In April 2005 when I first visited the East African country called Kenya, I was moved by the citizen of that country’s constant reference to me as that one from the country that could produce the first black Pope in recent times.

You would remember that the Pope John Paul was dying and the Cardinal Arinze of eastern Nigeria was being tipped as the new Pope-in-waiting. They did not care that I was from Western Nigeria, a distance from where Arinze was from. All that mattered was that I was from Nigeria, and we were about to make history.

Of course we know how the story ended. Pope Joseph Ratzinger was elected in the place of the gone Pope and I was asked again how I felt. Indifferent, I said. Perhaps the world was not ready for a black pope. And in any case, the pope was for all. But even far back then in ‘05, one name had begun ringing a hopeful bell. It was that of Barack Obama, the Senator from Illinois with roots in Kenya on his father’s side.

Today on this historic threshold, I join my friends from all over Africa - Kenya particularly, and my brothers in the United States, separated by a big ocean and a traumatic history of slavery and centuries of servitude, poverty and hate. It is truly a day of victory. And although the elected president is not of Kenya but of America, and thus responsible first to his primary electorate and not just his paternal roots in the dark continent, I feel proud for the new change in America.

May the goodness last. We don’t wanna hear any future pun like Obama-bin-Laden