The Clans Gathered For Brother Okello Oculi As He Paddled Across

 By Owei Lakemfa

The clans gathered. The intellectual clan surpassed the academic. The former flowed into the radical. The radicals bowed to the revolutionary. The revolutionary clan flowed into the Pan-Africanist. The Pan-Africanist made way for the traditional.

*Late Professor Oculi

We did not cry. It is not our culture to mourn the elderly who paddles to yonder sea. Rather, we rejoice for we have gained one more ancestor to watch over us.

Before Okello was 82, and decided to leave without fuss, he had spent the last 48 years in Nigeria. This Nigerian ancestor began his earthly journey in Dokolo, Northern Uganda. Then, we in Nigeria owned him, but he was a famous son of Africa; a priest who reminded us that so long as we are Black, we’ve got the identity of an African.

Remembering The 1986 ‘Ango Must Go’ ABU Students Protest

 By Ahmed Yusuf

Thirty-seven years ago, precisely on May 22-23, 1986, Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, students embarked on a peaceful protest against their Vice Chancellor, Professor Ango Abdullahi, who invited the police to quell the protest. The violence inflicted by the police is only comparable to that of the 1978 “Ali-Must-Go” nation-wide students’ protest against the increase in education financing.

*Ango Abdullahi

The Police brutalised, shot, injured, raped, murdered students and other citizens both on campus and the neigbouring Samaru community. The Academic Staff Union of the Universities, ABU Branch, wrote that the general conduct of the police “violated every known code of conduct for such operations”, adding: “To the police, it did not matter whether or not one was a ‘rioting’ student or a 13-year-old sitting quietly in a secondary school classroom; whether one was fleeing or refusing to disperse, whether one was armed with stones or not. It was as if they had a deep seated grudge against their victims.”