E.A. Ayandele - Holy Johnson, Pioneer of African Nationalism, 1836-1917

AFRICANA MODERN LIBRARY

No. 13

General Editor: PROFESSOR E. U. ESSIEN-UDOM

University of Ibadan, Nigeria

HOLY JOHNSON

HOLY JOHNSON

Pioneer of African Nationalism,
18361917

BY

E. A. AYANDELE

B.A. Ph.D. (London)

Professor of History, University of lbadan

First published in 1970 by

FRANK CASS & COMPANY LIMITED

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

Copyright 1970 E. A. Ayandele

ISBN 0 7146 1743 1

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited in writing.

For

OYEBIMPE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

James Johnson as a young man

LIST OF MAPS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

WE should like to make acknowledgement to the following for the use of photographs: to the Church Missionary Society for permission to reproduce the photographs of James Johnson, J. A. Payne and Dr. O. Johnson; to the Board of Trustees Glover Memorial Hall, Lagos, for permission to reproduce the portrait of James Johnson; to Allen & Unwin of London for permission to reproduce the photograph of John Pope Hennessy from the book Verandah; to Dr. J. O. Lucas of Lagos for permission to reproduce the photograph of Captain J. P. L. Davies; to Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce the photograph of E. W. Blyden from the book Edward Wilmot Blyden and to Bishop Samuel Charles Phillips for permission to reproduce the photograph of R. B. Blaize.

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE

HARDLY had James Johnson expired in May 1917 than the hope was expressed that a biography of this pioneer of African nationalism would not be delayed. From all account and as the uniquely profuse tributes that accompanied his death clearly testify, he was a rare but popular personality who occupied an olympian height in matters of morality and patriotism. For half a century this idealist of British West Africa commanded undiminished universal respect among Africans and Europeans even when they disapproved of his irrepressible passion, his puritanical outlook, his dogmatism, his sphinx-like resoluteness, his anti-white vituperations and his quixotism. For the Sierra Leonians he was Wonderful Johnson, for Nigerians Holy Johnson, for the authorities of the Church Missionary Society the Pope of Nigeria, for those who knew him in Britain a saint.

Though he left behind no evil that might have lived after him his good was interred with his bones. His activities and ideas, which essentially anticipated those of the well-known nationalist leaders of the inter-war years and of post-independence statesmen, were completely forgotten until only very recently. So deep was the vault in which James Johnson was buried that on the eve of political sovereignty by Nigeria and Sierra Leone, when the graves of the nineteenth century dreamers of this crucial event in the evolution of the continent were uncovered, the remains of this early prophet of African independence went unmentioned.

Two factors would seem to account for the total eclipse of James Johnson. First, he left behind no self-advertisement in the form of publications of monumental value such as have perpetuated the names of E. W. Blyden, J. Casely Hayford, J. M. Sarbah and J. B. Horton, whose works are now being reprinted by Frank Cass. Second, naturally, biographies of the nationalist crusaders and independence-winners of present day Africa have absorbed the interest and attention of writers. These writers do not perceive that Abdel Nasser, Habib Bourguiba, Ben Bella, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta and Kenneth Kaundato name a feware architects rather than fathers of independence, winners rather than beginners or originators. All over Africa, both before and during the colonial occupation of the continent, lettered and unlettered individuals and peoples had prepared the way for the welladvertised patriots of the last half century.

However it is better late than never. Thanks to enormously rich archival materials, it has been possible in this book to partially exhume and resuscitate one of the earliest of the literate prophets and pioneers of African nationalismJames Johnson. It is no more than a pioneer study. Were his personal papers available this unveiling of James Johnsons life would have run into several volumes. Nevertheless the author is persuaded that ample revelations have been made in this book to stimulate and to justify interest in the writing of biographical nineteenth century African personalities. The author is convinced that biographies can enrich and deepen our knowledge of the African past in a way no other kind of historical writing can: it compels authors to generalise less and, in the case of West Africa in the years covered by James Johnsons life, it enables the historian to operate in the wider West African, rather than the narrower provincial, spectrum. For, far more than the post-World War I African educated elite, their predecessors were cosmopolitan and West African, in their outlook; they were veritable West Africans. Unlike the present-day educated elite, narrow ethnic or tribal affinities and loyalty to narrow territorial frontiers were much less weighty than allegiance to Africa in general and West Africa in particular.

This fact can be abundantly illustrated. Dr. J. B. Horton, born of Ibo parentage in Sierra Leone Colony, spent the most eventful years of his political life pleading the cause of the Fanti of the Gold Coast, apart from demanding social and political reforms on the platform of West Africa; scores of Saro from Lagos and Sierra Leone sojourned in the Niger Basin, among ethnic groups unrelated to them, as traders and missionary agents. Institutions linked together the four enclaves that were to become British West Africa. Until the founding of the first secondary grammar school on the Gold Coast in 1876 the C.M.S. Grammar School in Freetown was patronised by the Gold Coasters, just as, until the founding of university institutions on the Gold Coast and in Nigeria after the Second World War, Fourah Bay College served all West Africa. In the civil service J. B. Horton served in all the four colonies; Blyden and Dr. Obadiah Johnson in Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The vitality of the prevalent West African-ness of those days may be judged from the desire of leaders of elite opinion to know parts of British West Africa outside their own areas. Mojola Agbebi travelled to Liberia and Sierra Leone, Casely Hayford and Edward Blyden to all the colonies; Herbert Macaulay of Nigeria corresponded with people in the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and Liberia.