Nnamdi Azikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah: Pan-Africanist Mentor and Mentee

"Zik had been instrumental in sending many Ghanaian and Nigerian students to Lincoln. The most famous of these was Nkrumah." - Niara Sudarkasa, former president, Lincoln University, PA.

Some of the more distinguished beneficiaries of Zik's West African scholarship program include, from Ghana: E. Ako Adjei, K. A. B. Jones-Quartey, and Kwame Nkrumah; from Nigeria: Abdul Karimu Disu, Okechukwu Ikejiani, George Mbadiwe, Kingsley Ozuomba Mbadiwe, Mbonu Ojike, and Nwafor Orizu.

"My nationalism was also revived ... through articles written in The West African Morning Post by Nnamdi Azikwe, a Nigerian from Onitsha. Azikiwe was himself a graduate from an American university and when I had first met him after he had addressed a meeting of the Gold Coast Teachers' Association some years earlier in Accra, I had been greatly impressed by him and had been more determined than ever to go to America." - Kwame Nkrumah.

Reference

Obiwu. “The Pan-African Brotherhood of Langston Hughes and Nnamdi Azikiwe.” Dialectical Anthropology, 31.1-3 (November 2007): 143-165.

He Was the Cobra (For Michael Jackson, 1958-2009)

He was the cobra
That stopped the
Nazi at Auschwitz;
He was the anaconda
That stopped the
Kamikaze at Iwo Jima;
He was the shore
Batteries at Onitsha;
He was the Ogbunigwe
Bombs at Abagana;
He was the unripe
Fruits of Asaba
That lined up a
Country soccer field
And were sledged
One by one by
Wrenching bazookas;
He was the lost
Ghost of Michael
That wandered lonely
In a London cloud
While a disheveled
Father planted a stone
At a hilly farmhouse;

He was the one-eyed
Pirate, an importunate
Wedding crasher of
Rime of the ancient
Mariner, who killed
A clingy albatross
And blessed a thousand
Water snakes;
He was the mockingbird
In the basement, whom
Everyone talked about
But none wished to see
At dinner table;
He was the bright fire
Burning at the window
Of the granite house
On Broken-Gun Hills.

By Obiwu

© 2009 Obiwu

This poem is excerpted from the book, Unspeakable Protocols (forthcoming, 2009)