Word: udom
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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...
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...
...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...
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...