the boxer, the patience of the Roman General Maximus Pontifex, and the necessity of dynamic motion. To be fixed to a spot is to be subject to overwhelming force. As for the quip about moving from "Zik of Africa" to "Owelle of Onitsha" - Zik himself was clear: the clear source of universality is locality. Zikism is a version of an idealist humanism, that can today be viewed from two lenses: the idea that social or renascent movements can be overdetermined, and secondly, that Africa as an idea constitutes a permanent renaissance based on the eternal philosophy of a permanently "new Africa," using whenever necessary, the Ekumeku method. I hope I have answered your questions.
Obi Nwakanma
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - From Nnamdi Azikiwe: " a lamp to guide our feet..." & history that vindicates the just
From:
seguno2013@gmail.com Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2015 04:25:52 +0100
To:
usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com Thanks Ayo for your response. I get disturbed when some of our Ibo intellectuals present hear says as historical facts to smear Pa Awolowo. A man who contributed so much to the unity of Nigeria. Any form of invented history by anyone will not be a fact of history when its goals are to distort historical facts that we know.
I think it is false to say that there is "no ideological difference between NPC and AG," for instance, AG propagated free education for all while NPC rejected it. How many schoolgirls enrolled in schools in the North where NPC was a dominant political party? How many almojiris went to school in those days in the North? Today, you will not be surprised that a number of intellectuals, scholars, professionals from the defunct Western Region were able to be what they are now as a result of free education ideology and policy of the AG.
I want eve
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