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Tekena Tamuno Quotes

1932–2015 Nigeria

Tekena Nitonye Tamuno (28 January 1932 – 11 April 2015) was a Nigerian historian and Vice-chancellor of the University of Ibadan. He was the President of the Board.

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Random Tekena Tamuno quote

13 quotes

In a country emerging from colonialism to independence, the factor of leadership in nation-building cannot be over-emphasised.

In post-independence Nigeria, as elsewhere in Africa the charismatic leadership of the advocates of de-colonization failed to ensure the stability of the newly-emergent state.

I have a soft spot for problems of power and stability in the evolution of the Nigerian State.

These Nigerians regarded independence not as an end in itself but as a means to an end: the improvement of the quality of life.

Intimidation and election-rigging tended however to prevent the free expression of the electorate in the choice of their leaders.

The cultivation of a personality-cult for the stability of a newly-independent state does not deserve serious consideration.

Work on Nigerian history, in particular, has now come of age.

Enlightened leadership could have minimized the force of the centrifugal factors in Nigeria's development as a modern state.

The fight for de-colonization and independence was such that it called for the support of the masses whatever the nature of leadership.

Elections, if responsibly conducted by the constitutionally recognized umpires and participants, could provide a means of securing and maintaining the legitimacy of governments.

Our survey of the human past is wide but we still believe that in both our researches and teaching, our work should be of relevance and service to Nigerians.

The Nigerians who fought for and won independence wanted the new rulers to undertake economic development and social welfare programmes more vigorously than their British counterparts.

The point is: wise statesmanship on the part of leaders would have emphasized the issues that unite without loosing sight of the problem of how to resolve important differences

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Tekena Tamuno (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.