Professor Ben Nwabueze, 85,
was the Former Minister of Education and legal icon Professor, He was also the first academic lawyer to be made a Senior Advocate of
Nigeria (SAN) in 1978 strictly on the basis of his published works. Nwabueze in this speech delivered at a ceremony to confer on him the
Distinguished Academic Leadership Award by Convention for Intellectual
Co-operation of Nigeria, revealed the poverty of intellectualism in Nigeria.
 |
| Prof. Ben Nwabueze |
SPEECH
The award with which I am being honoured today is for Distinguished
Academic Leadership, and the organisation bestowing the honour on me is
the Convention for Intellectual Co-operation of Nigeria (COFICON) under
the leadership of Professor Chiweyite Ejike. Two terms in the name of
the Award and the name of the organisation giving it to me have a
certain significance for our present purposes, which calls for comments,
namely, the words “academic” and “intellectual.”
An academic may be defined as a person engaged in the advancement of
higher education and higher learning, whether in the humanities,
science, law or other fields, through the medium of a university or
other such institution. The dividing line between an academic, as so
defined, and an intellectual is a thin one. The two are often used as
interchangeable terms. But an intellectual has a meaning wider than an
academic.
Intellectualism is concerned essentially with the notion of
“ideas”,
i.e. the mental ability to comprehend ideas, and to reason or think
them out. An intellectual is a person engaged in creative and rational
thinking about the world, about humanity, about human relationships, and
about the governance of human society; he is a person dedicated to the
study and understanding of ideas that govern and shape our world,
society, the organism known as the “state”, and generally to
intellectual pursuits and interests. The understanding of ideas and the
ability to reason and think them out presuppose a society permeated by a
culture or habit of reading.
The previous recipients of the award for Distinguished Academic
Leadership in 2011 and 2013 can rightly be described as distinguished
academics as well as eminent scholars and intellectuals – Prof Mkpa Agu
Mkpa, former Vice Chancellor of Abia State University; Prof Ikenna Oyido
the immediate past Vice Chancellor of Michael Okpara University of
Agriculture Umudike, Prof Celestine Onwuliri, formerly Vice Chancellor
of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri; and Prof Bart Okachukwu
Nnaji, formerly a professor at Amherst, University of Massachusetts,
U.S.A.
The credentials of the previous awardees also clearly establish them
as eminent scholars and intellectuals. Prof Mkpa is a celebral professor
of Education, Prof Ikenna Oyido, a highly celebrated research scientist
in the area of Chemistry, Prof Onwuliri, a distinguished professor of
Zoology, with specialisation in Parasitology, and Prof Nnaji, a world
renowned professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, with
special interest in the development of Artificial Intelligence and
Robotics.
COFICON itself was founded in April 2011, with the concept of “Thinking
together for capacity building” as its motto and imperative objective.
The creation of first class universities was conceived as providing the
tool in the drive towards the realization of the objective. The
expectation was that the universities, through their intellectual
activities, will serve as a stimulus and impetus needed for the purpose.
Regrettably, these objectives, for the pursuit of which COFICON was
founded, have, far from being realised, been dashed in the years since
independence in 1960. Notable among the factors responsible for this
tragedy is our pre-occupation with the pursuit of money and power and
other mundane, money-related things. In the result, the role of ideas,
reason and strategic thinking in the life of a people is sadly
neglected. We are, as the situation is today, neither a thinking nor a
reading nation. We neither think rationally about how to advance the
strategic interests of our country, nor do we read books on the matter.
MY INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
I believe that an account of my intellectual development might serve as a
stimulus and inspiration to our on-coming generation aspiring to attain
distinction as academics and intellectuals. The account is reproduced
from chapter 8 of volume 1 of my autobiography (in 3 volumes).
I was quite good in Arithmetic in the primary school, but Geometry,
when I was first introduced to it in the secondary school in 1947, was
mystifying and puzzling. I performed woefully in it in the first class
test. But I was determined to puzzle it out, as it were. Alone in the
room I shared with a fellow student. (I had left the school hostel after
the first term because the cost was too high for my parents to afford).
I tried the test problems in the Geometry textbook. Then suddenly,
after I had been at it for several hours, the door of the mystery opened
to me. I was able to solve successfully one test problem after another
included in the book. It was like magic. I felt an exhilarating sense of
triumph. I had become, from that moment, the mathematical “wizard” that
I remained throughout my years in the secondary school, 1947 – 50. This
may be said to mark the beginning of my intellectual development.
Given the lack of maths teachers in the poorly supported private
schools at the time, our maths teacher, Mr Okon, a product of Yaba
Higher College, which later metamorphosed into the University College,
Ibadan in 1948, used to draft me in my last year in the school to teach
mathematics in any of the lower classes without a maths teacher. Because
of this, I was given and called by the nickname “Syndicate” by the
other students, who thought I had the answers to all maths problems.
“Syndicate” was the name of the examining body of the Cambridge School
Certificate Examinations.
During the four years I was in the secondary school, maths became my
second love. I had, during that period and after, developed such
interest in, and passion for, the subject that I had no hesitation in
naming it in answer to the question put to me in 1955 by Uncle M.C.
Oduah : “what would you like to study abroad?” Upon hearing of my
success in four subjects at Advanced Level in the G.C.E. Examinations,
Uncle Oduah had driven to the house in Enugu in which I lived in a
rented room; he had come to congratulate me and to ask me to get ready
to go overseas for further studies. My answer to his question, “what
would you like to study?” drew laughter from him. He retorted : “Have
you ever heard of anyone going overseas with his own money to study that
kind of thing? They study Law, Medicine or Engineering. You will study
Law.” That settled it. It was an order, although I had never thought of
Law or read anything in it before. After this interview with Uncle
Oduah, I got hold of a book titled John
Citizen and the Law, and read through it with great interest and relish. It was my first introduction to Law.
The question, sometimes put to me, is whether I ever regret having
had to change from Mathematics to Law. My answer is No. Being so
intellectually stimulating and offering a life of reflection, Maths is
an excellent training ground for the mind, and I love it. I have no
doubt I would have distinguished myself in it had I taken to it. Yet,
Law is a noble profession, nobler than Maths, and distinguished by the
vast learning and understanding of human affairs it imparts to its
students. One may rightly say, as I said at a valedictory court session
in Calabar in March 2012 in honour of my good friend, Chief (Dr) M.T.
Mbu, no other profession really qualifies to have the word “learned”
applied to it, certainly not Mathematics. The medical doctors, I there
said, have done a tremendous service for humanity, but it is largely
detached from the principles of human life and the issues of human
relations, and the concepts of ordered human existence. These are the
things with which Law deals and which entitle it to be called a learned
profession. On the other hand, despite all the intellectual stimulation
and excitement it provides, the world of Mathematics is a rather narrow
world, and offers limited scope for greatness. The life of a
mathematician, unless combined with other worthy pursuits, as in the
case of Bertrand Russell, is a solitary life spent more or less in
confinement battling with mathematical problems.
But what is more relevant in this connection is the nature of
Mathematics as reflecting on the quality of a person’s mind. I have
always believed that any student good in Mathematics will also be good
in other subjects. Proficiency in Maths reflects the high quality of a
person’s intellect. You have to have a good precocious and perspicacious
mind to be good in Maths, and that guarantees that, generally speaking,
you will also be good in other subjects. A person may not like or have a
flair for certain subjects, but the kind of mind required for him to be
proficient in Maths rules out his being a poor student in other
subjects. That cannot be squared with the high quality of his intellect
that makes him good in Maths.
Lord Denning, the incomparably brilliant English judge, is cited as
an illustrative example. He had a First in Mathematics – and a First in
Law as well. The high quality of the intellect required for a First in
Maths is reflected in the high quality of his judgments. Their sheer
lucidity, the brilliant analytical dissection and logical presentation
of issues, the immense depth of his knowledge and mastery of the law
itself all show the high quality of the intellect demanded for a First
in Mathematics.
Or take Bertrand Russell (Earl Russell). He too had a First in
Mathematics – and in Philosophy as well. It was the high quality of the
intellect demanded for a First in Mathematics that enabled him to excel
in all his multifaceted pursuits in life, and in particular Philosophy,
becoming “probably the greatest of living philosophers”, the
“philosopher of the century.”
After Mathematics, Latin, strangely enough, was the other subject
that has had a profound effect on my intellectual development –
specifically Book II of Virgil’s The Georgics and Book IX of his The
Aeneid, both of which I read as prescribed text books for the Senior
Cambridge School Certificate Examination in 1950. Publius Vergilius
Moro, the full name in Latin, was born in 70 B.C. and died in 19 B.C. He
finished The Georgics in four Books in 30 B.C., and devoted the rest of
his short life (he was only 51 years when he died) to the composition
of The Aeneid in twelve Books, 952 pages in all.
The Georgics excited and stimulated me, both emotionally and
intellectually, more than The Aeneid, perhaps because it tells the story
of two passionate lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice. It is called “Poetry of
the Farm.” The word “georgic” means, according to the definition of it
in New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, a poem on
husbandry. Virgil’s father had a bee farm in which Virgil lived a good
part of his life. The Georgics, Book II, was built around the
experiences of a bee farmer who lost his bees caused by the angry
spirits of the two lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice, whom he had offended.
The cause was revealed to him by means of a consultation with a sea
nymph.
The Aeneid describes the fall of Troy to the Greek invaders, and the
escape from it of Aeneas, a Trojan prince, with some followers, to found
Rome in Italy. Both The Georgics and The Aeneid are great literary
epics.
As a secondary school boy in 1950, the beauty of Virgil’s poetry and
the epic stories it tells used to set me on fire; it so charmed me. It
more than charmed me, it mesmerised me. It casts a spell on me that
almost turned my head. I would be reading the two Books at 2 in the
morning at the top of my voice, overwhelmed by excitement, which
awakened the other residents in the compound, who thought I might have
gone naughts.
In my case, I had the two Books of Virgil committed to memory, and
could recite them word for word both the Latin version and the English
translation of them. I had then what some people sometimes referred to
as an electric brain. Today, 62 years after, I can still recite some
lines in The Aeneid (Bk IX) climaxing the exploits of the two youths,
Nisus and Euryalus, followers of Aeneas, in their desperate bid, through
the enemy lines, to reach Aeneas and bring him back to save beleagred
Troy from the Greek invaders.
You have to read the stories in Latin to appreciate the beauty of
Virgil’s craftsmanship. The description of it by Jackson Knight, the
translator of The Aeneid into English, says it admirably : “the music of
his Latin is lovely beyond description.”
What I say to myself is this : If Virgil could produce such a
memorable classic more than 2,000 years ago, why can’t I, in the 20th
century, produce something similarly worthy of acclaim? The twelve Books
of The Aeneid, edited and published by Virgil’s friends after his
death, became popular reading materials for literate citizens in the
Roman Empire. Before his death, in recognition of the influence of his
writings in the Roman Empire, he was made by Emperor Augustus the Poet
Laureate of Rome, with a stipend.
I have often wondered whether we did the right thing in scrapping
Latin from our school curriculum some years after I left secondary
school in 1950. I do not share the view of Bertrand Russell who thought
it “merely foolish to learn a language that nobody speaks” :
Autobiography p. 36. I am inclined to agree with Edward Blyden that the
literature and history of the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome,
not just the language, are more relevant and appropriate to the mental
emancipation of Africa than the literature and history of modern Europe.
I hold this view for the following reasons. First, because Africa
shares with ancient Greece and Rome a religious/cultural affinity based
on paganism with striking similarities in rituals, festivals and other
observances. In the second place, Greek and Roman civilisation is
unequalled by modern European civilisation in intellectual stimulation
and inspiration, mental discipline, and even in sheer intellectual
edification. “No modern writers”, he (Blyden) maintains, “will ever
influence the destiny of the [human] race to the same extent that the
Greeks and Romans have done”.1
In the third place, modern European civilization is derived largely
from Greek and Roman civilisation, and it seems intellectually more
rewarding and emancipating to have resort direct to the fountain head.
As he rightly observes, “there is nothing that we need to know for the
work of building up this country, in its moral, political and religious
character, which we may not learn from the ancients. There is nothing in
the domain of literature, philosophy or religion for which we need be
dependent upon the moderns”.2 I personally can testify to having learnt
more and profited more, particularly in terms of my own mental
liberation, from reading the story of Greek and Roman civilization than
from reading that of modern European civilisation. I have come to feel
that my real education began with my reading of the story of the
civilisation of ancient Greece and Rome in volumes II and III of Will
Durant’s monumental The Story of Civilisation in eleven volumes, and
that no one who has not read those two volumes and Edward Gibbon’s The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes can rightly consider
himself educated. I sometimes describe those of my friends in the
Humanities, like Wole Soyinka who read Greek and English Literature,
Emeka Anyaoku who read Classics, and Ayo Banjo who read English, as the
really educated (not “learned” in the sense in which that word is
applied to the legal profession) and civilised people in Nigeria. But
where were these people when classical studies were scrapped or
down-graded in our school and university curricula?
Mention must be made of Plutarch (c.46 B.C. – 20 A.D.), the greatest
biographer and chronicler of all times, whose Parallel Lives,3 with its
“vivid narrative, the exciting episodes, the fascinating anecdotes, the
wise comments, the noble style”, has been described as the most precious
book left to us by ancient Greece.4 By pairing and comparing great
Romans with great Greeks, he hoped to “pass on some moral stimulus, some
heroic impulse, to his readers.” In that, he succeeded excellently.
For, Napoleon carried it with him for inspiration almost everywhere, and
Heine, reading it, “could hardly restrain himself from leaping upon a
horse and riding forth to conquer France.”5 A hundred other eminent men –
generals, poets and philosophers – have also drawn inspiration and
stimulus from the book, my humble self included.
Most important of all, the history and literature of modern Europe
are linked and entwined with the transatlantic slave-trade and the
colonization of Africa, and all the horrors and degradations thereby
inflicted upon Africa and Africans. That era in world history “has
produced that whole tribe of declamatory Negrophobists”6 whose views of
the negro, as embodied in their prolific writings, have shaped the
negro’s whole perception of life and his place in it. For, if people
“read books which portray them as inferior, their minds are conditioned
to such a reflex.”7 The new generation of Africans should be spared that
literature. On the other hand, Greek and Roman literature contains not
“a sentence, a word, or a syllable disparaging to the Negro.”8
Blyden’s prescription of Greek and Latin languages, distinct from
their literature and history, as necessary subjects of study in African
schools, colleges and universities is, however, open to question.
Knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, though a powerful aid, is
not necessary to the study of Greek and Roman literature and history.
His claim that they discipline the mind better and “enable the student
in after life to lay hold of, and with comparatively little difficulty,
to master, any business to which he may turn his attention”9 is perhaps
over-stated, to say the least. In his advocacy of the study of Latin
language by African students, Blyden has a present-day disciple in
Kamuzu Banda who, as President of Malawi, established a grammer school
for the brightest pupils, the Kamuzu Academy, in which Latin occupies a
central place in the curriculum, and all teachers are required to have
had at least some Latin in their academic background.
Secondary school, which I left in 1950, provided the foundation for
my intellectual development. As a clerk in the Federal Civil Service at
Enugu from 1951 – 55, I had no avenue or means available to me to
further my interest in Mathematics. As earlier stated, I did not have
sex until I arrived Enugu in 1951, then aged 20 years. But when I did
have it, I found the experience somewhat intoxicating, and threw myself
with vigour into the licentious and unrewarding business of running
after women. Realising the folly of life spent in this way, I gave it up
suddenly in 1953, and threw myself with the same vigour into study and
reading, becoming an avid reader. I read everything I could lay my hands
on : The Complete Works of Shakespeare; John Milton, Paradise Lost and
Paradise Regained; King Edward viii’s A King’s Story; Winston Churchill,
Great Contemporaries; Macaulay, History of England, etc. I combined
these with reading novels, which I read at the rate of one or two a
week, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novels and of course
his Sherlock Holmes Stories in Omnibus Editions. My wide reading during
this period reinforced the foundation for my further intellectual
development.
In 1955, I entered for the G.C.E. Advanced Level in four subjects,
one of which was Economics, in the course of which I came across the
name John Maynard Keynes (Lord) and books with titles like Keynesian
Economics etc. I became interested in him wondering whether he was a man
or a myth. He must be a man, since Bertrand Russell, though ten years
his senior in age, knew him at Cambridge and was his close associate.
What he (Bertrand Russell) wrote of him in his (Russell’s) Autobiography
at page 72 intrigued me deeply : “Keynes’s intellect”, he wrote, “was
the sharpest that I have ever known. When I argued with him, I felt that
I took my life in my hands and I seldom emerged without feeling
something of a fool. I was sometimes inclined to feel that so much
cleverness must be incompatible with depth, but I do not think this
feeling was justified.” I had not at that time read the books in
economics with the title mentioned above or what Bertrand Russell wrote
of him; it was the name alone and his status in Economics which towered
over everyone else that captivated and fascinated me greatly. I wanted
to know more about him, and wished to be as distinguished and famous as
he was.
I arrived at the London School of Economics (LSE), one of the colleges
of the University of London, in 1956. My sojourn at LSE 1956 – 61 (I
transferred to the School of Oriental and African Studies of the same
University for my Ph.D in 1961.) played a profoundly significant part in
my intellectual development. LSE in the late 1950s when I was there was
acknowledged the world over as a leading centre of intellectualism made
so by its collection of world-famous intellectual figures like
Professor Harold Laski whose pioneering works, many of them world
classics, gave political science its present-day status as an academic
discipline; Professor Lord Robbins, an economic wizard of a stature in
economics approaching that of Lord Maynard Keynes; Professor Sir David
Hughes-Parry, one of the authors of the landmark 1925 property
legislation in England and one-time Vice-Chancellor of the University of
London (I was taught The Law of Contract by “old Sir David” whose
string of eighteen honorary doctorate degrees awarded to him by
universities around the globe was one of the things that attracted me to
apply to LSE for admission as a student); Professor Lord Dudley Stamp,
the geography guru; Professor Lord Wheatcroft, the renowned tax lawyer,
Professor Stanley de Smith, the widely acclaimed constitutional lawyer,
who taught me constitutional law, and a galaxy of other famous
academics, of whom Professor L.C.B. Gower must be singled out.
Professor Gower taught me Company Law at the post-graduate level in
1959 – 61. He took over as Dean of Law from “Old” Sir David Hughes-Pary
upon the later’s retirement at the end of the academic session in
June/July 1959. I knowledge him as perhaps the greatest direct influence
upon my intellectual development. I have tried to pattern my
lecture-room method, my style of writing, my lecture-room mannerisms,
etc on him. He was a progressive and liberal-minded intellectual, with
an acute and incisive mind.
While a student in London from 1956, I followed with keen interest,
and was greatly inspired by, the activities of Bertrand Russell (Earl
Russell) as leader of the movement for world peace and for the
amelioration of the conditions of life of the underprivileged members of
society. Much later in my life, I read his Autobiography, first
published in 1967 when he was 95, which profoundly impacted on me
intellectually. He became for me the greatest living legend.
His intellectual exploits began with Mathematics, on which he had
written several works, notably Principles of Mathematics (1904) and
Principia Mathematica (1910). The later work, which took ten years to
complete, he referred to as his magnum opus. It was indeed a magnum
opus, not because of its enormous size, but because it was a major
treatise and a masterpiece. In terms of sheer size, his description of
it in his Autobiography at page 152 testifies to this :
“I worked at it from ten to twelve hours a day for about eight months in
the year, from 1907 to 1910. The manuscript became more and more vast,
and every time that I went out for walk I used to be afraid that the
house would catch fire and the manuscript get burnt up. It was not, of
course, the sort of manuscript that could be typed, or even copied. When
we finally took it to the University Press, it was so large that we had
to hire an old four wheeler for the purpose.”
It was published as a three-volume work : see his My Philosophical Development (1959) chapters 7 and 8.
His works in Mathematics were somewhat dwarfed by those in
Philosophy, which became his major intellectual preoccupation, clearly
overshadowing Mathematics. His full-length books in Philosophy,
numbering over 44, are of such incomparably intellectual profundity to
have established him as “probably the greatest of living philosophers”
and the “philosopher of the century”. They mark an epoch in Philosophy,
the Bertrand Russell epoch, on which several books have been written;
they earned him the rare distinctive honour of O.M. and the Nobel Prize
in Literature.
The life and works of Bertrand Russell made him my idol, hero and
mentor (he was all three combined), and I wished and aspired to follow
in his footsteps, so far as such ambition is at all attainable,
especially having regard to our different backgrounds and the different
environments in which we lived and worked. He was the grandson of a
two-time former Prime Minister of Britain, Lord John Russell. Much of
his childhood and adolescent life was spent at Pembroke Lodge, one of
those state palatial buildings in the gift of the Sovereign for
outstanding services to the state, like service as Prime Minister. He
was educated at Cambridge, like his father before him, and his senior
brother at Oxford. (Maynard Keynes’s father was a professor at Cambridge
in whose academic and intellectual environment he and his senior
brother, who became a distinguished medical doctor, grew up.) Except for
short periods as lecturer at Cambridge – he, Russell, was a Fellow of
his College, Trinity College, Cambridge – his well-to-do family
background enabled him to devote his whole life almost entirely to
intellectual and other non-income generating pursuits. The language in
which he did his thinking and work, English, was his mother tongue and
was native to him.
In my own case, on the other hand, my background and the environment
in which I grew up are that of pervasive illiteracy, ignorance, poverty
and harsh conditions of life generally (see chapter 1 above). My mother
tongue and native language, Igbo, is different from that, English, in
which I do my thinking, reading and writing. It is an indisputable fact
that the development of a person’s intellect, and his ideas and vision
of life and the world are greatly shaped by the environment in which he
spends his childhood and adolescent life.
There is an issue which arises in this regard, viz the vexed issue of
eugenics, in which, undoubtedly, certain factors, such as
characteristics inherited from ancestors, language, cultural background,
environment and education, play an important but by no means an
exclusively determinative part. In my view, talents bestowed by God or
Nature and spread among people without distinction of race, sex or class
are also important in eugenics. For this reason, I disagree
respectfully with Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United
States, that negroes “are inferior to whites in the endowments both of
body and mind”, and with Bertrand Russell that “negroes [are] on the
average inferior to white men”. I believe that negroes can be as
naturally talented or endowed as whites, and that, making allowance for
the handicaps and limitations that confront them, such as those
mentioned above, a negro can achieve the great intellectual distinctions
attained by Bertrand Russell, Maynard Keynes and Albert Einstein. I see
therefore nothing irrationally presumptuous in me wanting to attain the
great intellectual distinction attained by Bertrand Russell and Maynard
Keynes, and to follow in their footsteps which has remained an
inspiring ambition of my life.
In the years from 1962 onwards, I developed the habit of reading
biographies and autobiographies of great men and women, especially those
that I consider as idols, heroes and mentors – Wole Soyinka (I am only
half way through this 577 – page magnum opus), Shakespeare, Napoleon,
Bertrand Russell, Maynard Keynes, described by Roy Harrod, one of his
biographers, as “one of the greatest Englishmen of his age”, and many
others, including in particular James Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Dr
Johnson was one of those whose life as a leading figure in the
intellectual life of England in his day fascinated and captivated me.
(The volumes of Boswell’s meticulous study of Johnson were among the
books in my library at Enugu lost during the Nigerian Civil War, but I
bought an omnibus version in London recently.) I read these biographies
and autobiographies in their scores, and my library in my home in Lagos
is full of them. They provide intellectual stimulation and inspiration
for me.
The reading of autobiographies and biographies went with other
readings aside from readings in Law – in History (one of my favourite
subjects), Literature, etc. In my search for books to read, I came
across recently in a bookshop in London, a book by Peter Watson titled
Ideas : A History From Fire to Freud, first published in 2005. The power
of ideas in shaping human life and in stimulating the mind, and the
ability to form them, is something that, for many years, I recognise. I
was, therefore, excited to come across Peter Watson’s book in a bookshop
in London, and immediately bought it. It is a tome of a book, 1117
pages. As Felipe Fernandez – Armento, a renowned professor and author of
the widely acclaimed book, Civilisations, another 636-page tome, which I
read with great interest and profit, said in a review of the book in
the Evening Standard, “the history of ideas deserves treatment on this
grand scale”. Another reviewer in the New Statesman, John Gray, says of
the book that it “gives us an astonishing overview of human intellectual
development.”
Last but not the least of the writers whose writings have had a
tremendous influence on my intellectual development is our own Chinua
Achebe, especially his Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, and Anthill
of the Savannah. I was also greatly inspired and stimulated,
intellectually, by Kenneth Dike’s admirable pioneering book, Trade and
Politics in the Niger Delta (1956).
