Nigeria, Aug. 4 -- Professor Okello Oculi was a cat with many lives. He outlived the several dictators who would have been delighted to roast him, but he has left a long trail of inconsolable mourners in Nigeria where he made a home and raised a family. In all, he lived in Nigeria for 48 years, longer than he ever lived in the country of his birth, Uganda.

Okello was my valued friend. His notoriety as a pan-Africanist intellectual, poet, novelist and social engineer/political scientist preceded him. He had made a name at the Ahmadu Bello University as a lecturer and researcher of the progressive school. Those were the days when being a progressive intellectual was not necessarily a death sentence.

Before joining the faculty in ABU, two ...