Amb. Uhomoibhi eulogises Late Prof. Obaro Ikime
By: Oriaifoh Godwins
The foremost aspirant in the upcoming 2024 Edo state governorship election, Amb. Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, OFR, in a Tribute he titled: "Obaro Ikime in the Eyes of an Africanist Protégé", has described late Prof. Obaro as a "transited sage".
Ambassador Uhomoibhi, who said he has no apologies whatsoever to declare that the University of Ibadan, particularly, the Department of History of the University made him, added that the late sage is central in that narrative.
Continuing, Amb. Uhomoibhi said; '...i consider myself most privileged to have had Professor Ikime as an incredibly devoted guardian and mentor for fifty long years, beginning from my first starrey-eyed days on this campus in 1973 to his death in April 2023...'
Ambassador Uhomoibhi described the late sage as "the arch-symbol of the intellectual firmament" into which he was inducted as a teenager at Ibadan.
Late Prof. Obaro Ikime, Ambassador Uhomoibhi said, was passionate about making trenchant Africanist disciples out of succeeding generations of Nigerian historians, to which he, Uhomoibhi, proudly belonged.
To him and his colleagues, he said, the late sage was the irrepressible crusader who embodied the entire spirit of an enduring postcolonial movement.
Describing the late Professor Obaro Ikime’s lectures as "...unforgettable in their distinctive mode as loud, almost ‘evangelical’ proclamations and testaments about the imperative of the rethinking of the essence and fate of the African in the long course of humanity...", he added that, "Those classroom transactions, and I am sure I speak for the entirety of my generation, transcended the ends of mere curricular certification; they were more accurately, capsules of Africanizing and humanizing indoctrination..."
Ambassador Uhomoibhi, in his eulogy, recalled the late Professor's Course 105, "European Conquest and African Resistance", which he said, the late sage ideologically codified to feature not just the European conquest, but also the spirited resistance of the African to domination and conquest.
Again, Professor Uhomoibhi said, 'one major offshoot of those sublime classroom exchanges with Professor Ikime, as a conscientized protégé was that the Africanist in me was enabled in ways which changed the trajectory of my life'.
Amb. Uhomoibhi who recalled the various assistance he received from the late Professor Obaro when he, Uhomoibhi, was away studying in Oxford University, up till when he later decided to join the Foreign Service, said; 'the limited space of this tribute will not allow me to render in proper perspective,...the enormity of my indebtedness to our departed mentor and father'.
'To state that Professor Obaro Ikime contributed immensely to laying the structures for my success as a professional/academic historian, and as a diplomat, is to convey a tightly-held truth in the most unadulterated of ways'.
Ambassador Uhomoibhi concluded his tribute to late Professor Obaro Ikime by saying; '... it is a pain that is gratefully cushioned by the consciousness and sensitivity that he is in a better place, as one who, like me, totally believed and vigorously engaged in very committed investment in the spiritual realms of the afterlife while on the earthly domains.
To God be the glory'.
Late Prof. Obaro Ikime, was a renowned scholar and Professor of History.
He died in April, 2023, at the age of 87 in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
He was born in 1936 in a village called Anibeze in Arohwa clan in the Isoko South Local Government Area of Delta State.
He studied History at the University of Ibadan, and got his PhD at the age of 29 and became a Professor at 37.
He retired in 1990 at age 54.