Ibadan & Legon – 1950s
The "Educational Dominance" was now reaching its zenith. The movement that began in Badagry (the first school) and moved to CMS Grammar School (the second), then to the Seminary in Ogbomosho (the third), and Hope Waddell in Calabar (the fourth), had now culminated in the University College, Ibadan (UCI).
David’s nephew, Kofi, had been sent across the border to help finalize the curriculum at the University of the Gold Coast (later the University of Ghana, Legon).
"The model is the same, Uncle," Kofi wrote in a letter from Accra. "We use the Ogbomosho discipline. We use the Lagosian rigor. We have students here from 48 different territories across Sub-Saharan Africa. They come because they heard that in Nigeria, the black man has mastered the 'White Man’s Magic'—Medicine and Law."
The "reciprocation" from the European missions had finally turned into a total surrender of the academic keys. In Ogbomosho, the first medical college was blossoming. Yoruba doctors, trained under the watchful eyes of Baptist missionaries, were now the ones performing surgeries and, more importantly, training the next generation.
The Final Scene: The Map of Light
The novel ends in 1960, on the eve of Independence. David stands on a hill overlooking the sprawling campus of the University of Ibadan. In his hand, he holds a map of the continent. He marks it with pins where "Yoruba Missions" have planted schools—from the Gambia in the west to the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro in the east.
"We were never just preaching a gospel," David whispers to the wind. "We were building a bridge across 48 countries. We were the black missionaries who taught Africa how to read its own destiny."
The book concludes with a list of the institutions that stood as monuments to this dominance:
The light that started in the shade of the Agia tree in Badagry had become a sun that would never set on the African mind.
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