The African Personality

Amid the excitement and prevailing uncertainty of what has been called "Africa's year," Essien U. Eissien-Udom, teaching fellow in Government, views the emergence of his native continent with a pan-african visionary's zeal tinged by a natural skepticism for politicians and a deeply felt attachment to traditional, but passing, customs. He is, as he says, "a traditionalist and a modernist."

Born in the Eastern Region of Nigeria and educated at Oberlin and the University of Chicago, Essien U. Essien-Udom (literally, in Ibibio, Essien, the first son of Udom and grandson of Essien) has an almost Jeffersonian aversion to urbanization: "It is very important that we preserve the communities. In the village you're not just a part of the crowd, going to the theatre or whatever, anonymous; you can be a whole man....In my village if I saw someone ten times a day, we would shake hands ten times a day. If I came up to a man in the market, why he'd reach into his kalabash and draw out some palm wine; first we'd drink together and talk, then perhaps I'd buy something. This may be a slow way to build an economy, but it's worth saving....Lagos (the capital) is already developing its slums and juvenile delinquency and prostitution--all the things which come with cities. What we should do is try and spread out our industries, bring clean water and electricity to the villages and, most important, avoid large, permanent conglomerations of people."

Coupled with his high regard for village life, however, goes a fear of the stigma of provincialism. In answer to the question of what village he came from, Essien-Udom said, "You know, we're very sensitive about not being 'universal men'; it's bad enough to say you're from Eastern Nigeria, but to say what village is really too much."

As for the future of Nigeria, Essien-Udom foresees a period of peaceful economic growth, without tribal strife. "There is rarely friction between the people of different tribes. It's the politicians who make the friction. But in Nigeria a party knows that it can't control the country by appealing to a particular tribe; it might get the support of a whole region, but it could never control the federal legislature. That is why our politicians are forced to rise above the tribes and think in terms of Nigeria."

The chances of an economic upheaval, with expropriations and nationalization, seem equally slim. The N.P.C. [National People's Congress] is a bourgeois reformist party, and while the ideologies of the N.C.N.C. [National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons] and the Action Group are less clear, their leaders realize that, if they drive away foreign capital, "they will be cutting their own throats."

While there is a good deal of sympathy for Communism among the intellectuals in French Africa, Essien-Udom thinks this danger is negligible in the former British colonies: "You just can't get an English speaking person interested in ideas....The people in English Africa are just interested in middle-class comforts and in becoming little bourgeois themselves--as quickly as possible."

Looking at the current African leaders, Essien-Udom contrasts Toure, whom he calls a revolutionist, wanting to change the whole of society, with Nkrumah, a reformist who only wants to patch things up, here and there. As to which of these kinds of change he thinks Nigeria needs most, Essien-Udom merely answers: "I am not a politician."

He does, however, feel strongly about Secretary Herter's recent remark that Nkrumah was "very definitely leaning toward the Soviet bloc": "it was a thoughtless thing to say--well, perhaps we'd better say unwarranted, it is possible that he did think about it. But, by lumping a man together with your enemy like this, without even asking him for an explanation, why you almost force him to join with your enemy!"

Among his other activities at the University, Essien-Udom is currently leading a non-honors tutorial at Dunster House on "The Genesis and Relevance of Pan-Africanism to Nationalist Movements." Here he plans to deal with what he calls, "unquestionably the major problem for Africa," that of overcoming the many different divisive forces and developing common, pan-african loyalties and values: "There are Yarubas in Dahomey and Yarubas in Gold Coast who, because of the artificial lines drawn by colonialism, can no longer understand each other. Sometimes divisions like this are actually encouraged by politicians who have gotten a little power and want to keep it. The problem is to find some mystique which can raise the people above these national and tribal categories and make them think of themselves as Africans."

"In French Africa the movement, La Negritude, has tried to do this by building an indigenous culture for all Africa. Pan-Africanism is also cultural. It is particularly concerned with what it calls the African Personality, a type peculiar to the continent, yet characteristic for all its parts. But the Pan-Africans also have political aims, constantly encouraging regional federations with an eye to their eventual goal, a United States of Africa."

At Harvard Essien-Udom is also working on a study of the African elite that emerged between 1900 and World War II. He plans eventually to return to West Africa, hopefully to Nigeria, and to teach in one of the universities there. Although he does not intend to enter politics, he does hope to help work for a united Africa; an Africa that can develop its resources and still preserve "the tradition and wisdom passed on to us by our ancestors."