As kids growing up in the fifties we were taught in primary schools that Mungo Park, a Scot, “discovered River Niger”. In Hausa, the main language of instruction in the two primary schools I attended in Kano between 1957 and 1964, our History teachers taught us that the Scot was “mabudin Kwara,” literally “the key that opened Kwara,” in English, Kwara being the Hausa name for River Niger.
History, it is often said, is the prerogative of the conqueror. This obviously explains the arrogance of our British colonial masters in attributing to one of their own adventurers the “discovery” of a river along whose valley many kingdoms and even empires had risen and fallen long before any European set foot on our shores.
In the twilight of our colonial subjugation in the late fifties, a number of Nigerians led by Professor Kenneth Onwuka Dike took it upon themselves to decolonize this Eurocentric history of Africa which we had been taught not just in primary schools but all the way to our tertiary institutions.
Dike was a pioneer in the reinterpretation of African history through the eyes of the natives. As the first African professor of History and head of history department at the University College of Ibadan he played a central role in founding the famous Ibadan School of African History. Among his foot soldiers was Tekena Tamuno who joined the faculty in 1962 at a relatively youthful age of 30 after graduating from the university in 1958 and earning his PhD abroad.
Others in that group included Saburi Biobaku, J. F. Ade-Ajayi, Adiele Afigbo, E. A. Ayandele, and Obaro Ikime. However, there were also British historians in the group, notably Michael Crowder and Robert Smith, who also believed there was an imperative for telling the Africa’s history from the African perspective. These two became professors of history at Ahmadu Bello University while the latter, who became Abdullahi Smith after he converted to Islam, founded what has since become the famous Arewa House for research into the history of the North.
Each and every one of these foot soldiers of Dike became a notable professor of history. Three, Biobaku, Ade-Ajayi and Tamuno, went on to become vice-chancellors at the country’s first generation universities. However, only Tamuno had the privilege of being the first Old Boy of his alma mater to become its vice-chancellor; both Biobaku and Ade-Ajayi, who were his seniors in the university, became vice-chancellors of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), the first in 1965, the other in 1972.
Tamuno became the VC of Ibadan University in 1975 and served for four years. It was a reflection of the man’s cosmopolitan outlook that he became vice-chancellor at a time the university’s faculty was heavily dominated by Igbos and Yorubas when he himself was a minority Ijaw. By the same token it came as no surprise that he took a Yoruba lady, who eventually became the university’s Librarian, for his wife.
His period as vice-chancellor was one of the most peaceful in the university’s history.
I came to know how excellent a leader Tamuno was when I became the managing director of New Nigerian Newspapers, Kaduna, in 1985. At about the same time he was appointed Chairman of the Federal Government owned stable. Before the Federal Government took it over completely in 1976, it had been owned by the Northern Nigerian government. As such it was the region’s mouthpiece, just like Sketch was that of the West, Renaissance, later renamed Star, was East’s and Observer was Mid-West’s.
The take-over of the NNN by the central government to balance its acquisition of 60% of the independent Daily Times of Nigeria, Lagos, following an internally engineered crisis at the DTN which was then under the late great Alhaji Babatunde Jose, put the NNN in an awkward position of being a regional newspaper that at the same time had to learn to speak for all Nigerians.
Under its first three indigenous managing directors, Malams Adamu Ciroma, Mamman Daura and the late Turi Muhammadu, the newspaper successfully walked that tight rope; it became the most respected newspaper in the country, bar possibly the Daily Times, even though it did not shy away from looking at issues from the perspective of its original owners.
As chairman of NNN, Tamuno never interfered with this editorial policy at the same that he insisted its newspapers must never publish anything that will threaten the unity and integrity of the country.
As managing director of the newspaper what struck me most about the man, however, was not his benign over-all guardianship of the company, excellent as it was. What struck me most about him was how he related to everyone as if he was one’s age mate. Never for once did I see him relate to or talk to anyone with a master/servant attitude.
Tamuno was not only an excellent leader who, because of his congenial, and apparently congenital, warmth, inspired respect rather than fear, he was and remained a great and active historian till his death on April 11. Among the great historical books he wrote or edited were The Evolution of the Nigerian State: The Southern Phase – 1898 to 1914, Nigeria: Its People and Its Problems, The Police in Modern Nigeria -1861 to 1965 and Nigeria Since Independence: The First 25 Years.
Of these four – and more – perhaps his greatest legacy was the last which was first published in 1989. It was a ten-volume encyclopaedic history of the country on subjects that ranged from society through culture, the economy and politics to international relations. The book was actually a composition of contributions from over 120 eminent scholars within and outside Nigeria on ten subject areas. Tamuno was the chair of a panel of 14, including Professors Afigbo, Bolaji Akinyemi, Peter Ekeh and the late radical Historian, Dr. Bala Usman, which worked on and edited the ten volumes from 1980.
In between writing and editing great history books the man continued to teach history at various institutions including the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, and the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, near Jos. He also served as pro-chancellor of several universities including at his native Rivers State’s University of Science and Technology.
As an accolade to his erudition he was a Fellow of Nigerian Academy of Letters as well as a Fellow of the American Rockefeller Foundation.
His death and burial in Ibadan where he went to university, started his academic career and spent virtually all his life, was a fitting testimony to his exemplary outlook about life which regarded everywhere in Nigeria as home.
May the Good Lord grant those he has left behind the fortitude to bear his great loss.
