Bay College. He became increasingly active in the politics of independence and after a sensational series of Town-Hall lectures, he formed the Sierra Leone Independence Movement in 1957. Promoting the view that a newly independent Sierra Leone would not be well served by the fractious nature of party politics, he galvanised his followers with the Movement's signature call and response: "What's the Word? SLIM!" Prominent supporters of SLIM included regional and international Pan-Africanists like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, Eric Williams, Julius Nyerere and John Henrik Clark who viewed the progress towards independence in Sierra Leone as part of a wider effort to forge an independent West Africa united by the same socio-political principles. In 1957, Blyden and Paramount Chief and Member of Parliament Tamba Songou Mbriwa of Fiama Chiefdom, Kono District lodged a formal protest at the Colonial Office in London against the illicit exploitation of Sierra Leone's diamonds, demanding a Royal Commission of Enquiry into serious riots in the Kono District. In the pre-elections of 1957, SLIM won no seats which disappointed Blyden and his supporters within and without the country. Blyden and Mbriwa went on to form an alliance, merging their parties to form the Sierra Leone Progressive Independence Movement (SLPIM) At the eve of independence, a West Africa Correspondent's Report summed up Blyden and SLIM's impact on pre-independence politics as follows: Academic years in West Africa In 1960, Blyden was invited by Nnamdi Azikiwe to help build the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he established the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy and the Department of African Studies. He was Dean of Faculties but made his most lasting impact on a generation of West Africans as the University Public Orator. Blyden was able to expose the student body to a wide spectrum of international scholars, including William Leo Hansberry, Arnold Toynbee, Basil Davidson, Leopold Senghor and others. At the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1966, he and his family moved to Freetown where he became Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Director of African studies at Fourah Bay College (the University of Sierra Leone). First and foremost, Blyden considered himself a teacher, and strove to imbue a generation of bright young men and women with the knowledge, principles and self-confidence needed to guide Africa in a Post-Colonial world. The careers of notable Africans such as Peter Onu, James Jonah and others he