IT was Issa Aremu’s tribute which alerted me to the passing of the inimitable Okello Oculi. Similarly, I saw that Denja Yaqub had also posted a tribute from INTERVENTION on the Conference on Marxism WhatsApp platform. The last time that I saw Professor Okello Oculi was at the celebration of Jibo Ibrahim’s 70th birthday last year.
Africans of my generation all over the continent would have come across his name. His work as a pan-Africanist and political scientist were very much part of the intellectual currents of an era of remarkable intellectual fecundity on our continent. He was not only a political thinker, he also wrote literature as the truly renascent and cultured human being that he was.
I met Okello for the first time in 2002. I had resumed as substantive pioneer editor of Daily Trust, and he was one of the intellectual giants in the newspaper’s editorial board. No one could escape his very disarming smiles and that ability to laugh heartily at jokes, and where would you get a variety of, often mischievous jokes, richer than at the weekly meetings of a newspaper’s editorial board? The composition was deliberately meant to provoke the intellect, given the different backgrounds that individuals brought to the gatherings.
Okello Oculi would walk into my office with his face lit with those truly honest smiles assured that I would have the daily cartoons on the pages of Nigerian newspapers waiting to tickle his fancy. I loved the flights of intellect of our cartoons, and he shared them with me.
But more seriously was his deep commitment to the African condition. He would tuck into the concerns of the continent, especially in the age of rampaging neoliberal decimation of Africa, painfully exposing the folly of the choices the ruling classes were making, but never despairing about the possibilities for change and liberation.
Because he was a man of incredible connections around Africa, he willingly tapped into those links to enhance discussions or to find solutions. That much we found out when we began the work around the AFRICAN OF THE YEAR project at Daily Trust. Okello Oculi was a very important part of the discussions as well as the eventual identification of the first individual that we named as our first African of the Year, the Congolese gynecologist, Denis Mukwege.
Oculi introduced our team to the work the doctor was doing to combat sexual violence as a weapon of war in the Congo. It was remarkable that the Daily Trust newspaper had recognized and rewarded the man’s work, long before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2018.
It was in fact pursuit to that original nomination, that an impressive pan-African team was put together by Daily Trust, headed by the Tanzanian diplomat and former Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim. Other members included Professor Abdoulaye Bathily from Senegal, Professor Kwame Karikari of Ghana, Professor Thandi Nkiwane from South Africa, Dr. Tajudeen Abdulraheem, secretary of the Pan-Africanist Movement, and the team was joined by Kabiru Yusuf, Professor Okello Oculi and this reporter, from Nigeria.
Our main meeting was held in Nairobi, Kenya, and Okello Oculi’s pan-Africanist credentials were also in full display in the Kenyan capital. He arranged a lunch meeting with the Kenyan intellectual Professor Anyang Nyong’o, whose daughter would go on to become an internationally-acclaimed film actress.
Okello Oculi’s consistency of application to pan-African issues was truly inspirational. It was always awesome to meet much younger people who spoke of how the mock OAU/AU Summits that he organized, became the platforms of their baptism into a consciousness of Africa, and the richness of its heritage, as well as the depth of its problems.
It was also when I met him, that I found out that he was married to Ms Debrah Ogazuma. She had been a Commissioner during one of the military administrations during the 1980s in.the old Kwara State. She visited Radio Kwara a couple of times for recordings and because she had come from television, she had a very familiar attitude to the broadcasting ambience.
Whoever had been in the company of Okello and Debrah would have felt the very deep feelings which united them as a couple. And that relationship was further testimony to the pan-African life which Okello Oculi lived to the fullest and till his passing. Indeed, with Okello Oculi’s passing, a truly pan-Africanist asteroid has burnt out on the African firmament forever!
It is equally noteworthy, as someone pointed out, that we have harvested the passing of leading Nigerian political scientists in the most recent past: Professors Ayo Dunmoye, Nuhu Yaqub, John Elaigwu and Okello Oculi. These are very difficult times for intellectual production in our continent. My heart and prayers are with Debrah, the family, and all who knew our pan-African patriot, friend and colleague, Professor Okello Oculi.
- Kawu, Ph.D, FNGE, is a Broadcaster, Journalist and Political Scientist and can be reached via kawumodibbo@yahoo.com.