The Education of a British-Protected Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

architecture, I saw a new almanac hanging on the wall and went immediately to look at it. I was as curious about wall hangings and posters in those days as my father was conscientious in putting new ones on our walls every year at Christmastime. A great part of my education came from those wall hangings.
    But the almanac I now saw on our neighbor’s wall was different from any I was familiar with at home. Ours were Church Missionary Society almanacs, with portraits of bishops and pictures of cathedrals. Our neighbor’s almanac, as far as I can remember, came under the banner of ONITSHA IMPROVEMENT UNION , or something like that.
    Sitting in the front row in a group photograph was Nnamdi Azikiwe in a white suit. Azikiwe was the most popular nationalist freedom fighter against colonial rule in West Africa. I readthat name, “Azikiwe,” over and over again in subdued surprise. I had never seen it written before, only heard it spoken. In fact, I had heard it spoken countless times, heard it invoked so often that I had come to think I knew it perfectly and was familiar with it. And now, face to face with it in print, I had suddenly realized that I never really knew it.
    You see, I had up to that point called it like two names, Aziki Iwe. Two names—a foreign Christian name, Isaac, and an Igbo surname, Iwe. One of my father’s friends, another retired church teacher, was called Isaac Okoye and I had assumed that “Azikiwe” was the same kind of name—until that day of enlightenment on the wall of our neighbor’s house. I did not rush off to tell all my friends of my previous ignorance. I took the new knowledge in my stride, quietly, and kept news of it in my heart. It is one of the few memories I can recall in such clarity from those faraway days. And so I assume it must have been of considerable significance in my evolving consciousness.
    A few years later, two or three years, maybe, I was judged old enough to take part in Empire Day celebrations in Onitsha, the famous River Niger town, seven miles away from my village. You had to be old enough in those days because if you wanted to go anywhere, you walked there. On the way to Onitsha I saw in the bush by the roadside a surveyor’s concrete beacon with the legend “Professor Nnamdi Azikiwe” imprinted on it. I believe it is the same site where his house in Onitsha stands today. I may be wrong; if so, who cares? Legends are not always where you think they are.
    What I want to present in a nutshell is a brief personal reminiscenceof the impact of this man who bestrode the world of this child like a colossus.
    It is interesting and, I believe, significant and appropriate that I became aware of him in the oral mode, pervasive and nebulous, before he crystallized into the more sedate print for me. As it happened, Azikiwe himself was as comfortable in the one mode as in the other, deploying the resources of oratory as effectively as he did the powers of print journalism.
    What I am struggling to convey is elusive by its very nature—the crossroads of history and legend at a time of transition. To say that Azikiwe’s name was a household word in my part of Nigeria during the first decade of my life would be true but insufficient. It was more in the general air we breathed than in the domestic chatter of our homes. There was an exhilarating touch of magic to it—a headiness, even a slight intoxication.
    There is a story I heard much later, of Zik having applied when he returned from America to teach at the Yaba Higher College in Lagos and being rejected by the British colonial service. Whether this is true or not I don’t know, and don’t care! I like it; it ought to be true. There was an eccentric editor of the
Hansard
, the official record of parliamentary debates in Britain. One day, goes the story, an angry member of Parliament stormed into the office of this editor, threw an open copy of the paper on the table, and said to him: “I never said that!” To which the