Though they operated in different fields, but thematically they were joined together by the idea of chronicling the society at different levels with the finicky eyes of an eagle.
Obaro Ikime, who died last week was an historian of eminence, while Peter Enahoro, who passed on two weeks ago was a journalist of international standing.
While the former chronicled the past, the latter recorded the present and both pointed the way and defined how the contours of the future will be.
Ikime, one of the finest historians to have come from Africa, was one of the early answers to novelist Joyce Cary, eminent British historian Trevor Ropper, Comte Gobineau and the entire Western scholarship bias against Africa, with their moniker: Africa has no history.
