Kenneth Dike, the University of Ibadan and the Glory Days of Nigerian Academia

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                         

                                           Kenneth Dike, demonstrating refined sartorial culture and sheer class in his bearing

                                                                              from the 234 Biographical Project 

Browsing generally online, I stumbled on the name of Kenneth Unwuka Dike, one of those names that resonates in myriad caverns of one's mind, evoking networks of memories, aspirations, emotions, regardless of one's distance from the bearer of the name.

I have not read one letter, talk less a word, a sentence, a paragraph, essay or any of the acclaimed books written by Dike, but his name will always resonate for me as emblematic of what the University of Ibadan in my native Nigeria one was, a blaze of enlightenment in which the African took control of their own story within institutions created by people who reshaped African existence through foreign institutions they brought with them in forcing themselves on Africa.

Kennth Dike represents the legend that the University of Ibadan once was, a university most fortunate to have a person like him in leadership at an embryonic point of its history.

A man trained in the heart of the Western tradition in the United Kingdom  but a pioneer in the telling of African history from the perspective of Africans, enriched by the critical tools of the Western academy. 

What of if a person with a different orientation from himself had become the first African professor of history and first African head of the history department and first indigenous Vice-Chancellor, all at the University of Ibadan?

Strategic significance of leadership.

Introductory: Kenneth Onwuka Dike [Wikipedia]

Powerful scholarly survey and analysis by Gloria Chuku: 

Kenneth Dike: The Father of Modern African Historiography - Springer