Okello inspired students; made us to think critically, strategically, and proactively; to recognise and pay serious attention to the specificities and uniqueness of African problems and crises; and to know that our faith as a people is organically linked with, and dialectically connected to, Africans in Africa and Africans in the diaspora.
Okello Oculi, a Ugandan, professor of Political Science, novelist, poet, literally critic, thorough Pan-Africanist, scholar, and advocate of African unity, democracy and development, passed on, on 26 July, in Abuja, Nigeria.
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Born on 1 January, 1942, Okello lived in Nigeria for forty-eight years, raised a Nigerian family, and taught largely in Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.
Okello taught me throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the 1980s. As a post-graduate student under him, I had to read Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. But my focus here are two undergraduate courses Okello taught me.
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The first was “Introduction to African Politics,” which I took in part one. Like Bonaventure Swai of the History Department, Patrick Francis Wilmot of Sociology Department and Yusuf Bangura and Bjorn Beckman of the Political Science Department, Okello allowed students to interrupt his lectures, with questions. He tolerated when students, during lectures, criticised him for not being too Marxist-Leninist enough or for being too Pan-Africanist and Afrocentric.
But Okello did not introduce most of us to African Politics. Nor was he the first to teach us African Politics. Most of us, who went through the School of Basic Studies, ABU, and read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God; Kennett Kaunda’s Zambia Shall Be Free; and Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy and Tell Freedom, had been so introduced.
Surely, we did not fully understand these literatures, but we made some sense out of them. We imagined, if not felt, the pains that Africans were subjected and subordinated to by European imperialist forces. Besides, some of us took Government and Politics in our pre-university institutions.
But Okello’s lectures blended African politics with African History and African Literature. He made us read, summarise and critique Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. He regularly drew attention to the history, politics and culture of African literature like Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; Ngugi’s wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not Child, Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross; Ousmane Sambene’s Xala and God’s Bits of Wood; and, Okot p’Bitek’s Songs of Lawino and Songs of Ocol, amongst others.
Okello equally taught, amongst others, the politics of Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Augustino Neto, Samora Michael, and he encouraged us to read their works. He also encouraged us to study pro-Western politicians like Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya; Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d’Ivoire; Joseph-Desire Mobutu of Congo; Kamuzu Banda of Malawi; Ahmadu Ahidjo of Cameroon; Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo.
He constantly insisted that we paid attention to primary documents when studying and writing African Politics, without neglecting secondary materials. He stressed that we must take cognisance of the fact that the African state, military, police, judiciary and civil service are different from those in the West.
By his teaching philosophy and methodology, I learnt from Okello that history is the politics of the past, and politics is the history of the present. That African literatures are not just stories, but they also contain the philosophy, traditions, cultures, and “everyday history” and “everyday politics” of Africa.
I learnt that while we must hold the West responsible for African underdevelopment, we must equally hold those Africans who collaborated with the West, subverted the independence struggles, and willingly and slavishly collaborated with the West to plunder Africa and loot its commonwealth for Western and their own interests.
Further, that while Marxism-Leninism is of epistemological and theoretical importance, it will only be useful when grounded in our concrete realities, and creatively – not subjective and mechanically – applied – to Africa.
The second course of Okello that I took was “African Strategic Thinking.” Here, he lectured us on how the West and the East used strategic thinking to advance their interests and goals. And why we should always be thinking strategically, stressing that what is good for the imperialist West and communist East might not necessarily be good for Africa.
The problematic questions where: How do we counter subversive foreign interests that obstruct democracy and development in Africa, taking into consideration that the African ruling classes are organically connected with, and dialectically related to, imperialist forces? How do we make others work for us, without necessarily subordinating ourselves to them? How do we, Africans, capitalise on the Cold War to defend, promote and advance African interests?
How do we build organic relations with Africans in the Americas to protect and defend our collective interests as black people?
This course compelled us to embark on individual studies, and think critically and produce original papers. I submitted two essays in this course. The first was “Strategic programme on promoting development relationship between Africa and the Soviet Union.” The second was “Strategic programme of building organic and beneficial relationship between Africans and Africans in the Americas.”
This course helped me when I was a student and a civil servant. As a student, it impelled me to go beyond class work and to conduct independent research. To always ask questions. To continuously imagine what my opponents are imaging and might do. To learn negotiations. To relate to opponents, without necessarily being antagonistic. To be antagonistic when antagonism is the only way to get concession.
This course led me to earnestly study Immanuel Geiss’ The Pan-African Movement: A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe and Africa; Kwame Nkrumah’s Africa Must Unite, Challenge of the Congo, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, Class Struggles in Africa; Liu Shaoqi’s Three Essays on Party-Building; and Mao Tse-Tung’s papers: “On Contradictions”; “On Practice” “On Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”; and “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society”, amongst many others.
The ideas I got in this course, I put to use as a national and ABU student leader.
As a staff of the Centre for Democratic Studies (CDS), it helped me contribute to the CDS’ organisation of the Nigerian Election Monitoring Group, which monitored the June 12, 1993 presidential election. I was in charge of monitoring the election in the North-West zone.
As a staff of the International Cooperation Department of the National Planning Commission, the knowledge I received helped me critique European Union funded projects, especially the ‘Micro Projects Programme for Six States of the Niger-Delta’, amongst others.
Okello’s teachings, philosophy and methodology were neither turgid nor rigid, but simple, engaging, discursive, and attractive. The way he lectured us was as if he was engaging us in “story-story.” In fact, he was ever smiling when lecturing, only looking directly at, and seriously into, our eyes when driving home serious points. So interesting were his teachings that students from other faculties like Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Environment Designs, etc., found time to attend his lectures.
Okello inspired students; made us to think critically, strategically, and proactively; to recognise and pay serious attention to the specificities and uniqueness of African problems and crises; and to know that our faith as a people is organically linked with, and dialectically connected to, Africans in Africa and Africans in the diaspora.
Rest in power, Okello.
Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: [email protected]
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