Three Fallen Rulers

Even in exile, a deposed political leader is often a potential danger to the government that overthrew him. In Africa today, however, that danger seems to be more theoretical than real. Three well-known former leaders are currently at large, and for differing reasons, none has a hope of going home again. One is dying, reports TIME Correspondent John Blashill; another is in hiding; and a third lives in enforced silence.

>Ghana's ex-dictator Kwame Nkrumah, 62, has lived in neighboring Guinea--of which he is officially "co-President"--since his overthrow in 1966. He is now apparently succumbing to cancer, probably in a hospital in Conakry, the Guinean capital.

> Former President A. Milton Obote of Uganda, who was offered sanctuary by the Tanzanian government after he was deposed in an army coup last January, has totally disappeared from public sight. The apparent and plausible reason: Uganda's military ruler, General Idi Amin, has offered a reward of $143,000 to anyone who can bring Obote back to Uganda alive.

> General Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the ill-fated Biafran secession, is living in the isolated Ivory Coast bush town of Yamoussoukro. His stay in the Ivory Coast, however, is tenuous. He has already been ordered to leave the country once, for breaking the terms of sanctuary by granting a press interview, but the order was quietly suspended.

Back home in Biafra (now known as the East Central State of Nigeria), Ojukwu still has some admirers among the Ibo tribesmen, who tell each other, "Agaracha-a ga nata [The wanderer will return]." But they know he will not. Ojukwu, a man without a country, is also in danger of becoming an exile without a refuge.

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