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Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo
Born: November 22 nd 1937
Citizenship: Nigerian
Ethnic: Group Igbo
Field: African History
Institutions: University of Ibadan, Ibadan (1964 – 1966)
University of Nigeria Nsukka (1966 – 1992)
Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, 1993 – 1998)
Abia State University,Uturu, (1998 – 2003)
Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki,(2004 - )
Known For The history and historiography of Africa, more particularly Igbo history and the history of Southeastern Nigeria. Themes emphasized include pre-colonial and colonial history, inter-group relations, the Aro and the slave trade, the art and scjence of history in Africa, non-written-sources and the reconstruction of African history, history and nation-building.
Introduction
Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo is a Nigerian historian. He was made a historian by the men and forces that gave birth in the 1950's to the celebrated Ibadan School of History which for about three decades was the most prominent school of history in Africa. He developed to become a prominent member of that school, which devoted its time to preaching and demonstrating the possibility of and the necessity for African history and historiography as a specific genre of the world branch of knowledge known as history. In pursuing the mission of this school through teaching, research, writing and publication Adiele Afigbo produced a wide variety of works which established inter alia the possibilities of basic reconstructionist history, of African historical methodologies and of the close link between the art and science of history on the one hand and state formation and statecraft on the other. In the process he gave full rein to eclecticism with respect to sources and methods, using as the occasion demands and warrants elements from myth and other oral sources, from archaeology, linguistics, material artefacts and written sources. In the last analysis he defines a historian as a clinical student of human experience who seeks to tell the story as it is and to explain it. With respect to style and presentation he believes in lively narrative and analysis while heeding Aristotle's advice which says write in the language of the ordinary man but think like an intellectual.
Early Life
Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo was born at Ihube, Okigwe, in present day Imo State. His formal education began in 1944 at the then famous Ihube Methodist Central School, Ihube where he came under the influence of remarkably dedicated teachers, the most outstanding of whom was Mr. Oji Iheukumere, the head teacher, a native of Uzuakoli, in today's Abia State who was a noted church musician and disciplinarian. At Ihube Central School Afigbo's brilliance manifested early which made his teachers to encourage him to go to a secondary school in spite of the opposition of his parents who were intimidated by the cost of post-primary education. He succeeded in his bid and went to St. Augustine's (CMS) Grammar School, Nkwerre Orlu in Imo State. with an Okigwe Native Administration scholarship won in a competitive examination. There again he came across a crop of dedicated teachers who left a definite imprint on him. Crying for mention are Mazi F,C. Ogbalu, a teacher of Igbo language and Culture and the founder of the famous Society for Promoting Igbo Language and Culture, Mr. C.G.I. Eneli a history graduate of the University College, Ibadan andMr, E,C. Ezekwesili, the principal of the college and a history graduate of the University of Southampton, UK. These three helped to determine his future academic career. From St. Augustine's Grammar School Afigbo gained admission to the University College Ibadan with a scholarship from the government of Eastern Nigeria to read history under the then obtaining special relationship with the University of London. There again, he met remarkable scholars noted for their brilliance and beneficent influence – J.D. Omer-Cooper, J.C. Anene, J.F. Ade Ajayi and K.O. Dike. There were also his colleagues – Obaro Ikime and Philip Igbafe who not only read history with him, but with him went on to pioneer the “made in Nigeria PhD” at the infant University of Ibadan with the help of post-graduate scholarship awarded by the university to the best graduating students. Adiele Afigbo had not only come on top of his class at the B.A. level, but also was the first of these colleagues to finish his Ph.D and thus the first to receive the Ph.D. degree from an indigenous Nigerian university since the world began! For this reason some of his friends refer to him as “a national specimen”
Early Career
On obtaining the Ph.D. Adiele Afigbo was appointed a lecturer in his parent department of history, a position he held for two years before fleeing to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the wake of the Nigerian civil war. During the duration of hostilities he served in the Directorate for Propaganda of the Ministry of Information, Republic of Biafra. He promptly resumed his interrupted academic duties after the war and rose very fast on the academic ladder – Lecturer to Senior Lecturer in History in 1970 and Senior Lecturer to Professor in 1972, thus reaching the top of his profession after only five years input as an academic. He has been heard to jocosely complain that in all his working career he has had only two promotions! A year after attaining to professorship he was appointed the Head of the Department of History and Archaeology. The year after he became also the Dean of the Faculty of Arts. On more than one occasion he held the Directorship of the Leo Hansbury Institute of African Studies. At different times in the following years he held the following public appointments among others – pioneer Director of Research at the National Institute for policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Jos; Commissioner first for Education and then for Local Government in the Government of Imo State; Chairman of the Michael Okpara College of Agriculture, Umuagwo in Imo State and Sole Administrator of the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri. He has also won many coveted academic honours : Honorary Member of the Historical Association of Great Britain, Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria, the Nigerian National Order of Merit, the (foundation) Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. His traditional chieftaincy titles include Ogbute-Okewe-Ibe, Ogbuzuo, and Olaudah.
Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo – The Historian
Any attempt to understand the work of Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo as a historian must be made at many levels and from different directions. On the territorial level he is a historian of Africa, a historian of Nigeria, a historian of Southeastern Nigeria and finally a historian of the Igbo. On the disciplinary front he is a political historian, an economic and social historian as well as a peculiarly fecund student of historiography. Myth, History and Society, one of the three volumes of his essays edited by Professor Toyin Falola is devoted to theorising on the methods of doing history in Africa, on the sources of history in Africa, on the place and purpose of history in Africa and other related issues. In many publications he sought to use the particular to illuminate the universal, and the universal to illuminate the particular. Thus, for instance, he used a detailed study of the textile process in Southern Nigeria to throw much helpful light on the socio-cultural dynamics of the societies of the region. In a similar manner he used the rise and expansion of the pre-colonial great states such as Benin to show that the so-called segmentary societies as well as the so-called mini-states of pre-colonial Africa are, among other things, fossilized reminders of the conditions from which the great states arose.
Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo broke away early from the action-reaction thesis that ruled the new African historiography when he joined the history profession. He did so by emphasizing in his works basic reconstuctionist history, the study of peoples and cultures in their own right instead of, as he put it, seeking to put the battle dress of Saul on his little David; the study of inter-group relations as a fruitful approach to understanding pre-colonial African societies; the dynamic and multi-faceted character of myths and traditions and thus the need for scholars to adapt their methods accordingly; the recognition of historical studies as a form of statecraft while not making history the slave of politics and politicians. Perhaps it is this richly diversified approach to history, to historical studies and historical sources that helps to explain the range and volume of his publications which some of his colleagues have found astounding bearing in mid the environment of lack and deprivation in which Afrcan academics operate.
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