By Owei Lakemfa
The clans gathered. The intellectual clan surpassed the academic. The former flowed into the radical. The radicals bowed to the revolutionary. The revolutionary clan flowed into the Pan-Africanist. The Pan-Africanist made way for the traditional.
We did not cry. It is not our culture to mourn the elderly who paddles to yonder sea. Rather, we rejoice for we have gained one more ancestor to watch over us.
Before Okello was 82, and decided to leave without fuss, he had spent the last 48 years in Nigeria. This Nigerian ancestor began his earthly journey in Dokolo, Northern Uganda. Then, we in Nigeria owned him, but he was a famous son of Africa; a priest who reminded us that so long as we are Black, we’ve got the identity of an African.
Okello was the child of elders. He was wise in their ways. His path was well cut out. But he needed all the knowledge he could gather. Sembene, his son told us Okello “would walk long kilometres to school very early in the morning and would have to run all the way arriving late at night, just in time to play a little, hear some stories and sleep earlier than his siblings just so that he could do it again the next day.”
Okello armed and fortified himself with knowledge from all parts of the universe. He earned a political science degree from Makerere University, Uganda, Masters in Arts from Essex, United Kingdom, and a doctorate in political science from the University of Wisconsin, United States.
In 1977 he decided to return home, to Africa. He had so much knowledge to impact. Generations of youths to inoculate with knowledge, teach to think and inspire to soar, taking our continent to unimaginable heights. But, there was a problem; a rampaging dictator, the self-styled Field Marshall Idi Amin Dada was on the loose roaming through the Ugandan forests, knocking down trees and trampling the grass under his feet. Okello had been a victim of the Amin dictatorship which had sent him on scholarship to detention without trial. After his release, he had escaped the clutches of the dictatorship by going abroad for further studies. After his studies, returning to Uganda was like trying to commit suicide. Yet, staying in the West was not an option.
However, for a Pan-Africanist, any where on African soil is home. So, he chose Zaria, Nigeria where he found a welcoming home at the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU. All he needed was a piece of African soil to plant his ideas, nurture and culture them.
Maybe he thought he would return to Uganda after the dictatorship, but he spent the rest of his life in Nigeria, becoming a noted citizen and a mentor of generations.
His Socratic method of knowledge impartation and mentoring, made his students to think. They were not just to earn degrees, but to be soldiers of a future Nigeria and Africa. The change agents in a world badly impacted by the greedy praxis of a rotten system built on enslavement, colonialism and domination. He wanted the meek to inherit the earth, but to do so, the ungodly ones have to be confronted and utterly defeated. Although he taught political science, but his students had to also study literature, economics, philosophy and related disciplines.
One of his students, Tai Hassan Ejibunu recalled: “He made us to read iconic books authored by the likes of Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon and Festus Iyayi. Those texts revolutionised our minds and made us tall as Africans who are equal to other races…”
Aminu Ahmed Yusuf, also a former Okello student, further expatiated: “Okello inspired students; made us to think critically, strategically and proactively; to recognise and pay serious attention to the specificities and uniqueness of African problems and crises; and to know that our faith as a people is organically linked with, and dialectically connected to Africans in Africa and Africans in the diaspora.”
Professor Yusuf Bangura who came from Sierra Leone and now lives in Switzerland recalled thus: “Ever since I met Okello at Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, in 1980, Africa had always been front and centre of his writings, advocacy and politics. He lived and breathed Africa. He was a passionate and relentless advocate of a united and prosperous Africa that can assume big power status in world affairs.”
Indeed, Okello lived Africa so much that he held Mock Sessions of the Organisation of Africa Union, OAU, now African Union, at ABU. After retirement, he continued the culture by holding it amongst high school students.
Professor Jibrin ‘Jibo’ Ibrahim who taught alongside Okello, described him as “the poet who taught politics creatively”. He wrote: “Okello’s message to Africa’s ruling classes is worth repeating. Stop deepening the vulnerabilities of citizens, build their strength. Stop the colonial policy of divide-and-rule, promote unity to build on the innate strength of the African people. Do not use African regional organisations as a prop for self-aggrandisement. Turn them into pillars of unity and strength.”
Jibrin’s identification of Okello with creativity is well grounded. Indeed, Okello was a prolific writer who in literature, produced at least ten published works, from ‘Orphan’ in 1968 to ‘Banana Man’ in 2024. Besides being also a political scientist, he was equally a poet, journalist and columnist. But what many may not know is that he was also enchanting. His wife, Debrah Ogazuma, narrated how she ‘fell’ for him: “It was another invitation. Another dinner. Another elegant evening of small light, pleasant talks. Then the laughter. The glances. The penetrating and the depth of the look. The smile.”
As I sat at his funeral on Friday, August 22, 2025, I recalled the last time we met. It was March 6, 2025 at the International Conference on “Political Instability and Crisis of Development in Africa”, organised by the Bingham University, Keffi.
As usual, we discussed Africa, and my favourite demand: that he filled me more on the life and times of Okot P’Bitek. He was the famous author of books like ‘Song of Lawino’ ‘Song of Ocol’ and ‘Song of a Prisoner’. P’Bitek, who had also come from Uganda, was my lecturer in Ife and was well loved. He passed away on July 19, 1982. Okello had known him quite well outside the shores of Nigeria. But this July 26, 2025, Okello also departed.
The Ugandans were at the funeral in full force. Some came all the way from Uganda. One of them, Professor Okaka Opio Dokotum, stepped forward with a heartfelt poem which partly read: “The balladeer of Lango has rested; The polemicist of Uganda and Africa
Has bowed out from the fireside…Rest with the ancestors,
Amazing son of Lango!!”
