Final flightof theEagle

A commemorative magazine in honour of

Chinualumogu Albert Achebe November 16, 1930 – March 21, 2013

Final flight of the Eagle

22

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

As Achebe goes home... e was not a prophet, in the literal sense. He was a writer. For him, writing was life. To him, the printed word was the sole weapon to banish ignorance, shred wicked stereotypes and set the mind at liberty. And he was so effective in stitching and stringing words to equip people with ‘the freedom to think or act without being constrained by necessity or force’ (Encarta World English Dictionary) that Dr. Nelson Mandela, that renowned world’s statesman, described him, in a tribute, as “The writer in whose company the prison walls fell down.”

The aged former South African president never exaggerated.

The deluge of tributes that have trailed the death, on March 21, 2013, of Professor Chinualumogu Albert Achebe, the Father of Modern African Literature, bear witness to Mandela’s testimony. As the world has come to acknowledge, Chinua Achebe was a writer with a prophetic mission. He was true to his vision and mission as a writer virtually every day of his 82 years on earth. And once that mission was done, the Iroko drew the curtain. He signed off his final script on March 21, 2013, in United States of America where he had resided since the 1990 road crash that left him partially paralysed.

Now, how do you honour a man who lived not for self but for the emancipation of his country and race?

Everybody agrees that only honours fit for royalty and global heroes can do justice to the memory of Chinua Achebe, a man, whose work, Things fall Apart, gave name recognition across the world.

This is why immediately after the news of his demise filtered in, the Management and Board of Editors of The Sun, the undisputed Voice Of The Nation, discussed various perspectives to the story and assembled a formidable team to package a commemorative magazine as a worthy tribute to the outstanding contributions of this extraordinary Nigerian to humanity.

The team members, with the solid support of management, rolled their sleeves, and crisscrossed the country to produce this un-put-downable magazine.

The magazine has four broad divisions, namely: news, interviews, reviews and tributes.

Trust us, this is a buffet like no other. In it, we serve you what you have never read elsewhere about the departed icon, spicing it with contributions from some of the best writers this country has ever produced.

As they say, the taste of the pudding is in the eating. Please, enjoy all of it.

H

THE TEAM Shola Oshunkeye Editor Beifoh Osewele Deputy Editor Alvan Ewuzie Ikenna Emewu Chika Abanobi Yinka Fabowale Tope Adeboboye Sola Balogun Henry Umahi Henry Akubuiro Kemi Yusufu Contributors Sunny Hughes Eyo Hogan Layout & Design

What the world never knew about my father –Dr.Ike Achebe, the icon’s first son

-Shola Oshunkeye Editor, Magazines

How Achebe temporarily lost Things Fall Apart

Special Tributes by Profs. Bede Okigbo, –Pg 27 Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, Jerry Agada & Close up on Ogidi, the legend’s place Hajiya Zaynab Alkali

of birth in Anambra State –Pgs 28 & 29

Focus on Tedder Hall where Achebe gave Things Fall Apart to the world –Pgs 24,25,26 & 34

–Pgs 31, 32 & 33

–Pgs 38, 39, 40 & 41

DAILY SUN

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May 23, 2013

Cover Interview

Rhythms of the Master

After that accident, doctors never gave dad much chance to live long – Ike Achebe, the icon’s first son

BY SHOLA OSHUNKEYE (Photos by Shola Oshunkeye)

C

lose your eyes for a moment. Listen to his velvety voice for some fleeting seconds. Hear the modulation in his voice that rises with the intensity of the subject. And for one moment, you would think you are right there in the awesome presence of the master, the father of modern African Literature, the great Professor Chinualumogu Albert Achebe, who the world stands in awe to bid a final bye today.

Remove the element of age, and you find the perfect replica of the departed wordsmith, Chinua Achebe, who conquered the world at just 28 with his epic, Things Fall Apart, in the subject of this interview. At 49, Professor Ikechukwu Achebe is the chip off the old block.

As his legendary father would have described him, were he to return from the land of the spirits and manufacture another masterpiece, Ikechukwu Achebe is his father’s child. The true son of his father.

As preparations to receive the remains of the departed iconic writer back home hit a frenetic height, upper week, I cornered the younger Achebe, a visiting Scholar and Director of the Igbo Archival Dictionary Project at Brown University, Providence, Rhodes Island, United States, at Awka, the Anambra State capital.

The first of the Iroko’s four children (two boys and two girls), Dr. Ikechukwu Achebe, during the two-hour encounter, opened virtually every page of his legendary father’s life and paid a glowing tribute to a man whose works shredded the thick wool woven on the world’s eyes by racist writers who projected blacks as apes that hopped from tree to tree in the thick jungles of Africa for survival.

Though pained by his father’s eventual demise, Ikechukwu, a former Professor at Bard College, New York, who holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge, was grateful to God that the old man lived for 23 years after an accident that crippled him and which seriousness made his doctors predict that his days were numbered.

As a dyed-in-the-wool reporter, there is the tendency for you to want to poke your nose further and ask for details of the legend’s final days and the infirmity that sent him the way of all flesh.

Dr. Achebe, who, in 2004, was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Nigeria, would just look at you straight in the face, lower his voice, almost to a whisper, and say: “The complications are not things that I am going to discuss on the pages of a newspaper. I’m not going to discuss his medical records or medical history on the pages of any newspaper.”

Case closed? Not really. He, however, would tell you that the accident that crippled his father at 60 was serious enough to raise concerns.

Indeed, going by the seriousness of the injuries, doctors, at the time, never gave the writer much chance of making old age. And that he lived for 23 years after was one miracle that the family was grateful to God for.

Away from the accident, Ikechukwu, who was a Smuts Fellow in Commonwealth Studies in

‘Those of us who were close to him were aware that his condition, after that accident, was one in which he was fragile in some areas. But his spirit simply refused to accept defeat or to be cowed by his condition’

the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, between 2006 and 2007, spoke about things you have never read anywhere about his father. He revealed the man’s unaccomplished work, his major regret and why the family’s 70-something-year-old matriarch, herself a professor, has steered away from the klieg lights that perpetually trailed her global celebrity husband.

You won’t want to swap this interview for anything. Not for a million dollars.

Therefore, sit back, relax and enjoy the whole of it.

work but he always has many things he was working on.

In his comment on There was a Country, former South African President, Dr. Nelson Mandela, described your father as ‘a writer in whose company the prison walls fell down.’ Now, what were the prison walls that your father’s writings brought down in your life?

Although you’ve asked the right question, I think the quote in full is something like ‘there was a writer named Chinua Achebe in whose Is There was a Country, your father’s last company the prison wall fell down’. It was actuwork or there is something else he was work- ally a tribute that Mandela had given to my ing on before he died? father on the occasion of his 70th birthday and it There was a Country was his last published Continued on page 24

24 Cover Interview

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

My father’s biggest regret He was just interested in his family and friends? …And anybody who came through him. He was very generous. That’s why he was instrumental in the growth of African literature because he spent a very long time essentially building a continent-wide body of young writers, some of them not so young, into famous international authors. He was the general editor of the African Writers Series and he did that for decades without pay.

Continued from page 23 is not a recent quote.

I know; I just want to transpose that to you so you could look at the statement and tell me those walls in your life that your father’s writings metaphorically helped you to dismantle.

Well, I think that, like most people who have read the works and have encountered his writings would understand, what Mandela was saying was that he derived a sense of liberation from reading the work. For me, it was, like the walls that had been put up, in the sense of an absence of the African person in literature, were being brought down by the publication of his novel (Things Fall Apart). And you could begin to see yourself in literature for the first time. That is the symbolism we are using here.

self. That was the first experience of his art of storytelling that I got. And then, I must have read Things Fall Apart at the age of eight or nine. I think it may have been an abridged version that was in the market at the time. But then, it didn’t take very long before I read all his works because I was interested. Of course, when we got to secondary school, they became the prescribed text and you have to read them. But I had already read them at home.

He worked without pay?

He wasn’t interested in money because he was on a mission. He discovered his mission at a very young age, and he set about it in a very systematic way. I think that is really very important in understanding the person that my father was. He was so focused on the work that has to be done to really uplift the African, the black person globally. He was focused on the work that has to be done in terms of reaching out to other people around the world; and the work that has to be done in creating a common humanity of people with shared values. So, he had many fans and friends from all over the world.

From Korea to England, from United States to Australia to New Zealand, he had friends who identified with the values he represented and the values that he suggested. That mission was central to who he was. He was particularly concerned about the denigration of the African over a period of 400 years of the Atlantic slave trade and he was very conscious of the problems and some of the benefits of the colonial rule, including education. He believed very much in the school system that was set up by the missionaries. He wasn’t a one-track-mind man. Those are the values we learnt and have helped us in developing.

How did the fact of he being your dad impact on your life, first, as a child, and as you grew up?

One is always able to distinguish clearly between the father who is not an internationally famous writer, and another father who is this internationally famous man; and I think it was because he, too, focused a greet deal on his family. Family life was important to him, and even though you are constantly aware of fame and publicity, it wasn’t something he drew attention to. It was more to do with ‘where have you been today? Have you done your home work?’And I think that distinction was important in keeping us grounded and focused on the things that were important as a family as opposed to this very public famous man.

So, you didn’t grow up consciously trying to ape those values you saw?

No, because he was not prescriptive. He would not come and say be like me; or do this or do that. No. But the force of the argument should be the sort of life he lived and the value he represented. The idea that the writer was not on the side of the government, that the writer had no business with siding with government against citizens, were important ideas to him. His life was a life of mission. He was a missionary in a sense that resonated with his own father’s background as a mission agent and so on.

What were those core African values that he imparted on you?

Integrity and the way he did things, the way he lived his life. He wasn’t a preacher, but he wouldn’t tell you how to live your life. But he would always present to you his own way by simply living an example. You could tell that truth was important for him. Integrity, telling the truth, was important to him. You knew that you shouldn’t compromise principles in little things.

You knew that he would support you if you What’s your earliest exposure to his work, stuck to your position based on conviction. And working very hard, he believed a great deal in and what particular work?

My earliest exposure to his work? I think I will education. He invested everything in education. start by saying it was through storytelling as a Education was really that important to him.

He never acquired wealth? child. He used to tell us stories.

No, he wasn’t interested in wealth.

Like tales by the moonlight?

How many known property did he have?

He told us tales of the tortoise; he told us chilNo, I wouldn’t discuss that (laughs). But it dren’s stories; and there were many of them. And these were stories that had been handed down wasn’t something that he wasn’t interested in at from his mother to his elder sister, and to him- all.

‘He loved speaking inconvenient truth to power.

So, you do feel that Mandela was expressing a sense of liberation in that reaction to your father’s work?

I think Mandela was inferring to a specific context of being imprisoned, and that being in Robben Island, in prison and receiving copies of my father’s work, he was able to imaginatively leave the confines of prison, and once again inhabit the open spaces of the Africa that he knew. So, imaginatively, literature does liberate the mind and the spirit.

So, which of your father’s works liberated you?

Liberated me imaginatively?

Yes. I think they all did because you are imaginatively liberated from your presence to a little known part of the glorious past. That is what his books have done for me; and I think that’s what imaginative literature does generally.

Oh, he loved it. In fact, he often said the job of the writer is not to prescribe medicine but to give you the headache’

You described your father as an excellent family man, and espoused the values he inculcated in you. In doing so, did he spare the rod?

No, he was not known for spanking. He would talk to you and he was a very gentle person when it came to his children. I can’t really remember any occasion of spanking. What I remember was more the forcefulness of his presence. You knew when you had done the wrong thing.

His body language will tell you that?

Absolutely. He believed in respect. He believed in giving respect and he would respect you even as a child. He never really wanted to disrupt us. That, in itself, was punishment for us.

If you found that that respect he had for you had now diminished, that he thought less of you because of something you had done, that was enough punishment. And you wouldn’t want that. He believed very much in the equality of the sexes and so his daughters were a premium to him in terms of education and the way in which he interacted with them and the way in which he interacted with us the boys. He was foremost a family man and then the famous writer.

Your father was renowned to be a principled man and he demonstrated that in many ways, including turning down two national awards. How did you feel on those two occasions? Did you feel very proud that he did what he did, even though some people felt he turned his back on his fatherland?

That’s an important question. But it’s equally important to understand that he never turned his back against his country because he had, on previous occasions, been awarded the Officer of the Federal Republic, OFR, and the National Merit Award. I know how proud he was of hav-

ing received those two honours. Incidentally, the OFR was awarded to him under President Olusegun Obasanjo. Of course, he had received other wards from the nation. For instance, in 1960, on independence, he had been awarded the Nigerian National trophy for Literature.

In rejecting the award of the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) the first time, he did make it clear that, number one, he thought it was a high honour that he had been given and he was agonized by the fact that he was rejecting a high honour. Secondly, he stated clearly in the letter that he wrote (to turn down the award) that

DAILY SUN

25

May 23, 2013

Cover Interview

Rhythms of the Master

...He loved giving headache to power he had, in fact, accepted many honours from this country even though he knew things were not perfect, but that he did so in the hope that things will get better; that with all the things committed to work, things would work for the improvement of the Nigerian citizens. He stated all these things so clearly that one didn’t need to explain things for him. He was always clear about what he did.

I don’t think we have forgotten so quickly about what he wrote in that letter (rejecting the last offer). He wrote clearly in that letter that things had gotten out of hand and that he felt that accepting that particular award at that particular time would have done some injustice to Nigerians who were suffering from the heavy political and economic pressure from their government. He went further to say that, for instance, in his home state of Anambra, ‘this is what is happening right now’. So, it was clear.

For us, as a family, we felt that we needed to support him and we gave him our support. And we are proud of him. We gave him as much support as we could because it was always a lonely road. With the initial reactions that usually trail such decisions, you will be on your own. You will be alone. That initial period was a period when people were asking those questions without full understanding. But subsequent events would, of course, bear out some of the analyses that he gave. As it was always the case, it was clear that he was ahead in seeing certain things; and that puts him in a very lonely position.

Because he also walked on that lonely road, he wasn’t quite shy of controversy?

No, he never did.

What was his reaction when the controversy generated by There Was a Country roiled on?

It is like this is his life. It’s not new to him. It’s like most controversies. He doesn’t pay attention to controversies. He never paid attention to them.

He never did?

No. Once he had written a book, the next thing he did was to take some form of holiday or a vacation away from the work that had just been introduced. It was a process in which he had liberated himself, to use that term again. As long as he felt the integrity of the work was secure, he was done. That was it. Then, he would focus on his grandchildren. He would spend more time with them. He would go out a lot more. So, he wasn’t really aware. Of course, we would tell him this is what happened, but he never, for instance, read articles on it. No, he never did. The same thing happened when he wrote The Problem with Nigeria and other controversies. The same thing happened in the 1960s when he published The Man of the People. The military started looking for him.

They said he was involved in plotting the over-

‘He didn’t organize his life around winning the Nobel, otherwise the novels that he wrote and the criticism that he wrote could have been very different. …He was on a mission and part of that mission was not about winning a prize’

throw (of the government of the day) because his novel had predicted a coup in Nigeria. But he had always known that there would be pushback. That is what he felt he was created on this earth to do: to give headache not prescription.

All his life, he had been engaged in speaking truth to power. He loved speaking inconvenient truth to power. Oh, he loved it. In fact, he often said the job of the writer is not to prescribe medicine but to give you the headache.

So, as much as he gave power headache he was fulfilled?

Yes. I think he felt that was part of his mission.

Speaking truth to power is the most ancient role of the poet, like the poet against the emperor.

The poet is there to speak the truth to power because he is particularly endowed with those gifts, whether oratory or writing, to do so. So, he took that mission seriously. It was both a domestic mission to help uplift the people in Nigeria and the condition in his village, or more globally to help uplift the African, the black person, and to create a fellowship of citizens of all colours around the world based upon shared values.

development and thinking.

Incidentally, maybe because of who he was, little was known about your mother. Was it a deliberate attempt to shield her from the public?

I don’t think there was a deliberate to shield Your father was always in the eyes of the her. My mother is a highly accomplished person public. As your father, which of his past do in her field. you not know?

What’s her field?

Past?

A Professor of Education in Guidance and Counseling, and later on, a Professor of Yes. He was very open. He would always answer Psychology. She is one of the very first profesquestions that you ask him. He would not volun- sors in education guidance and counseling anyteer stories, but if you ask him he would tell you. where in this part. She is one-time vice president of the Nigerian Guidance and Counseling assoAnd if you don’t ask him, he keeps quiet? ciation.

Yes. He was a very quiet person. He was a How old is she now? very, very quiet persona and he liked his privacy.

She is in her late 70s.

But his being quiet is also part of a family trait. I think the area that I would have liked to know And how is she faring? more about, and I think he thought about too, Well, she has lost the love of her life. She has was the relationship between himself and his father. I know that one of the novels he wanted lost her partner for over 50 years. It’s a very difto write would have had to do with his father’s ficult time for her. But she has her children and life, my grandfather’s life. Perhaps, that is some- grand children to support her but she is very thing I would have wanted to know more about. proud of him. She believes completely in his mission, so, she was able to be very supportive.

Their relationship was very close. They talked He never got round it, he never did?

It was meant to be part of an epic story of the about everything. And for us, we would always first three novels. The first three novels were find out a sort of solid wall of loyalty between conceived as one, but he broke them into three. the two of them. It was so solid that even when The second novel in the trilogy, the one that he you wanted to complain about one to the other it did not write, was in fact the story of Okonkwo’s couldn’t work. They were very close. son.

Accomplished as she is, why did he shield The same character in Things Fall Apart? her from the public?

I think it was her own choice.

Yes, he was just thinking about it in terms of the novel that he did write. The novel that is Not much of your father? missing, or the story that is missing is the story No. As I said, my father wasn’t prescriptive in of Okonkwo’s son, the story about him, the first story, which is the story of Okonkwo’s grandson, anything. He wasn’t. He was also the most liberwhich is in No Longer at Ease. So, you have the al-minded person I know in terms of acknowlfirst story of Okonkwo and the story of his edging the power of women. His mother meant grandson. But that little story which represented everything to him. And he was very close to his his father was a story that he didn’t get round to mother, and in our household, it was clear that my mother was in charge of the household. He telling. would come in but my mother was in charge.

As his first son, you must be very close to There was no question about that. Although my him. I want to assume that you know very mother spent a lot of her time raising the family, much about him. Which part of your father she also had a great career. She balanced the two and wasn’t really interested in publicity for herdoes the world not know?

I think it is the part of him as a family man. It self. So, if anybody shielded anybody, I think it is the very private part of a family. The part of his was my mother who shielded her children from love for his wife, his real love and loyalty to his too much publicity. My mother is a very strong wife and his love for his children. That is always person. a private part and, of course, his love for family, Please tell me the truth about Nsukka. Why his nieces and nephews. That was important to him. Family was important to him in a very did your father leave Nsukka?

Remember, he left Nsukka twice. The first broad way. But the world doesn’t know much about that as they do about everything else. time was in 1972, that was after the civil war. A Everything else dominated. He is a very dedi- lot of that had to do with the fact that the federal cated husband and a very present father even military government of the time was, underthough he travelled a lot. He was, in many ways, standably, very hostile and jittery about those a present father, a very focused father. He was that they thought had left Biafra. And there was focused on his children’s education and on the a lot of harassment. As a child, I remember a visit

by the Head of State at the time, General Yakubu Gowon. He was in the area and soldiers coming into our house and ransacked the entire place looking for weapons and so on. My father had not been well but they went ransacking everywhere. Soldiers jumping everywhere was something we…

You could not stand it?

No. We were fairly used to it having come through the civil war. But there was a climate of intimidation and disruption. And I think it got to a point they (family and friends) were concerned about his safety sufficient enough for him to have taken the decision to take his family out of Nigeria in 1972.

Can you give me one of those sufficient reasons why he had to flee?

Well, these things would have been reports about plans to do more than simply harass and intimidate.

You mean there was a plot to kill him by the Gowon Regime?

I certainly will not go that far but I think there was sufficient harassment of those who were thought to have been leaders of Biafra to have made life very uncomfortable and difficult for them. So, it was in that climate, and the climate of the post-war exhaustion, that he left for the first time. The second time was when he retired from the university. This time, there wasn’t any controversy. He had taken early retirement because he wanted to focus more on his writing.

Teaching was something he did but writing is something that he loved. He wanted to do more of that.

What are your recollections of the accident that crippled him?

I think it’s fairly well known. He was travelling out of the country to take up an appointment. I think it was Stanford University. And it was a motor accident he had on the way that left him paralyzed. He was first taken to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, where they did an excellent job in stabilizing him and, then, he was flown abroad. From there, from the hospital in England, he was invited by the president (vice chancellor) of Bard College to come and take up an appointment at Bard. But, initially, he was travelling to take up an appointment at Stanford.

That now helped him to stay permanently abroad?

No, he never liked staying abroad. The reality of his medical need and the concern of adequate medical care, were the primary reasons for his extended stay. But he did some travelling. At a time, he went to South Africa; he went to Europe; and he came back to Nigeria a couple of times. But I think the fact that he wouldn’t have had (in Nigeria) the level of medical care that he needed was what kept him abroad.

Continued on page 31

26 News

DAILY SUN

Rhythms of the Master

How Achebe almost lost the manuscript of Things Fall Apart!

By SOLA BALOGUN anuscript of Things Fall Apart, which later became the first published novel of the late Professor Chinua Achebe could have been lost forever but for the benevolence of a British broadcaster who eventually rescued it in London. And had he lost the manuscript, Achebe himself said that his writing career, which later launched him into global reckoning, would have equally been ended as far back as 1956.

In his last and most controversial book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, Achebe had dispelled rumours that he allegedly lost the manuscript to a Camerounian researcher who later moved it to his home country in Africa. According to Achebe, shortly after completing the novel in 1956, he naively sent the raw (hand-written manuscript) to some typists in England to transform it into an acceptable manuscript for publishing. But that after paying for the service, the typists refused to contact him even after writing several letters to them. He almost lost hope when one of his former colleagues at the then Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) offered to assist him.

Said Achebe in the book: ‘What I did next, in retrospect, was quite naïve, even foolish. I put my handwritten documents together, went to the post office, and had Raji-Oyelade them parcel the only copy of the manu-

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May 23, 2013

script I had to the London address of the higly recommended typing agency that was in the business of manuscript preparation. A letter came from this agency after a few weeks. They confirmed that they had received my document and wrote that the next thing I should do was to send them 32 pounds, which was the cost of producing my manuscript. Now, 32 pounds was a lot of money in 1956, and a significant slice of my salary, but I was encouraged by the fact that I had received this information, this feedback, and that the people sounded as if they were going to be of great value to me.

So I sent off the payment as instructed.’’

But after sending the money, Achebe was faced with disappointment as he never heard any information from England again.

His words ‘What happened next was a near catastrophe. The typing agency, obviously having received the money I sent, went silent. One week passed, then two, three, four, five, six weeks, and I began to panic. I wrote two letters inquiring about the status of the manuscript preparation and I got no answer.’

Meanwhile, Achebe had no choice but to complain to one of his colleagues, a Briton, who was about to travel to England then.

He recollected how Ms Angela Beattie, a former BBC Talks producer, was seconded to NBC as head of Talks, which he (Achebe) produced. Beattie later asked for the name and address of the agency and while on her vacation in London, she visited them and requested for Achebe’s manuscript.

Explained Achebe ‘She (Beattie) arrived at the offices of the typing agency and asked to speak with the manager, who showed up swiftly. Angela Beattie asked the manager sternly what she had done with the manuscript that her colleague in Lagos Nigeria had sent. Here, right before them, armed with a threat, was a well-connected woman who could really make trouble for them. The people there were surprised and shaken. ‘Now, Iam going back to Nigeria in three weeks,’’ Angela Beattie said as she left the agency’s office, ‘And when I get there, let us hope that the manuscript you took money to prepare has been received by its owner, or else you will hear more about it.’ A few weeks later I received the handsome package in the mail. It was my manuscript. I look back now at those events and state categorically that had the manuscript been lost I most certainly would have been irreversibly discouraged from continuing my writing career.’’

However, another version of the possible loss of the manuscript had it that the legendary writer was never in possession of the manuscript of the novel before dying. In a recent interview with Professor Remi RajiOyelade, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, it was learnt that Achebe had allegedly lost the manuscript of Things Fall Apart to a Cameroonian researcher many years ago in America, and that the researcher who was Achebe’s student never returned the script to the owner.

According to Raji-Oyelade who claimed that he learnt about the loss of the manuscript five years ago in America, the story had it that Achebe, out of his generosity and willingness to assist younger scholars and researchers, innocently released the manuscript of Things Fall Apart to his student who hailed from Cameroon. The latter promised to return it but he never did and that he (the student) has since moved the manuscript to Cameroon. Said Raji-Oyelade ‘There is need for us Nigerian writers and maybe the Achebe’s family to find out where the original script of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is. This issue made a row at a conference that I attended in the United States a few years back. The story was that a graduate Cameroonian student who was working on archival materials came to Achebe to collect the manuscript and that out of his generosity, Achebe gave him the script but he never returned it. The story went on that the script has been moved from the United States to Cameroon. I’ve heard that story five years ago, and perhaps the best person to ask now is Achebe’’s son, Ike’’

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May 23, 2013

NEWS

Rhythms of the Master

Tedder Hall, University of Ibadan • Where the story began

Achebe

‘There is a common spirit that we share-we see ourselves as future leaders, who must set good example for others to follow.

What we have learnt from our predecessors is that you don’t get anything through violence or force’

Tedder Hall

By YINKA FABOWALE, Ibadan

I

t was the second residential hall for male students of the then University College, Ibadan, UCI. It joined the Mellamby Hall with which the college started out in 1948, in 1952 and was named after a retired British parliamentarian, Lord G.C.B. Tedder, who was the Chancellor of Cambridge University in colonial England at the time.

Tedder was a Marshal of the British Royal Force, a reason, the current hall chairman, Sylvester Oluoha, says, explains why it has an aeroplane as a logo.

It was in this hall, ensconced between the now University of Ibadan administrative block and the Faculty of Arts, bordered on the right by Mellamby Hall, that the famed writer and educator, Prof. Albert Chinualumogu Achebe (Chinua Achebe for short) lived and is believed to have written his epic novel, Things Fall Apart, as a student in the university in the 1950s.

Fashioned after the architecture of similar facilities obtainable in British universities then, Tedder Hall consisted of 179 rooms, with one or two students to a room. As the population of students increased, the rooms were allotted with a final year student per room, in D Block, while freshmen and sophomore occupied the ‘A’ ‘B’ ‘C’ wings, two per room. This was also later reviewed to two per room in ‘D’ Block and three in the other wings, due to population pressure.

Now, there are 513 bed spaces. But these used to be 542, but got reduced to 513 when the present university administration of Prof.

Isaac Folorunsho Adewole banned students from cooking in the rooms using hot plates and other electrical appliances, due to the risks of fire, etc. and converted a room on each floor of the four-storey quadrangle edifice that squats with only three floors in front, to construct kitchenettes for such chores.

The residential hall has, over the years, added new structures including Junior Common Room (JCR), a buttery, mosque and cafeteria that immediately confronts a visitor on entering through the gates.

Courtesy of the Governor of Abia State, Chief Theodore Orji, an old student and former resident, the hall, which hitherto lacked space for parking vehicles, lately got a parking lot through creating and maximizing the narrow parcel of land at its entrance.

According to the hall chairman, Oluoha, there are at present more than 1, 000 Tedderites, as the inmates fondly like to refer to themselves, studying on the campus. But, only 513 are officially accommodated in the hall, due to housing challenges and the university management’s policy to give preference to freshers and final year students.

Achebe, according to sources, was among the first set of boarders that moved into the new hostel when it was established.

Although, a cool and reserved person, he was said to have contributed to literary activities in the hall by frequently writing for the hall press board, in addition to his involvement in campus journalism at a larger scale.

Says Oluoha: “We heard he was a class rep and a very, very quiet person in the hall, although he was highly respected among his peers, because of his brilliance. The main thing people remembered him for is that he liked to write a lot. He was part of the campus press and was a friend to the (hall’s) Information Minister during his time.”

Few knew that Achebe did not set out to be a man of letters that the world came to know him to be. He was actually admitted to read medicine in U.I, but switched to English Studies in the second year. Remi Raji-Oyelade, a professor of English who graduated from the same department and who was to become Achebe’s ninth successor as President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), however, debunks

the notion spread by rumour mongers that the change of course was because Achebe could not cope with the academic rigours of the medical school.

He says: “He (Achebe) didn’t fail as a medical student contrary to what some have been made to believe. What happened was that after a year of noticing his excellent writing and usage of the English Language, he was advised by his discerning professor, who felt he would perform better in English and heal people more through writing.”

Raji-Oyelade, a former Head of the university’s English Department and current Dean, Faculty of Arts, rejected the idea that “my department produced Chinua Achebe”.

To him, the opposite would be more correct that: “I am a product of Chinua Achebe’s Department, as I hadn’t even been born when he graduated from the department.”

He declared that: “ It’s a great feeling to know that we went through the same department that he passed through and thread the same corridor.

He added: “Actually, we heard about him and other literary pathfinders (Chris) Okigbo, Mabel Segun and Wole Soyinka.

But, of the four, he was the most self-effacing, introverted person, who chose his words. He started as a cub journalist, writing for the University Herald and later The Bug.” The late literary icon was said to have stayed in Room C5 and D11, while Wole Soyinka, also a Tedderite, who came in a year or two later, stayed in D7. Oluoha says students allocated these rooms usually see it as a great thing of pride to stay in the same room these literary giants once occupied.

“We normally feel proud that we stay in the same room as WS and Achebe,” he says.

But, it is not only the two illustrious writers that passed through the hall. The list of eminent Nigerians churned out of this hatchery is long and includes: the current Vice

Chancellor of the university, Prof. Adewole, who, besides his present station is also a world class gynaecologist and medical scholar; Governor Orji of Abia State; a former Governor of Benue State, George Akume; Ambassador Joe Keshi; the Asagba of Asaba, Prof. C. Edozien; the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo; Dean of Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Microbiology U.I, Prof. V.C. Taiwo and the Head of Department of Mathematics, U.I, Prof. Ayoola.

Together with their neighbours, the Mellambytes, Tedderites fancy themselves to be of the elitist class in the whole of the university community. Not theirs is the culture of stirring or leading agitation or protest demonstration against perceived shortcomings and failings of the school authorities.

That trait is seen as reserved for their “unruly” colleagues or “Zikites” in Nnamdi Azikwe Hall and the “Katangites” in Great Independence Hall, located in the further recesses of the campus that the boarders in the hostels near the school area pejoratively call “bush area”.

The tradition of sobriety and civility, which has earned Tedderites and Mellambytes the enviable honour of being referred to as the “gentlemen of the campus”, particularly among the female students, was passed down through generations.

The hall chair explains: “There is a common spirit that we share-we see ourselves as future leaders, who must set good example for others to follow. What we have learnt from our predecessors is that you don’t get anything through violence or force.”

Chinualumogu Achebe was evidently an icon and model of this tradition in the way he fought his battles against all that he disdained-corruption, misrule, tyranny and injustice with his literary engagement.

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Rhythms of the Master

PROF.REMI RAJI-OYELADE Dean of Arts,University of Ibadan

Tedder Hall, Home of the ‘Four Musketeers’ It’s gratifying to know that Achebe, Soyinka, JP. Clark, Christopher Okigbo passed through here

--Achebe

Soyinka

Tedder Hall

‘Up till the very end, he confessed to being somewhat mystified that his books-especially the first one – would achieve their aweinspiring reputation. That sense of surprise did not emerge from diffidence’

By SOLA BALOGUN

L

ike a prophet who has the gift of foreseeing the future, young Chinua Achebe started his literary career at the University College, Ibadan (now University of Ibadan) with faith. He saw quite early in life a career that would shoot him into global reckoning hence his venture into creative writing despite having been admitted to study Medicine.

The great writer-to-be also began writing in his hall of residence, Tedder, which incidentally housed his peers and co writers like Wole Soyinka and John Pepper Clark.

In a recent interview with Professor Remi Raji-Oyelade, award-winning poet, former Head, Department of English (where Achebe graduated from), President of Association of Nigerian Authors, (ANA) and now, Dean, Faculty of Arts, fresh facts emerged that Achebe’s career as a writer actually started from Ibadan. He had used his hours outside the classroom to invest in creative writing, and he was able to churn out several stories, which ultimately nurtured him into a great writer. According to Raji-Oyelade, the period between 1952 and 1957 (when Achebe was in UI) also coincided with the time when he wrote his first novel, Things Fall Apart, which he eventually published in 1958.

Below is the text of the interview: Can you reflect on the late Professor Chinua Achebe as a literary giant and scholar?

Prof. Chinua Achebe along with his contemporaries paved the way for the respect that Nigerian literature and African literature now

have all over the world. I am always very proud to announce to people that I come from a country where we have real literary giants. So, what I see in Nigeria, the names that always come to mind- Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and so on, gives one real joy that we have the legacy.

And by the time Achebe had that almost near fatal accident, he was an active Professor teaching at UNN. But his beginning was here at the University of Ibadan, then known as University College, Ibadan. He has given us cause to be J.P Clark very proud that we are Nigerians and that we are writers.

What can we say is the essence of Achebe as far as Nigerian and world literature are concerned?

The significance of Chinua Achebe will dawn on people who have not met him or encountered his works in the next one or two decades. Some of these may be children or school pupils who have only heard about Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease etc, but it’s a historical fact that he was a pioneer in his own right. He was a pioneer among pioneers of African Literature. He was a pioneer in the use of certain linguistic inflection of English. That was his vital tool of reaching out to the world.

Achebe was one of the first set of university graduates who came out of the University College, Ibadan, at that time, and he succeeded in making waves so early. He was first into broadcasting, later civil service and later writing. It would be interesting to note that Achebe started as a medical student at the University of Ibadan, in those days when Professors recognised early the talents of their students. He didn’t fail or flunk his first year exams, but he was advised to do Okigbo

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Rhythms of the Master

Tedder Hall something in the area of arts and language, and that was how he moved to the Department of English, and today, we are the better for it.

Most importantly, Achebe worked like a literary surgeon all his life. He was someone who tried to dissect the trouble with his country, and who also tried to proffer solutions to the problems. He diagnosed Nigeria and proffered drugs to cure it. Although he did not graduate as a medical student, he worked like someone who tried to proffer solutions and who truthfully engaged the problem that is at the heart of our country.

But generally, the essence of literary writers is usually immortal, compared to people in other professions. Achebe’s books would continue to give moral message and aesthetic pleasure to a wide range of readers within and beyond the African culture.

As the immediate past Head of English Department, and now, Dean of Faculty of Arts, can you recollect stories about Achebe’s days at the University of Ibadan?

We thrived as students in the early 1980s on the legends and authors, particularly those who are UI alumni, and it looks like every important author has directly or indirectly passed through University of Ibadan. These include Achebe, J.P.Clark, Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, Mabel Segun, Elechi Amadi, Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide, Odia Ofeimun, Ken Saro-wiwa, Harry Garuba, among many others. At the time that we came, these writers and authors had already established themselves at the national and international spheres such that we were only looking ahead to any of them coming back to visit University of Ibadan. So, we didn’t meet them as such but we heard stories and particularly, we learnt that Chinua Achebe was one of the pioneers and one of the great contributors to the University Herald, the first literary journal/magazine to be published in the country. At the same time, J.P Clark also served as Editor of The Horn. So, we had the University Herald, The Horn and The Bug. Another story we heard was from Mrs. Mabel Segun who gave us hints of her encounter with Achebe. She explained how she was friendly with Achebe, particularly when they used to edit the University Herald together. There was the story of a mischievous writer who tried to play pranks on both of them. Chinua Achebe was then in Tedder Hall where he started his writing from. Majority of them were in Tedder Hall, including Soyinka, J.P Clark and Okigbo.

Achebe started writing in Tedder Hall even though it took many years later to get Things Fall Apart published. There are facts that Achebe actually wrote Things Fall Apart while he was at the University of Ibadan. I encountered Prof. Achebe only once on September 9, 1999, when he was returning to Nigeria for the first time after his relocation to the United States. I went to meet him in his house in Ogidi. From my observation of the man I encountered, he must have been a very reclusive person, somebody who was so self-effacing that, perhaps, would

have been why he was one of those silent achievers in his days, hence his non-involvement in most activities such as the Mbari Mbayo which comprised Soyinka, Demas Nwoko, J.P Clark, Ulli Beier, among others.

What has been the role of the Ibadan school of creative writing and its influence on writers?

Ibadan school of creative writing, even after six decades of establishment of the University of Ibadan, will always come alive on the strength and achievements of these writers that passed through it. There’s no gainsaying the fact that their presence or the history of their presence gives a kind of aura and respect to the University of Ibadan; Department of English, particularly.

And so, when I start teaching my students, for example in Room 32, I always tell them that where they are sitting was where great writers like Achebe, J.P Clark, Soyinka and others sat.

This revelation usually gives the students a sense of commitment to the arts aside throwing some kind of challenge to them that these writers we have mentioned were once students like them and that majority of them passed through the Department of English. So, if not directly, the influence of the department on the students is virtual.

Some people, even in the literati, believe that Prof. Achebe was unjustifiably denied the Nobel Prize for literature while alive.

What is your reaction to this?

The Nobel Prize has its own politics and I do not think we should allow the debate on this prize to rob a writer of genius of his significance.

There are so many writers who have missed the Nobel or who the Nobel has missed. So, I don’t think we should bother ourselves about whether a writer deserves the award or not. Although it is a very enticing argument to always talk about why Achebe did not get the Nobel or whether he was robbed of it, I do not think that every important writer in our continent (Africa), especially which is a lot disadvantaged, should bother about whether he or she is not awarded the Nobel. To me, the Nobel Prize is a recognition of a certain genius or mark but it cannot be the yardstick or measure to judge the brilliance or the significance of an author. I have been to the Nobel Museum and met with the chairman of the committee in 2005 and discovered that if your work doesn’t get translated to those minority languages in Europe or that you don’t have managers who can launder your image, even if you are the most popular writer in your country, nobody gets to know you.

In 2005, there were only three Nigerian writers whose books were listed in the Nobel library.

Also, I discovered that a brilliant writer like Nurudeen Farah has been listed constantly among the potential winners of the Nobel, but he has never had it. But that does not diminish his status as a brilliant writer. Whereas there are many obscure authors or writers from old Europe and Asia who have been awarded the Nobel but who are not generally popular outside

Europe.

How can the great literary tradition, which was pioneered by the Achebes and Soyinkas, be sustained among writers today?

We are getting more and more distracted in terms of the kinds of influence we talk about.

There are so many authors who are so much in a hurry to even win the Nobel. There are many who are yet to crawl and yet they want to walk.

It is not that we lack those who can teach, but there’s little to actually teach when it comes to creative writing. You can show by example and then you get influenced and your audience or students get influenced by your act.

But in a situation whereby students do not place any priority on the need to own their art, to improve on the grammar of whatever language they choose to write, that is the problem. The other problem is that we do not get the appropriate handle on how to expand the teaching and practice of creative writing in our different institutions. The fact really is that the creative writing class is a continual one outside the four corners of the classroom. This is because the experience that you need to do your writing is out there. You also need a moment of tranquility to imagine the space in which you are going to put your characters or your metaphors. In addition to these, you

I would desire a long-term celebration of Achebe.

I would want every school child to celebrate Achebe by reading his books and not just jump up and dance and say we are celebrating him

also have to allow a period of immersion as well as a period of editing. There are different facets of the art and science of creative writing, which many people want to jump.

The social media, for example, has been good to those who believe they have genius and germ to improve upon it. They allow their works to be criticised and they learn from it. But there are

29 NEWS those who would defend every line of their poetry, every paragraph of their story, and every bite of their dialogue. And there are also other writers who like to rubbish the works of other fellow writers. But the moment you begin to have bloated praise, we should know that the critic is no longer a critic but a praise singer. Potential writers should focus on the energy of their peer groups, i.e. fellow writers around them. They should also look up to those who have written before them. The fact is that you have to write good poetry by reading good poetry and you have to read good novels before you can produce one. And you must also go through a period of imitation before you can obtain your originality. I don’t believe in automatic writing, you have to work for it and where there is lack of that interest, it affects the quality of writing.

Let’s have your comments on Chinua Achebe’s last book: There was a Country…, which generated a lot of controversy last year.

For me, There was a Country… is a historical text. It is a historical text written by a literary artist who has his own views and perspectives to the issue of the civil war. It is like what we had in the 80s when we had an explosion of the civil war novels, and we had various perspectives given by Aniebor, Chukwuemeka Ike, Ademoyega, among others. While some of these books could be put in the realm of fiction, others could be regarded as literary biographies or autobiographies, but they all deal with particular events, depicting the proverbial masquerade that cannot be seen from one side.

And it is also impossible for one to be at war and be able to see the two sides.

Achebe’s contribution cannot be quantified or even qualified by whatever controversy surrounding the text itself. Moreover, it is not every non-Igbo person that has attacked Chinua Achebe for writing an Igbo-centric text, and it is not also every Igbo person who has actually given kudos to all he has written in There Was a Country… For me, I have not actually found a better title by any author, living or dead, to the story of our country than the title given by Achebe. In every sphere of our life, there was a country where things worked; there was a country where brothers treated themselves with mutual respect even though there could be frictions; and there was a country before we became the citizens.

As President of ANA, which was incidentally founded by Achebe himself, how would you want him remembered?

I would desire a long-term celebration of Achebe. I would want every school child to celebrate Achebe by reading his books and not just jump up and dance and say we are celebrating him. But, of course, as I’ve said in other places, I don’t know of any street in Abuja that has been named after any Nigerian writer. I may not know what the Abuja metropolitan council is doing now, but I know that in other places like Europe and even South Africa, streets are not only named after politicians, philanthropists or footballers etc but it is total disservice, to the human intellect, and to the imagination of the historian, the writer and the philosopher for him or her to be celebrated only on the pages of newspapers or television but not to name particular monuments after them.

We can build busts in their honour or name stadiums after people, bust how much of the philosopher or morality teacher have we encouraged among the new generation of Nigerians? Are we going to allow our children to get influenced by the imagery of Snow White or the Jack and the Beast stuff? We should learn how to valorise our own. The works of every Nigerian writer are decidedly Nigerian products. We should package them and let the world know them, because when we go outside Nigeria, the world knows us more as having come from the country of great writers.

I think we can do better as a nation for our authors, philosophers and historians by immortalising their names by having architectural sites, educational facilities, writers’ residences and streets named after them.

As for ANA, Achebe was one of our national trustees, together with Mabel Segun, the late T.M Aluko. So, ANA has no option than to celebrate Achebe, and at our own time, we will do the needful. But it is important to note that the University of Ibadan recognises the fact that Achebe was a product of the university and on Wednesday, May 15, the university authorities, in collaboration with the Oyo State Chapter of ANA, organised a stand-up programme for Achebe at the historic Trenchard Hall. The programme is fully funded by the university and the Faculty of Arts.

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Rhythms of the Master

He’ll be buried like a legend –Prof. Uzodinma Nwala, chair, transition committee

By IKENNA EMEWU, Abuja

P

rof. Tim Uzodinma Nwala has lived 42 years of his life shared with the late literary icon, Chinualumogu Achebe, until when the legend passed on.

From the early 1970s, they were all teachers in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN, Their bond remains strong and tough even now Achebe has transited.

On the day the great man died, Nwala, who is equally an academic of great reputation and father of African Philosophy, like Achebe is of literature, was one of the first to be informed by the family with briefing on how to go about preparations for the burial. While the icon’s demise has been making front page almost on a daily basis, Nwala has been shouldering the tough assignment that Achebe’s first son, Dr. Ike Achebe, gave him to organize groups., bodies, governments, fans and associates of Achebe to prepare for his burial.

As the coordinator of the Chinua Achebe Transition Committee, Nwala is at the centre of the drafting of the burial programmes, announcement and execution.

He told us the story of what has been going on and what would later happen before, during and after Achebe’s burial.

His exact words: First of all, in answer to your ques-

Prof.Nwala tion on how the mantle fell on me, as you put it, I told you the day Achebe died that we had been close for 42 years. It, at a point, became a sort of spiritual bond between his entire family and mine. Last December, my wife and I had some days together with his family in the USA during the last Achebe Colloqium. In addition to our long relationship as academics from the same stock in UNN, Achebe also saw in me the right quality of a scholar worth his close relationship. We shared so much in

Achebe common. Therefore, there is no surprise that I was called on to take this task. It is hectic but I do it with all sense of joy and commitment.

Prof. Chinua Achebe’s burial programme is a global thing, but the task of my committee is to make sure everything is put in the right shape so that when the body arrives, until the burial, everybody would be happy that there is no hitch.

Remember that the international chairman of the transition team is Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa who is also the chairman of

the Chinua Achebe Foundation. So, we handle the end in Nigeria, which I am the coordinator. Apart from what we do here, the Achebe funeral held at various countries in all the continents of the world. Many had celebrated him even in governments and universities and other institutions.

Dr. Ike, his first son, is the chief mourner, by the traditions of our people, and so everything I coordinate here is in consent with him and his siblings. We are in touch daily and we don’t do anything or conclude on

our own. And because he has implicit confidence in the committee I head, it makes it easy to handle no matter where he is.

We have also been working very closely with President Goodluck Jonathan who has had audience with us, given his support from time to time and has also made commitments to the project in the past.

I have to admit that handling the plans for the burial of Prof. Achebe is one of the toughest and challenging tasks I ever handled. The meetings, consultations and errands have been enormous and tasking. It is a great challenge, but what makes it go is the enormous goodwill of the man involved. There has been tremendous goodwill and out pour of support from several quarters and that is what makes the task worth coping with.

Most of all, I must commend the extraordinary effort of the Anambra State governor, Peter Obi, and, of course, all the governors of the South East states whom we have had meetings with at Enugu and straightened out modalities to ensure Achebe gets befitting passage.

Another person that has been wonderful is the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi OkonjoIweala, who is a personal friend of the Achebe family.

The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) has also been part of the programmes and played major role in what we have been doing.

What the world didn’t know about my father Continued from page 25 His death came as a rude shock to some of us, because aside from his accident, we didn’t hear of him falling ill for a long time. Or did he have any debilitating condition that we didn’t know? What actually happened?

My father was 60 when he had that accident. You know the condition of suffering a motorcar accident at the age of 60 and not being given very long to live by the doctor? And he still went on living 23 years after? We like to say that we are not sorrowful.

Instead, we are very grateful to God for that time that he was given. But it’s a very tough situation to be in. There are medical complications associated with that condition and these are not things that the whole world would have known about. Surely, that condition comes with complications.

Did the injuries affect his internal organs?

I’ve said I will not talk about my father’s medical records on the pages of newspaper, please. No. I’m not going to talk about internal organs or anything of that sort, if you don’t mind.

But I think for somebody who suffered a severe car accident at the age of 60, and lives another 23 years, one would not want to sound ungrateful for that time that God gives him to be with his grandchildren, to be with his family and for his family to sort of prepare for that condition that he was.

You were at his death bed?

Yes. The entire family was there. We were all there.

You wouldn’t want to share with us what he told you as he was coasting home?

His records are so public and well known…

I mean, during those final moments?

He was very consistent throughout his life. It was the same message, the same concerns. He loved his family and, obviously, family issues arose, but he was preoccupied with the conditions of his country. He was preoccupied with the conditions of Africans…

Rather than his imminent passing?

He never drew attention to himself.

Like I told you, when people said ‘we can’t understand why this is happening to you’, he said ‘why not me?’

Who else would you want it to happen to?’

What were his regrets, his unaccomplished tasks?

I think the big unaccomplished task was writing Things Fall Apart in Igbo.

He wanted to do that but it would have been a major undertaking. But given the sheer scale of his achievements, given the fact that here is a man who has achieved so much, it would be difficult to talk about regrets. Although, in terms of his work, doing a lot more with the language, with translation, would have been gratifying, the biggest regret was the fact that the country, Nigeria, that he loved so much in his time, had not lived up to the expectation that they all had for her.

That is, the expectation of leading a new Africa based on equity and fair-

ness. And having seen that happen was an area of sadness.

Does his not being able to win a Nobel Prize not constitute any regret?

To him, certainly not. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1972, and nominated several other times. He didn’t organize his life around winning the Nobel, otherwise the novels that he wrote and the criticism that he wrote could have been very different. And so, it was just not important to him in the way that it’s been really preoccupied the mind of a lot of people. He was on a mission and part of that mission was not about winning a prize.

What if it had come?

Well, we don’t know what he would have done if it had come, and I think, at a point, it became difficult. A lot of

these people on the Nobel Committee and so on are people he knew, and he knew them for a long time. So, his prize is not really this ‘great prize’that has eluded him. His prize is that we have created a formidable body of literature that has given voice to a continent. His prize is that the dignity of the Blackman has seen real development and growth in his lifetime. His prize is that you cannot consider certain racist books of the western canon great literature anymore because Achebe has spoke against racism in Joseph Conrad.

His prize is that Things Fall Apart is, perhaps, the greatest African novel ever written, certainly the most translated. His prize was that everyday he would receive letters from school children in Korea, China, India, school children Bronx in New York, England and so on, saying ‘Okonkwo was like my father’, ‘Okonkwo was like my grand father’. With that amount of recognition, his work was done long ago. And I think that there were industries created, of course, of critics who were more concerned with prizes. But prizes don’t really matter to the artist.

It’s not about prizes. It’s about your voice. It’s about your message. It’s about seeing people saying ‘Oh, Okonkwo’, ‘Oh, Amalinze, the cat’, ‘Oh, Chief Nanga’, ‘Oh, This Trouble With Nigeria’. This is what writer lives for. And then, he was particular in focusing more on the message.

Do you get amused about these controversies as to whether he was the best writer from the continent of

Africa?

No. I think that people will make their own judgement and, sometimes, these judgments are not made today in the heat of political debates. They are made by posterity, looking back. And I feel very confident that he has made the greatest impact of any writer from the continent of Africa in the last 100 year. There is no question in my kind about that. But I am his son, and I think posterity will be the judge of that. That is why we don’t get involved with that now.

Did he leave words as to how best he wanted to be remembered? To be celebrated?

I think he wanted to be remembered in the way that he was remembered in life. And he wanted to know that his life has had meaning. I think by that yardstick alone, his influence is almost immeasurable. His influence on the development of African studies as a global discipline in the universities in North American and Europe, his influence in helping build a body of African writing, and a body of African writers, his influence in helping shape his country, his influence on his children and his wife, his influence on his village, his influence on his town union, all these are really a formidable body of achievements, and I think that he would be remembered for all those things. We are grateful that God, in His wisdom, had given him that opportunity and directed his life. We are saddened by his demise but we are thankful to God that he lived a remarkable life. He lived a life of purpose.

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Rhythms of the Master

How Ogidi will receive her son

Ogidi Town Hall Photos By Okoro Nwosu

By HENRY UMAHI

W

illiam Shakespeare's postulation that “when beggars die there are no comets; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes” certainly rings true for the late Professor Chinua Achebe. All the villages that make up Ogidi are celebrating his life through both traditional and Christian rites and festivities. Even pupils of Akpakaogwe Central School, Ogidi formerly known as St Philip's Central School where Achebe began his formal education have been looking forward to the DDay. The headmistress of the school, Mrs. Ngozi Oraka said that it is the dream of every pupil to be an Achebe someday. Reinforcing what she said, 10-year old Master Ifeanyi Abugu, told our reporter: “ I am proud to be attending the same school where the great man began his journey. I want to be like him. I pray to be like him. I'm working hard to be like him.”

The town is also wearing a new look as some facilities have been spruced up. Saint Philip's Church, Ogidi hosting the 'last mass' has received a facelift just as the town hall has been renovated.

Hero's burial While alive, he was known as Ugoberenoji (the Eagle perching on the Iroko). But the eagle has flown away, leaving the big tree bare. Ogidi is no longer the same. It has lost its usual calm, tranquil self. It has become a Mecca of sorts as visitors descend on the community where Achebe is hailed as a man of the people. He could, indeed, be described as the heart and soul of Ogidi.

As Chief Chuka Onubogu, Vice President General, Ogidi Union, puts it: “Ogidi is in a mood difficult to describe. For the first time in the community, we are experiencing this nature of burial. So, the whole community will come out to identify with its illustrious son, the pride of Ogidi.”

Indeed, Achebe is going home in a blaze of glory. Ogidi will bury its most prominent son like a hero. The fact that Ogidi have not had an Igwe (traditional ruler) for several years will not deprive Achebe of being accorded due privileges considering that he held a revered title in the land - Ugoberenoji.

“The absence of an Igwe in Ogidi won't affect the burial of Prof. Chinua Achebe in anyway especially as we have a regent who acts as the Igwe in Ogidi. We have somebody in-charge of that space, the space is not exactly empty, even though there is no substantive Igwe for one rea-

May 23, 2013

son or the other, ” explained Arc. Amaechi Ekume, National President, Ikenga Ogidi Family Union, which is Achebe's family association.

Now, what role would Ikenga Ogidi play in Achebe's burial?

Ekume answered: “Within the limits of the scope we will be allowed to operate, I think we are going to do the best to see that he gets a befitting burial because he is one of the greatest men to have come from the community, Nigeria, Africa and beyond. He was a very great man, a world-renowned writer whose every work is always extraordinary. There is no way you can say you will limit his burial to just his community. The international community is eager to play very significant roles in his burial. So, by the time you come down from the world level to Africa, from Nigeria level to state level, you will see that it is going to be a Herculean task. So, as much as we are allowed to play a role, we are going to do everything that we can to see to it that no cost or energy is spared in seeing that our son, Prof. Chinua Achebe, gets a befitting burial.”

Offering insights into how Achebe affected the Ogidi community, Ekume said: “I will say that his name alone gives a lot of advantages to Ogidi. To be specific, I will say that his name or rather his activities, his ideologies are actually worthy of emulation. For somebody to be given national awards twice by two different presidents and he turned them down on grounds that things were not right with his people, that tells you the sort of man he was. He did not limit himself to the village alone. As a matter of fact, he fought for humanity. By fighting for humanity, everybody benefits. He was not materialistic, he was humble, he was selfless. His way of life is worthy of emulation by every standard”.

Chief S.N Okeke, Regent Ogidi, also averred that the absence of a substantive Igwe would not affect Achebe's burial. Hear him: “It would not have any effect on Achebe's burial because he was a titled man and a great man. He will not be buried with anyone. It is the living that buries the dead, and mourns them. So, the absence of a substantive Igwe will not have any negative effect on Achebe's burial because there is someone who represents the Igwe.”

The regent further explained the shape the burial will take. “To bury him, with the way things are, his corpse will be taken to the church because he was a Christian. After the funeral service at the church, his corpse will be taken to Ofe. Ofe is like a barn where yams are kept.

Every man has a house and Ofe and Oba (yam barn). So, if he is taken in there, nobody will see

Chuka Onubuogu, Vice President-General Ogidi Union Nigeria

Okeke, Ogidi Regent

him till late in the evening. They will bring fire, there is a way they do it and he will be buried.

Nwada will be there. That is how a titled man is buried in Ogidi.”

Asked if it means that the remains of the trailblazer would only be committed to Mother Earth when the sun had retired after the day's activities, Chief Okeke, who spoke in Igbo language, volunteered: “Yes, he will be buried in the night. The burial will take place between 7:00pm and 7:30pm. That is the tradition of Ogidi, for someone of his stature. He was known as Professor Chinua Achebe, Ugoberenoji Ogidi. So, Ugoberenoji was his title in Ogidi. He was an Ichie.”

Explaining why Achebe was conferred with the revered title, the regent said: “He was conferred with the title because he was eminently qualified to be so honoured. He deserved or merited it. To start with, he was a knowledgeable person. There was a time he was the President General of the community and he proved his mettle. He was a man of peace; he preached peace. When he led us as President General, he settled some disputes in the community. He was someone who fought for peace and progress to reign in Ogidi and wherever he found himself.

So, when these sorts of things are put into consideration and someone is found or considered worthy of a title, the Igwe will so recognize the individual.”

On the preparations being made towards his burial, Chief Okeke said: “Ogidi has so much work to do with regards to the preparations for his burial because of the stature or status of the person in question. He has written several books and done many other things that conferred greatness upon him. So, we are expecting personalities from all over the world to attend the burial.

Indeed, we recognize the enormity of the task ahead and we are trying to do the best to see that all the people who will converge on Ogidi are adequately protected and properly taken care of even as we give our departed brother a befitting burial. We also pray that all the visitors will return to their various destinations in peace.”

Culture on parade Chief Chuka Onubogu, vice president general, Ogidi Union Nigeria, threw more light on how Ogidi will receive its son.

With excitement in his voice, he said: “We are in high spirit. Almost all the roads are being cleaned up. We are assisting to see that everything that is going to be done is done well. We learnt that about four presidents are coming in.

So, Ogidi is in a mood difficult to describe. For the first time in the community, we are experiencing this nature of burial. The whole community will come out to identify with its illustrious son, the pride of Ogidi. The rich cultural heritage of the people will be displayed. The community will come out with all it has to see that he is given a befitting burial.

“Our rich and unique cultural heritage will be on parade. We have entertaining and energetic masquerades like the Ugo masquerade, the Atu masquerade and others. The traditional institution of the Ndichie Ume, which he was a member of, the Igwe-in-Council, the Ozo titleholders, including women will honour him. Different types of drummers and dancers will give a good account of themselves. Every aspect of our culture will be displayed in honour of the man of the people.

“He was somebody that loved feeding the poor. So, we will ensure that the poor in society gets something from the community on the day of his burial. We will be giving out foodstuffs like rice, beans and yams among others to the poor.

Also, the roads are being put in shape; the government is assisting in this direction. The church he attends is not sparing any effort to see that everything is in order for us to receive him. The town hall is also wearing a new look. We are renovating and repainting the structure to make sure that the place looks nice on the day. That's what he loved.”

Resting place The final resting place of the master storyteller is the newly constructed mausoleum inside his compound. It is located on the left side of the compound.

“We built a separate house for the fallen literary giant. It is attached to the main building but it is still on its own. We don't want Prof. to share his resting place with anyone. When you come into his private residence, you will see it on the left side,” a family source disclosed.

DAILY SUN

33 NEWS

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

Ogidi: A place you dare not kill pythons

By HENRY UMAHI

Photos By Okoro Nwosu

P

a James Aghanwa, Chinyelugo of Iyi Enu Ogidi, is arguably the oldest man in Ogidi.

Although his exact age is unknown, the issues he discusses show that he is, indeed, a very old man. Asked how old he was, he said that he was no longer talking about age having lost count. However, inside the frail, age ravaged body is a remarkable retentive memory.

But one thing Pa Aghanwa talks about, albeit with so much pride, is the St Philip's Church, Ogidi, the oldest church in the town. He tells the story of the Church with unmistakable excitement in his voice and a glint in his eyes.

According to him, it took the community a long time to complete the church, a development that made Awka people to ridicule them.

“Awka people used to do inyanga for our people who went to worship with them, saying that it was taking us donkey years to complete our Church. They said that we were lazy,” he recalled.

Pa Aghanwa said that the natives, in their characteristic manner, took the challenge in their stride and made sure that the Church was completed.

Different age grades were tasked and they made contributions towards the completion of the project. That was a manifestation of the resilience and doggedness of an average Ogidi man.

One of those who played pivotal role at ensuring that the project was completed, according to him, was Chinua Achebe's father, Mr. Isaiah Okafo Achebe. The senior Achebe was an early Christian convert, a catechist and teacher; hence his family spent considerable time at the Church.

According to the younger Achebe, “the centre of our family's activities was St. Philip's Church, Ogidi, a large Gothic-style parish church that my father helped establish. It was constructed on an impressive, open ilo, or piece of open grass, on the outskirts of Ogidi.

It was an imposing structure for its time, built with wood, cement, mud, and stone.” Spending so much time in the Church and being a teacher's son shaped Achebe's life. Or so it seemed.

Hear Mr. Godfrey Agbogu, who was Achebe's classmate: “Both of us were together. First, we worshipped at the same church, St. Philips Church Ogidi.

We were lucky to come from Christian homes. So, we had the opportunity of having early primary education. First, we were together in the same vernacular class from 1937/1938 to Standard Five in 1945 when he entered Government College, Umuahia. I completed Standard Six while he entered college from Standard Five.”

The retired headmaster added: “Chinua was a very quiet boy in the sense that his father's occupation as a church teacher conditioned his life. He wasn't as free as some of us who were not teachers' children. He was very fond of reading. Perhaps, it was because he didn't have the freedom of going out to play as freely as we used to be because we were freer. After school, we would assemble at the open square near our house. It was our stadium. We used to play football as well as moonlight games there. But he did not have that opportunity. His home was very near but he hadn't that opportunity. At school, we couldn't understand Chinua's life because he had that gift. I am older than Chinua by two years; I was born in 1928.”

Gov. Obi inspecting the Masoleum

Chief Jame Aghanwa Chinyelugo of Ogidi ( Oldest Man in Ogidi community) Achebe was only five when his father retired from missionary work in 1935. His journey into the world of story telling also started in those early days. In the words of Achebe: “My initiation into the complicated world of Ndi Igbo was at the hands of my mother and my older sister, Zinobia, who furnished me with a number of wonderful stories from ancient Igbo tradition.

The tales were steeped in intrigue, spiced with oral acrobatics and song, but always resolute in their moral message. My favourite stories starred the tortoise mbe, and celebrated his mischievous escapades. As a child, sitting quietly, mesmerized, story time took on a whole new world of meaning and importance. I realized, reminiscing about these events, that it is little wonder I decided to become a storyteller.

Later in my literary career I traveled back to the magic of the storytelling of my youth to write my children's books,” he disclosed.

Even as a young lad, Achebe could notice the dichotomy or conflict between the 'religion of the white man' and the traditional value system. And this influenced the choice he made later in life. “I can say that my whole artistic career was probably sparked by this tension between the Christian religion of my parents, which we followed in our home, and the retreating, older religion of my ancestors, which fortunately for me was still active outside my home. I still had access to a number of relatives who had not converted to Christianity and were called heathens by the new converts.”

Mr. Godfrey Agbogu, Achebe's Primary School mate at Akpakogwe Central School Ogidi That, according to Achebe was “a more innocent time….Things were simpler and safer in those days.”

But Ogidi has changed. Modernity has crept in, transforming the rural setting into a town. Unlike those days when there was no electricity and the roads were untarred, Ogidi has witnessed social infrastructural development.

History and culture Geographically, Ogidi falls within the tropical rain forest region. Located in Anambra State, it is the headquarters of Idemili North Local Government Area. Its neighbours are Nkpor, Oze, Umunachi, Umuoji, Umudioka, Ogbunike and Abatete. It has a very rich history dating back several centuries. Ezechumagha is said to be the founding father of the town. He married Anum-Ubosi and they had a son, who was called Inwelle. Then the family expanded and became what it is today.

The four quarters of Ogidi - Akanano, Uru, Ezinkwo and Ikenga- were named after four of Inwelle's sons. Some of his children were said to have migrated and settled elsewhere. Ogidi means pillar.

According to a source, “every Ogidi person can trace his or her name back to one person in the distant past who is called Ogidi."

Although Ogidi is currently a predominantly Christian community, it remains culturally buoyant. One of the best-known cultural activities in Ogidi is the Nwafor festival held in the middle of July every year. It is a 'taboo' for an Ogidi man to be outside the community

while Nwafor is being celebrated.

Nwafor, the progenitor of Ogidi, is believed to have been born on an Afo day. So, the festival is in commemoration of his birth, a kind of birthday celebration. In the days of yore, the period was reserved for resting and feasting after the tedious work on the farm, particularly yam cultivation.

It is an age-long celebration, which is preceded by ikpu-ana (initiation of young boys from 10 years and above into the masquerade cult), the night before the Nwafor day.

Because of the advent of Christianity, Nwafor Ogidi festival has taken a new dimension. According to a source, “the necessary rituals are (now) performed by the high priestess and some traditionalists on behalf of the rest.” So, devoid of rituals as it were, it is now a period of merry making, a time when those who have roots in Ogidi return to familiarize with their kith and kin.

Masquerades also perform on the occasion. All burial ceremonies are postponed till after the four-day event.

For the Ogidi Union Nigeria, the government of the community, it has an opportunity to hold general meetings and mobilize the indigenes for the execution of developmental projects. With the 'reformed' Nwafor, everyone is involved irrespective of religious beliefs.

Mr. Chigozie R. Obi in his book, Ana Ogidi (The history of Ogidi) said: “Today the festival of Nwafor lasts for four days, that is '”Ofu Izu.'' The approach of the festival is announced by night masquerades from four market weeks before the festival. The festival ought to be celebrated in June but for the convenience of the civil servants it was shifted to July. The festival is held from Friday of an Afor day in July to Monday Oye of the following week.

There is a great joy and merriment that accompany the festival. It is graced by big masquerades especially the ones that beat and flog one another. The occasion attracts both Christians and African Traditional religionists in the town. In fact, it is the most cherished festival for the time. It is worth saying that the festival is enjoyable and significant in the community.”

Take this: The people are known for not killing pythons, as the creature is regarded as a deity. Other deities or gods recognized in Ogidi are Ogwugwu and Udo. Amaechi Ekume, an architect and National President, Ikenga Ogidi Family Union, offered insights into the relationship between

Ogidi people and pythons. He said: “Ogidi people don't kill 'royal' pythons.

If you kill it in error, you will give it a befitting burial like a human being. If you kill it in secret, the spirits will deal with you in their own way. If you kill it openly, you will be avoided like a plague by our people.”

Of course, the average Ogidi person proudly identifies with his roots and showcases his culture with pride. This was typified by Achebe, who did not allow his Christian background becloud his Ogidi culture and Igbo identity.

Young men get initiated into all traditional adolescent groups while worthy elders take the Ozo title and get inducted into the Ogidi Ndi-Ichie society. The titleholders wear the symbolic red caps with pride.

Perhaps, as a demonstration of the Ogidi people's love for their tradition and culture, Christianity came into the community at somewhat snail pace.

This is because the average Ogidi man is opinionated, not easily swayed from his heritage and beliefs. Perhaps Achebe painted the picture of an Ogidi man in Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart.

Royalty Ogidi traditional stool is not hereditary but the Amobi family has held it for so long. Since the death of the last Igwe in 1998, the community has been without a substantive traditional ruler.

With regards to Igwe, things have fallen apart in Ogidi and the centre can no longer hold. Hence, the matter of who succeeds the late monarch has been in court.

A historical source said: “His Royal Highness Igwe Amobi I of Ogidi, Walter Okafor Okerulu Nwatakwochaka Amobi (1838 - 18 December 1925), was the first ruler of Ogidi. His father, Abraham Amobi was born in 1806, and was one of the first people to encounter the English Church missionaries and embrace their religion when they arrived in Onitsha through the River Niger. He became the first catechist in Ogidi.

“His son, Igwe Walter Okafor Amobi I of Ogidi had the rare opportunity of being exposed to Christian education and culture. He was active in the palace council of HRH The Obi of Onitsha and adjudicated in native courts there. A wealthy and prosperous noble, he was appointed a political agent of Queen Victoria's Royal Niger Company in 1898 and had a contingent of soldiers at his command. On July 9, 1904, he became the first Igwe of Ogidi in a ceremony recorded in the Colonial Administrative Intelligence Book and witnessed by colonial officers representing the government of HM King Edward VII of England.

“HRH Igwe Amobi I reigned for 21 years until his death on December 18, 1925. He was succeeded by his eldest son, HRH Prince Benjamin Olisaeloka Amobi, who, as HRH Igwe Amobi II of Ogidi, later represented the colony and protectorate of Nigeria at the coronation of HM King George VI of England in 1937. His eldest son, HRH (Dr.) Benedict Vincent Obiora Amobi became Igwe Amobi III after the death of Igwe II in 1975. When he died in 1986, HRH (Engr.) Walter Nnamdi Ifediora Amobi ascended the throne as Igwe Amobi IV of Ogidi until his death in 1998.”

However, Chief S. N. Okeke is Regent Ogidi, overseeing the traditional institution.

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DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

How the foreign media reported the death of the Iroko

By TOPE ADEBOBOYE hen beggars die, there are no comets seen.

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes,” so says Calpurnia in William Shakespeare’s classic play, Julius Caesar.

When Shakespeare penned those words in the 15th century, the iconic dramatist could just have been talking of another great wordsmith that would pass on 414 years later. On Thursday, March 21, when Chinua Achebe, the Ogidi, Anambra State-born, worldacclaimed Africa’s literary Iroko breathed his last in Boston, United States, the entire world media rose up in salute to the man described by the New York Times as a “towering man of letters.”

From New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Associated Press to The Guardian of UK to CNN to Skynews, the foreign media not only reported the passing of a literary icon, it was tribute upon tribute to one of the greatest weaver of words that the world would ever know.

Reporting the death under the headline, Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82, the New York Times described Chinua Achebe as “the Nigerian author and towering man of letters whose internationally acclaimed fiction helped to revive African literature and to rewrite the story of a continent that had long been told by Western voices.”

In a report, anchored by Jonathan Kandell, the New York Times further said: “Chinua Achebe caught the world’s attention with his first novel, “Things Fall Apart.” Published in 1958, when he was 28, the book would become a classic of world literature and required reading for students, selling more than 10 million copies in 45 languages.

“The story, a brisk 215 pages, was inspired by the history of his own family, part of the Ibo nation of southeastern Nigeria, a people victimized by the racism of British colonial administrators and then by the brutality of military dictators from other Nigerian ethnic groups.

“Things Fall Apart gave expression to Mr. Achebe’s first stirrings of anti-colonialism and a desire to use literature as a weapon against Western biases. As if to sharpen it with irony, he borrowed from the Western canon itself in using as its title a line from Yeats’s apocalyptic poem, The Second Coming.”

“Though Mr. Achebe spent his latter decades teaching at American universities, most recently at Brown, his writings-novels, stories, poems, essays and memoirs-were almost invariably rooted in the countryside

“W

and cities of his native Nigeria. His most memorable fictional characters were buffeted and bewildered by the competing pulls of traditional African culture and invasive Western values.”

The newspaper averred that Achebe gave African literature its own voice, asserting that, “in his writing and teaching, Mr. Achebe sought to reclaim the continent from Western literature, which he felt had reduced it to an alien, barbaric and frightening land devoid of its own art and culture. He took particular exception to “Heart of Darkness,” the novel by Joseph Conrad, whom he thought “a thoroughgoing racist.”

The paper went ahead to review Achebe’s works – from Things Fall Apart to There was a Country, his final offering.

For BBC news, it was the celebration of the uncommon artistic achievements of a fecund literary soul.

Describing Achebe as one of Africa’s best known authors, the BBC, which Achebe worked for in the 1950s, and where he wrote his first and most popular work, said Achebe’s 1958 debut novel, Things Fall Apart, which dealt with the impact of colonialism in Africa, has sold more than 10 million copies.

“The writer and academic wrote more than 20 works-some fiercely critical of politicians and a failure of leadership in Nigeria,” the BBC noted.

It recalled that South African writer and Nobel laureate, Nadine Gordimer, referred to

Achebe as “father of modern African literature” in 2007 when she was among the judges to award him the Man Booker International Prize in honour of his literary career.

Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s first literary outing, the BBC recalled, has been translated into more than 50 languages and focuses on the traditions of Igbo society and the clash between Western and traditional values.

The organisation quoted a Nigerian author, Victor Ehikhamenor, as referring to Achebe as a global citizen.

“I met him on two occasions,” Ehikhamenor had told BBC’s Focus on Africa. “When you are with Achebe outside Nigeria, even when you are with him in Nigeria, you cannot claim him as a Nigerian because he’s a world citizen,” The BBC also quoted former South African president and anti-apartheid fighter, Nelson Mandela, as saying that “Prof. Achebe is a writer in whose company the prison walls fell down.”

The American National Public Radio (NPR) was also effusive in its praises on Achebe. NPR, in a report anchored by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, described Achebe as one of Africa’s greatest contemporary writers.

The medium wrote on its website: “Chinua Achebe who taught at colleges in the United States made literary history with his 1958 best-seller Things Fall Apart, a sobering tale about Nigeria at the beginning of its colonization.

‘Chinua Achebe who taught at colleges in the United States made literary

history with his 1958 best-seller Things Fall Apart, a sobering tale about Nigeria at the beginning of its colonization.’

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master “Achebe, 82, played a critical role in establishing post-colonial African literature and is known to students all over the continent for his seminal novel, Things Fall Apart.

Achebe’s masterpiece has graced countless school and college syllabuses and is translated into fifty languages worldwide. It is often cited as the most read book in modern African literature and has sold more than 12 million copies.

“Achebe also was an essayist and an outspoken critic of successive Nigerian governments, poor leadership and institutionalised corruption. He passed up national honours in protest. Achebe taught Africana Studies at Brown University and before that at Bard College in New York. Many of his fans feel that the award-winning writer was passed over for and should have won a Nobel prize.”

The Guardian of UK described Achebe as the “Nigerian author recognised for key role in developing African literature,” and “the Nigerian novelist seen by millions as the father of African literature.”

The respected newspaper quoted Simon Winder, publishing director at Penguin, as saying that “Chinua Achebe is the greatest of African writers and we are all desolate to hear of his death.”

Like most other foreign media, The Guardian did some review of Achebe’s works, especially Things Fall Apart, which it noted had sold more than 10 million copies around the world and has been published in 50 languages.

“The poet, Jackie Kay, hailed Achebe as “the grandfather of African fiction who lit up a path for many others,” wrote the newspaper.

Listing some of the laurels earned by the writer, The Guardian wrote that, “Achebe won the Commonwealth poetry prize for his collection-Christmas in Biafra, was a finalist for the 1987 Booker prize for his novel Anthills of the Savannah, and in 2007 won the Man Booker international prize. Chair of the judges on that occasion, Elaine Showalter, said he had ‘inaugurated the modern African novel’, while her fellow judge, the South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, said his fiction was ‘an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the postmodern breaking of sequence. Achebe is a joy and an illumination to read.’”

The newspaper also informed that Achebe had twice rejected the Nigerian government’s attempt to name him a Commander of the Federal Republic.

CBS News, on its part, said Chinua Achebe gave literary birth to modern Africa with Things Fall Apart.

“For decades, Achebe penned novels, stories and essays to rewrite and reclaim the history of his native country.

“His eminence worldwide was rivalled only by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison and a handful of others. Achebe was a moral and literary model for countless Africans and a profound influence on such American writers as Morrison, Ha Jin and Junot Diaz,” the CBS said on its website. It stated also that the writer helped define revolutionary change in his motherland.

“As a Nigerian, Achebe lived through and helped define revolutionary change in his country, from independence to dictatorship to the disastrous war between Nigeria and the breakaway country of Biafra in the late 1960s. He knew both the prestige of serving on government commissions and the fear of being declared an enemy of the state. He spent much of his adult life in the United States, but never stopped calling for democracy in Nigeria or resisting literary honours from a government he refused to accept.”

The CBS News also did a review of Achebe’s works, from Things Fall Apart to There was a Country.

“Achebe never did win the Nobel Prize, which many believed he deserved,” it wrote, “but in 2007 he did receive the Man Booker International Prize, a $120,000 honour for lifetime achievement.”

Achebe, the CBC news noted, served for years as editor of Heinemann’s “African Writer Series,” and also edited numerous anthologies of African stories, poems and

essays. In There Was a Country, he considered the role of the modern African writer.

“What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal,” the CBS News quoted Achebe as saying.

The Wall Street Journal also celebrated the literary and other lifetime accomplishments of the great author, in a report anchored by Drew Hinshaw.

The newspaper reported: “The first book of Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was nearly lost to history when a London typing service dismissed the handwritten manuscript sent from Africa as a joke.

“The joke was on them. Finally published in 1958, Things Fall Apart became an improbable success, announcing the Nigerian author, and Africa, on the world’s literary stage. It went on to sell more than 10 million copies in 50 languages.”

Simon Gikandi, the Kenyan author of Reading Chinua Achebe, told the Wall Street Journal that Things Fall Apart “literally invented African literature.”

“He started writing at a moment of great expectations, but his works contained this important cautionary note, that things could go wrong,” Gikandi told the newspaper.

The newspaper informed that “in 1975, he accomplished a feat rare even for authors: He knocked a classic, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, from the literary canon. The 1903 novel had been Europe’s most commonly read account of Africa, and bristled with depictions of Africans as half-human cannibals. In an influential series of lectures and essays, Mr. Achebe called the author “a thoroughgoing racist.” The charge stuck.

Steadily, Mr. Conrad’s share of university reading lists fell as Mr. Achebe’s rose.”

According to the newspaper, “Things Fall Apart” ranked as one of America’s most frequently taught high-school books.

“Yet its author played down praise. Twice, he rejected Nigeria’s second-highest honour, accusing the leaders who award the prize of trying ‘to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom.’

“When critics credited him with transforming American and European views of Africa, he abstained-he thought they hadn’t changed all that much.”

The CNN also added its voice to the plethora of praises on Chinua Achebe at his passing. In a report by Laura Smith-Spark and Faith Karimi, described Achebe as a literary icon.

“An author of more than 20 books, he was celebrated worldwide for telling African stories to a captivated world audience.

“He was also accorded his country’s highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award.

“Achebe is a major part of African literature, and is popular all over the continent for his novels, especially “Anthills of the Savannah,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987, and “Things Fall Apart.”

The newspaper recalled that Achebe once wrote an essay criticizing Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, as a racist for his depiction of Africans as savages.

Conrad’s popularity took a hit after the accusation-a testament to Achebe’s credibility.”

The Los Angeles Times said Things Fall Apart, presented European colonization from an African viewpoint and established Achebe as the patriarch of modern African literature.

The report by Robyn Dixon stated: “When Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe was in college, a European professor assigned “Mister Johnson,” which portrayed Africa as a land of grinning, shrieking savages. TIME magazine called it “the best novel ever written about Africa.”

“Achebe was outraged. He vowed that if someone as ignorant as Joyce Cary, the novel’s Anglo-Irish author, could write such a book, “perhaps I ought to try my hand at it.’

“The result was a masterpiece. Things

Fall Apart, his 1958 debut novel, changed the face of world literature by presenting the colonization of Africa from an African point of view. With more than 10 million copies sold in 50 languages, it established Achebe as the patriarch of modern African literature.

According to the LA Times, “Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian playwright, hailed Things Fall Apart as “the first novel in English which spoke from the interior of an African character rather than … as the white man would see him.”

The newspaper reported: “At 14, he was accepted into an elite boarding school in southeastern Nigeria, and as a young man he read so much that he was nicknamed “Dictionary.” He later won a university scholarship to study medicine.

“After a year, he switched to his passion, writing, and studied English, history and theology. That decision was to change his life and the landscape of African literature.

“Growing up, he had absorbed Western prejudices so thoroughly that, he later wrote, “I did not see myself as an African to begin with.” But in college, it dawned on him that he had given up too much of his identity and could not accept white authors’ portrayals of Africans as culturally inferior and subhuman.”

CBS News also heaped copious encomiums on the departed literary giant, calling him a celebrated writer that influenced a generation of writers from Africa to America.

It recalled that Achebe’s Things Fall Apart had a first printing of 2,000 copies, noting that its initial review in The New York Times ran less than 500 words.

“But the novel soon became among the most important books of the 20th century, a universally acknowledged starting point for postcolonial, indigenous African fiction, the prophetic union of British letters and African oral culture.

CBS News quoted the African scholar, Kwame Anthony Appiah as saying of Achebe: “It would be impossible to say how Things Fall Apart influenced African writing. It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or Pushkin influenced Russians.

Achebe didn’t only play the game, he invented it.”

According to the CBS News, “wheelchair bound in his latter years, Achebe would cite his physical problems and dis-

35 NEWS

‘He started writing at a moment of great expectations,

but his works contained this important cautionary note, that things could go wrong,’ placement from home as stifling to his imaginative powers.”

Also writing on Achebe’s transition, Skynews noted that apart from criticising misrule in Nigeria, Achebe also strongly backed the secessionist State of Biafra, which declared independence from Nigeria in 1967, sparking a civil war that killed around one million people and only ended in 1970.

“The conflict was the subject of a longawaited memoir he published last year, titled There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra,” the Skynews stated on its website.

It noted that in 2011, Achebe rejected a Nigerian government offer to honour him with one of the nation’s highest awards, at least the second time he had done so.

“But while he was widely lauded worldwide, Achebe never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, unlike fellow Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, who became the first African Nobel literature laureate in 1986.

“In an interview with The Paris Review, Achebe said that as his reading evolved, he slowly became aware of how books had cast Africans as savages.

“There is that great proverb that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realised that, I had to be a writer.”

36 Tribute

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

Deluge of condolences

Achebe

By BEIFOH OSEWELE he demise of legendary writer, Professor Chinua Achebe, has continued to elicit torrential condolence messages from across the country and people drawn from all walks of like.

Achebe passed on Thursday, March 21 in the United States at the age of 82. His remains would be laid to rest this weekend in his hometown, Ogidi, Anambra State.

ALHAJI ABDULFATAH AHMED, GOV. KWARA STATE Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, governor of Kwara State, in a message of condolence addressed to Mr. Peter Obi, governor of Anambra State said the demise of the novelist, poet and critic, who he described as “a great man of wonderful talent who inspired many a young men like me, in our schooling days” as unfortunate and sad.

“The death of Prof. Achebe at this period of our national history, when scholars and intellectuals capable of original thinking are fast becoming like an endangered species, is most devastating indeed...If Achebe could hear in the great beyond, we would say to him “thank you for walking this path”, for he inspired a generation of young Africans and changed the landscape of African and world literature.”

Ahmed said the late Achebe would be sorely missed as one of the rare men of letters who could chronicle our chequered history with the power of words.

ADAMS ALIYU OSHIOMHOLE, GOV. EDO STATE Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, Edo

T

Oshiomhole

Ahmed

Fashola

State governor on his part said with Achebe’s demise, Anambra State and, indeed, Nigeria has lost a major personality, who played a unique role in its modern history.

“His death will no doubt leave a big vacuum in the political, social, cultural and literary landscape of not only Nigeria and Africa but the entire world.”

He added that Achebe was, indeed, a remarkable personality who will always be remembered for his forthrightness and incisive interventions in national affairs.

GOVERNOR BABATUNDE RAJI FASHOLA, SAN, GOV. LAGOS STATE Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, of Lagos State noted that the late Professor Achebe was Anambra’s gift to the world, a towering African figure whose literary prowess took our Nigerian and African culture to far and distinct places.

“Indeed, for me by far his most significant legacy and one that speaks to his generosity of spirit, was the African Writers Series through which he helped Africa to tell its own stories.

Without a doubt, he was the soil that made many a flower bloom making his sobriquet “the father of modern African literature” a well-deserved one. I am saddened by the fact that did not realise our meeting in December 2012 would be our last.”

SENATOR IBIKUNLE AMOSUN, GOV. OGUN STATE Senator Ibikunle Amosun, Governor, Ogun State in a condolence letter to Governor, Obi, Amosun described Achebe’s death as a shared loss, even beyond the shores of Nigeria and prayed that God would grant the family and people of Anambra State the fortitude to bear this colossal loss.

The letter personally signed by Amosun read in part: “His death is a loss of monumental proportion and global dimension. The literary world has lost a master storyteller and teacher, a most potent and authentic voice of African people has quietened, and a courageous interventionist in the Nigerian nation has departed.”

But Amosun added that people like Prof. Achebe do not die;

they only transit from mortality to immortality.

“He lives on - in the pages of his timeless books with their powerful undated messages and interrogations, the generation of students he moulded, and the legacies of uncommon patriotism and unapologetic love of his people. This Global Brand will be sorely missed.

“We find solace in his own words as recorded in his Magnum Opus, Things Fall Apart: “Do not despair. I know you will not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”

EZE FESTUS ODIMEGWU, CHAIRMAN NATIONAL POPULATION COMMISSION The National Population Commission, NPC, also commiserated with Governor Obi and the people of Anambra State.

In a letter signed by its chairman, Eze Festus Odimegwu, NPC lauded Achebe as the man

Amosun

He lives on - in the pages of his timeless books with their powerful undated messages and interrogations, the generation of students he moulded, and the legacies of uncommon patriotism and unapologetic love of his people. who not only exported our history and cultural values to the rest of the world, but also stood for equity, fairness and justice.

“He demonstrated this at different times in his literary works by intervening in key national issues. As an accomplished academic, Chinua Achebe has mentored other talents that have made the country proud.”

NPC noted that Achebe lived a worthy life of service and commitment to humanity.

DAILY SUN

37

May 23, 2013

Interview

Rhythms of the Master

Prof. Wole Soyinya Nobel Laureate

Achebe’s place is assured wherever the art of the story-teller is celebrated obel laureate Wole Soyinka has described Africa’s most well known novelist,Chinua Achebe, as a storyteller who earned global celebration,adding,however,that those describing Achebe as “the father of African literature”were ignorant.

N

Do you recall where or how you first learned about the death of Professor Chinua Achebe? And what was your first reaction?

Where I heard the news? I was on the road between Abeokuta and Lagos. Who called first – BBC or a Nigerian journalist? Can’t recall now, since other calls followed fast and furious, while I was still trying to digest the news. My first reaction? Well, you know the boa constrictor – when it has just swallowed an abnormal morsel, it goes comatose, takes time off to digest. Today’s global media appears indifferent to such a natural entitlement. You are expected to supply that instant response. So, if – as was the case – my first response was to be stunned, that swiftly changed to anger.

Now, why was I stunned? I suspect, mostly because I was to have been present at his last Chinua Achebe symposium just a few months earlier – together with Governor Fashola of Lagos. Something intervened and I was marooned in New York. When your last contact with someone, quite recent, is an event that centrally involves that person, you don’t expect him to embark on a permanent absence. Also, Chinua and I had been collaborating lately on one or two home crises. So, it was all supposed to be ‘business as usual’. Most irrational expectations at one’s age but, that’s human presumptuousness for you. So, stunned I was, primarily, then media enraged!

Achebe was both a writer as well as editor for Heinemann’s African Writers Series.

How would you evaluate his role in the popularization of African literature?

I must tell you that, at the beginning, I was very skeptical of the Heinemann’s African Series. As a literary practitioner, my instinct tends towards a suspicion of “ghetto” classifications – which I did feel this was bound to be.

When you run a regional venture, it becomes a junior relation to what exists. Sri Lankan literature should evolve and be recognized as literature of Sri Lanka, release after release, not entered as a series. You place the books on the market and let them take off from there.

Otherwise there is the danger that you start hedging on standards. You feel compelled to bring out quantity, which might compromise on quality.

I refused to permit my works to appear in the series – to begin with. My debut took place while I was Gowon’s guest in Kaduna prisons and permission to publish The Interpreters was granted in my absence. Exposure itself is not a bad thing, mind you. Accessibility. Making works available – that’s not altogether negative. Today, several scholars write their PhD theses on Onitsha Market literature. Both Chinua and Cyprian Ekwensi – not forgetting Henshaw and others – published with those enterprising hous-

Soyinka es. It was outside interests that classified them Onitsha Market Literature, not the publishers.

They simply published. All in all, the odds come down in favour of the series – which, by the way, did go through the primary phase of sloppy inclusiveness, then became more discriminating.

Aig Higo – who presided some time after Chinua – himself admitted it.

In your view, what’s the nature of Achebe’s enduring influence and impact in African literature? And what do you foresee as his place in the canon of world literature?

Chinua’s place in the canon of world literature? Wherever the art of the story-teller is celebrated, definitely assured.

In interviews as well as in writing, Achebe brushed off the title of “father of African literature.” Yet, on his death, numerous media accounts, in Nigeria as well as elsewhere, described him as the father – even grandfather – of African literature. What do you think of that tag?

As you yourself have observed, Chinua himself repudiated such a tag – he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject. So, it is a tag of either literary ignorance or “momentary exuberance” – ala (Nadine) Gordimer – to which we are all sometimes prone. Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe etc. etc. literary scholars and consumers

think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity? It’s as ridiculous as calling WS father of contemporary African drama! Or Mazisi Kunene father of African epic poetry. Or Kofi Awoonor father of African poetry. Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.

As a short cut to such corrective, I recommend Tunde Okanlawon’s scholarly tribute to Chinua in The Sun (Nigeria) of May 4. After that, I hope those of us in the serious business of literature will be spared further embarrassment.

Let me just add that a number of foreign “African experts” have seized on this silliness with glee. It legitimizes their ignorance, their parlous knowledge, enables them to circumscribe, then adopt a patronizing approach to African literatures and creativity. Backed by centuries of their own recorded literary history, they assume the condescending posture of midwifing an infant entity. It is all rather depressing.

Following Achebe’s death, you and J.P. Clarke released a joint statement. In it, you both wrote: “Of the ‘pioneer quartet’ of contemporary Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced – one, of the poet Christopher Okigbo, and now, the novelist Chinua Achebe.” In your younger days as writers, would you say there was a sense among your circle of contemporaries – say, Okigbo, Achebe, Clarke, Flora Nwapa – of being engaged in a healthy rivalry for literary dominance? By the way, on the Internet, your joint statement was criticized for neglecting to mention any female writers –

say, Flora Nwapa – as part of that pioneering group. Was that an oversight?

This question – the omission of Flora Nwapa, Mabel Segun (nee Imoukhuede) – and do include D.O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, so it is not just a gender affair – is related to the foregoing, and is basically legitimate. JP and I were however paying a tribute to a colleague within a rather closed circle of interaction, of which these others were not members. Finally, and most relevantly, we are language users – this means we routinely apply its techniques. We knew what we were communicating when we placed “pioneer quartet” in – yes! – inverted commas. Some of the media may have removed them; others understood their significance and left them where they belonged.

Did you and Achebe have the opportunity to discuss his last book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, and its critical reception? What’s your own assessment of There Was a Country? Some critics charged that the book was unduly divisive and diminished Achebe’s image as a nationally beloved writer and intellectual. Should a writer suborn his witness to considerations of fame?

No, Chinua and I never discussed There was a Country. Matter of fact, that aborted visit I mentioned earlier would have been my opportunity to take him on with some friendly fire at that open forum, continuing at his home over a bottle or two, aided and abetted by Christie’s (Achebe’s wife, Professor Christie Achebe) cooking. A stupendous life companion by the way – Christie – deserves a statue erected to her for fortitude and care – on behalf of us all. More of that will emerge, I am sure, as the tributes pour in.

Unfortunately, that chance of a last encounter was missed, so I don’t really wish to comment on the work at this point. It is however a book I wish he had never written – that is, not in the way it was. There are statements in that work that I wish he had never made.

Your joint statement with Clarke balances the “sense of depletion” you felt over Achebe’s death with “consolation in the young generation of writers to whom the baton has been passed, those who have already creatively ensured that there is no break in the continuum of the literary vocation.” How much of the young Nigerian and African writers do you find the time to read?

Yes, I do read much of Nigerian/African literature – as much as my time permits. My motor vehicle in Nigeria is a mobile library of Nigerian publications – you know those horrendous traffic holdups – that’s where I go through some of the latest. The temptation to toss some out of the car window after the first few pages or chapter is sometimes overwhelming. That sour note conceded – and as I have repeatedly crowed – that nation of ours can boast of that one virtue – it’s bursting with literary talent! And the women seem to be at the forefront.

• Culled from Sahara Reporter

38 Interview

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

PROF. FEMI OSOFISAN

Achebe doesn’t need our monuments

By SOLA BALOGUN ne of Nigeria’s most celebrated authors and leader of the second generation of the country’s writers,Professor Femi Osofisan has described the late Professor Chinua Achebe as a genius who would forever live in the mind of his fans and readers worldwide.Osofisan was part of the formation of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) which incidentally was convened,and chaired by Achebe many years ago.He also, at one point,became president of the association and has since been an advocate of quality literature which the likes of Achebe and Soyinka pioneered.

In this interview with Daily Sun,Osofisan paid glowing tributes to his master in the art of creative writing,noting specifically that writers like Achebe have indeed written their names in gold before dying:

O

Can you reflect on your meeting/encounter with the late Prof, noting his qualities, his mannerisms and achievements?

I first met him some thirty years ago, when we were about to form ANA. He had invited us to Nsukka to discuss the project. I was very young then, in visible awe of his achievement; I could not have been critical of anything he said or did. All I remember from the encounter, as with others afterwards, was that he was full of humour and geniality, an elder brother who spoke in a soft, charming voice. There was always laughter in his eyes; and he had so many stories. With him you laughed a lot, and you learnt a lot. Our last meeting was when I was President of ANA, with the now late Adah Ugah as my secretary. We succeeded in bringing him to the annual convention in Calabar, to the part of it which we had transferred to the Obudu cattle ranch, long before it became the famous tourist camp that Governor Donald Duke has now transformed it into. There Achebe spent the night with us, and read to writers around the lit hearth, with the logs burning and sparking, whispering along. It was like a scene out of the Arabian Nights! For me that has been an unforgettable, magical experience.

As a distinguished alumnus of UI yourself, what stories did you hear about him and some of his friends/contemporaries when he was a student?

No, there were no specific stories about him when we came in. At least I didn’t hear any. I was not in the English department, remember?

And this was, you know, almost two decades after. When, later, I was sufficiently curious to ask, the stories were all about Christopher Okigbo. All we heard about Achebe was that he edited the departmental magazine.

Has he influenced you and your own generation of writers in any way?

Obviously yes indeed! In many ways you cannot even begin to quantify. And not just my generation, but also his own and all the generations that have followed. In fact, as long as we continue to use English, Achebe’s influence will continue to weigh heavily on all the writers that may come up, and not just in Nigeria or Africa alone. From the tributes that continue to pour in, you can see how influential his works have been on writers and readers all over the world. He taught us non-English natives how to use English in our own way, and still remain ourselves and retain our dignity. He made us remember that we black people also have stories to tell, stories that have just as much value as those of others, and perhaps more validity in fact with regard to our own circumstances. And he himself, by telling the stories so well and with such simple but irresistible power, he forced the world out there to drop its customary, hypocritical blindness to listen and take notice of us.

Sometimes, you have reacted to his views and that of Prof Soyinka’s, based on their recreation of the past in their works, what do

Osofisan

Achebe you have to say today?

My reactions were varied, and not as antagonistic or violent as erroneously alleged sometimes. First, I was against the merely exotic in their works—you know, that part that just evokes the past uncritically, not to say, indulgently. Things Fall Apart, for instance, is filled with anthropological data, which sometimes impede the flow of the narration. You may not feel this at first, but it is there; customs and practices being explained again and again ad nauseam, the way you would do when talking to strangers or to an idiot. And of course that was true: the readers that the writers aimed at in those days were mostly the white foreign audience in London or elsewhere. But if you are Nigerian, familiar already with these customs, you cannot but lose your patience at such moments. Fortunately however, such is the magnetic pull of the story that Achebe is narrating, so skilful his control of dramatic effects, that you forgive and move along. In other writers, however, particularly those who sought to imitate him, this alliance with exotica is so conspicuous, so awkward, that it is an embarrassment. There are other issues I cannot pursue here because of space—issues such as their portrayal of females, which was undeniably sexist, patriarchal. I attacked that, as well as their heroic, but inevitably morbid, moralism. With Soyinka, it was curious, since this tragic world-

view was in direct opposition to his own constant, fearless confrontations with state power, and not even for any personal interest but on behalf of all of us! No one we know has been so unrelenting, so dependably courageous, in the fight for human rights! And yet, look at a play like Madmen and Specialists! However let us not needlessly pursue the point. Yes, I say needless because, later in their careers, you could see a discernible change in their works, a distinct signal that they had been listening attentively to their critics, even if they would not admit it. In their most recent works, you will notice that women are no longer invisible or helpless or mute; and the human being is given more power than the gods in the determination of his own destiny. So what has happened is that some kind of affinity has gradually developed between our generations and in our works.

How do you react to the view that Achebe was robbed of the Nobel prize?

I would laugh at that. What do you mean “robbed”? Does the Prize belong to him or to any of us? Achebe didn’t get it, and that was most unfortunate, given his talent and achievement. But just think of the astonishing number of great writers who didn’t also! Or some who were given, but rejected it! Let us not be unduly sentimental. The Nobel Prize is immensely prestigious, but not getting it should not mean the end of the world. For years I was one of those who kept nominating Achebe, making sure his name was always there for consideration. Until I came to realize that the effort was futile and he would not get it. Did that stop the sale of his books or diminish his readership?

Has it reduced his stature in any way? We like to be unreasonable, to exaggerate things to the point of ridicule. We think that, just because Soyinka has won it, Achebe too must be given, not stopping to reflect in fact that Soyinka’s case could be a reason even for another Nigerian not getting it so soon. Or was the prize created solely for Nigerians? If we are really serious, the question we should be asking ourselves is this—why can’t Nigeria have its own Nobel Prize, even a super-Nobel Price, given the humongous amount we rake daily from oil?

What stops any of our billionaires from establishing a similar Prize that the whole world would be rushing to compete for every year?

Please give Achebe a rest on this matter.

What is your view on his last book, There was a Country? Some people say he poured his tribal venom too much through the book?

It wasn’t so much a tribal venom. It only came out like that. It was his great sense of frustration at the failure of the nation. And I think you can add to that his physical disability, which forced upon him a life of exile, far from his beloved native land. He was deeply embittered, like many of his contemporaries, like many of us also who are growing old, that all his youthful aspirations about his homeland have come virtually to nought. In coming to terms with that, it was natural that he would turn particularly to the Biafra war, and especially the aborted dreams envisaged in the idealist Ahiala Declaration that he helped prepare.

Clearly, given the leading role he played in that unsuccesful war, he had never forgotten or forgiven. For him, it represented one moment that he believed his social and political vision could have been fulfilled. Like Ojukwu he just never saw nor accepted the reality of the war that people like Zik saw early enough, that it could not be won with those odds. He would not accept that neither grievances nor grief are sufficient to win a battle. He would have fought on— indeed, he did fight on, in his own way, with his pen. For a genius who kept pointing to the many-sidedness of stories, insisting that you cannot stay at one point to fully view a masquerade, it was surprising how blind he himself proved to be in this book to other points of view, to the wounds of others than his own people’s. It is strange that he, who knew Okonkwo and Obierika so well, who gave us the drama of Ezeulu and his people, that this same author would forget to see that no side in a conflict can be rightly assigned absolute innocence or total guilt. This to me was the most obvious limitation of the book, that is, the deliberate silence on other stories, the refusal to acknowledge other victims or other talents outside his own ethnic circle, or to mention the numerous reconciliations that have been made since the war, even if still incomplete. Who but the envious or demented would deny for instance that the Igbos are talented, pushful, adventurous and nomadic? But what else but extreme narcissism would make an Igbo conclude that his people are the only ones who are so endowed in the country of 350 ethnic groups? Did the hideous pogrom in the north just begin, without provocation, and were there no Hausa Muslims who dared, even at the risk of their own lives, to rescue their Igbo friends? What of the Yoruba victims trapped between the two antagonistic forces? Then, if we were to accept Achebe’s sudden discovery that Yoruba hate the Igbos, how would we explain the fact that, in Ibadan where I live, entire quarters have been acquired by Igbo traders? Or that, within my family alone, we have at least three Igbo inlaws, both male and female? Achebe is a powerful writer no doubt, but his is fortunately not the only account on the war. There is Adichie’s book, for instance, which presents a more balanced story. Or Akachi Ezeigbo’s. Or Onuora Nzekwu’s. Those who are angry with Achebe should just go and read these other accounts, and forgive him. He was a genius, but a genius who was also human, capable of his own weaknesses and prejudices. And if you read this last book of his with the awareness of these gaps, and what you will find is a fascinating and disturbing book, written by a great patriot in pain, grieving for a homeland lost to perfidious bandits.

How would you want him, and perhaps writers of his status remembered?

Such a question is already beyond my wishes, I’m afraid, beyond the wishes of any of us.

Writers like Achebe don’t need us or our monuments. They have prepared their own enduring testaments. The books they leave behind will outlive all of us. Anything we add is just for our vanity, believe me.

DAILY SUN

39

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

Interview

DR. JERRY AGADA •EX-ANA PRESIDENT

With or without Nobel Prize, he was the father of African literature •His legacy is unquantifiable

By KEMI YESUFU, Abuja

D

r. Jerry Agada is a former Minister of State, Education, and the immediate past national president of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). He is also a prolific writer whose books have inspired younger authors and readers alike. In this interview, he speaks on the Achebe legacy and why he thinks the late literary icon is the undisputed father of African literature.

Excerpts: What does Chinua Achebe mean to you as a writer?

Professor Achebe is an icon and a remarkable individual who took the African story to the world. He means a lot to me as a person and a writer. In 1981, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and some other authors, met in Anambra State where they founded the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Professor Achebe served as the first president of ANA. And you know that I served as the 9th president of the association. So, you will understand, when I say that his death is a personal loss.

How would you describe the Achebe legacy for ANA? His ANA legacy is unquantifiable.

First and foremost, he founded the association. Secondly, the association is still in existence and waxing stronger by the day. This is a legacy that needs little or no explanation. For us in ANA, Achebe's personality looms large and we believe that he lives on though he has transited from earthly existence to the spiritual realm.

Did he influence your style of writing?

He influenced me in the sense that in my books, I refer to the culture of my people. For me, Achebe's Things

Fall Apart set the standard for the propagation of the Nigerian and African culture through literature.

Achebe used Things Fall Apart to fight the imposition of the Western culture on Africa. He used the book to show the world that Africans have cultures that they are proud of. Anytime, I write about my hometown Orokam in Ogbabibo LGA, Benue State, Professor Achebe comes to my mind.

Each time I write about my place, I remember that he did the same for his hometown, Ogidi, the Ibo people, Nigeria and the African continent.

What do you like most about Achebe's works?

I like his simplicity. There is no reader who picks any of Achebe's books and complains that he cannot understand what he is reading. Achebe was never into the complex use of English. He kept things simple.

Which of his books is your favorite?

The point is that, his works followed a certain pattern. Books like No Longer At Ease and A Man of The People, follow a similar pattern, but none is as iconic as Things Fall Apart which generations of Nigerian students read. So, for me, Things Fall Apart is my favorite. The book has been translated into 50 languages and there are few books that have made such an impact.

You said that Professor Achebe's books have a common thread that runs through them and his thematic preoccupation centered on the Ibo culture.

Do you relate with his stories as someone from Benue State, North Central Nigeria?

Oh yes. It is important that you look at it from the angle that though Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups, culturally, we are interwoven. When you read Achebe's books or any book whose

How the master influenced my writing

Dr. Agada author writes about his culture, you unconsciously compare what he's writing about with your own culture. The writer's culture might not be exactly the same with yours, but you are likely to draw similarities. Like, my hometown, Orokam, is a stone throw from Nsukka, which isn't far from Ogidi where Achebe's comes from.

Orokam's landscape is similar to that of Nsukka and Ogidi, our villages also share other similarities. So, I can relate with the themes in his books.

What do you think Achebe will be remembered for?

Like I mentioned earlier, his image looms large in Africa and on the world stage. Without a doubt, he will constantly be remembered as the father of African literature. It doesn't matter that he didn't win the Nobel Prize for Literature, he can still win it posthu-

mously and even if he doesn't, he is undoubtedly the father of African literature.

His last book, There Was A Country… generated controversy, which led to some people saying that it was anti-climax to an epochal life, especially as he passed on not too long after its release.

As a writer from a North Central State, what is your take on the book and do you think it alienated him from his admirers from other parts of the country?

The book might have been controversial. Some people may say that it made his passage dramatic. But I liken his passage, coming after the debate on the book, to what Shakespeare described as heavens blazing forth in the death of a prince. Achebe is royalty in the literary world and the intellectual

Alkali

–Zaynab Alkali, first published northern female author

By KEMI YESUFU, Abuja

B

orn in Tura-Wazila, Borno State, renowned novelist and poet, Hajiya Zaynab Alkali is the first published female author from Northern Nigeria. Outstanding works such as The Stillborn, The Virtuous Woman, Cobwebs & Other Stories, have earned her iconic status in the literary world. In this interview, Hajiya Alkali shares her views on the works

of Professor Chinua Achebe. She also speaks on his influences on her writing and what he will be remembered for.

How would you describe the writings (style) of Professor Achebe?

Professor Achebe’s style is uniquely his own.

Achebe’s style is highly original.

Many critics and admirers alike have described Achebe’s works as being directed at correcting the wrong perception about the

African culture. Do you agree with the notion that his books promoted the African culture?

Sure. My favourite quote about Achebe is by his contemporary, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, who says, “Achebe has succeeded in giving human dignity to his African characters...his task as a writer is of helping his society to regain its belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self denigration.” Achebe’s books, besides promoting African culture, have undoubtedly given us

circles. So, the great debate arising from his last book celebrated his final journey on earth. Secondly, I have told people that tagged him tribalistic that there is nothing wrong with Professor Achebe writing about his people and their culture. When people complain that he writes about the Ibo culture and I ask them “Why not?” I don't see anything condemnable about his last book.

Even in mathematics, you solve problems by starting with the known and then delve into the unknown. Should Achebe have written about Beroms or the people in Kaduna and leave his own people's story which he knows?

He wrote his last book based on what he saw during the war. People are entitled to their opinion, but as far as I am concerned, Achebe's last book was his own account of events. He simply wrote about what he knows.

(Africans) a pride of place in the literary world.

Did Achebe’s books influence the thematic choices and writing style of northern authors who came after him?

I do not know what books influence the thematic choices and writing style of Northern writers who came after Achebe. I can only speak for myself. His use of proverbs and the sayings of his Ibo people influenced my style of writing, especially in my first book, The Stillborn. The effect was great!

What do you think the literary world will miss the most about Achebe?

The literary world will miss a master storyteller and a great artist.

As a celebrated writer yourself, how best can Nigeria immortalise Achebe?

Achebe immortalised himself through his books. There’s no greater immortalisation than living in the minds of men for generations, even yet unborn. How was Shakespeare immortalised by his people?

Is Achebe one of your favourite writers?

Yes, I am a rural woman. I set almost all my novels in the rural areas. I like Achebe’s fictional community, like the manner in which the characters interact with each other, and commune with nature.

There’s a kind of sacredness, an aura of spirituality that is hardly present in the fast city life.

Do you think Prof. Achebe deserves the “Father of African” literature title?

African literature is far much older than our beloved Professor Achebe. Let’s not forget the age of our Oral Literature. I believe Prof. Chinua Achebe to be “The Father of Modern African Literature.”

40 Interview

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

Prof. Bede Okigbo

The Achebe I knew

By ALVAN EWUZIE

P

rofessor Bede Okigbo, Nigeria’s foremost Agronomist and head of the famous Okibgo family in Ojoto in Anambra State was Chinua Achebe’s classmate at Government College, Umuahia. His cousins, the late Pius and Christopher were also close to Achebe. In his last book, There was a country… Achebe eulogised Chris Okigbo, an outstanding poet. Here, the head of the Okigbo Family, Bede, speaks on the late Chinua Achebe. The 86-year-old professor has fond memories of the departed icon-his late friend and schoolmate.

Excerpts: When did you meet Chinua Achebe?

I entered Government College Umuahia in July 1943 but in 1944, I met Achebe because he entered a year later, although we ended up in the same class because he was promoted from his own class to our own after the first year.

What was the reason for the promotion?

The reason was that when the Second World War was on, Government College, Umuahia, was closed and they dedicated the place as prison for all Germans in West Africa. So, in 1942, they decided to reopen it and removed the German prisoners. They decided that it would not be very appropriate to start reopening it with totally new students. So, they sent the first batch to Kings College. The second batch was about 18 students. We were admitted in July to make up students that were in class two. That means there were two classes, A and B; that is, those that were in Kings College who had stayed six months, and those who came later in July. So, there was a change. When Umuahia was opened, W.A. Simpson, who was the Education Officer in Onitsha, became the principal but when he left in 1943, they sent two people, E.C Hicks and another person from Maleya. So, he said that it would be uneconomical to have two classes of less than 20 students each.

And the same class anyway?

Yes, the same class. So, he gave an exam, and after the exam, they weeded out those who were weak. Achebe did very well in his own class and was promoted to our class, and we graduated the same time. The other thing, which I think Achebe mentioned in his book, is that in Umuahia, they introduced what they called Text Book Act. Every Tuesday, after classes, if you are found reading a textbook, you are punished.

So, they sent 10 literature textbooks to each class and you read them. At the end of the year, they have an exam for each class on the 10 books they read, and the result is posted in the lobby.

They arranged the result according to the number of marks you scored, such that sometimes, a student who was in

class one may have over 90 percent and a person who was in class five or two will score below him in the list at the lobby.

The reading was for everybody?

Each class has its own literature text but the exam result is posted according to what you scored in the literature you read, assigned to your class, so that a person who is in a senior class could find himself below a person who is in a junior class. And that could be very shameful because they would put it in the lobby where everybody (students and visitors alike) would see it.

So, that made people to work hard?

Yes, it made people to work hard.

Again, the other thing that happened was in 1947, when they insisted that Government College was mainly to get people to go to higher college, like Yaba, and not for school certificate.

You go to government class six. We were not allowed to take school certificate. But we wanted to leave; we didn’t want to go to class six. So, we went on strike. And they allowed us take the exam. We had 21 students who wrote the exam, and 20 passed with 15 making grade one. Again, as Achebe indicated in his book, he was not so much interested in Cricket like some of us.

We were playing Cricket, Rugby and others, but he used to read a lot of books by Dickens and other authors in the library. While others were playing games, he would go to read. He did more of that than playing games.

When he now joined you and you were in the same class, what kind of student was he?

He was a quiet gentleman and Umuahia had so much discipline. For example, if you fought, they (the authorities) would order you to enter the ring and do the boxing until you collapse or one person beats the other person silly. But Achebe was such a nice gentleman; he didn’t quarrel, he didn’t fight anybody. But in things like essays and other things, he was excellent in them.

Okigbo From your hindsight, were there signs at that time that he might end up a writer?

No, and let me give you an example.

When we were growing, before you go, I will show you something; I gave the first Ahiajioku lecture and he was introducing; he did the citation for me. And he showed what happened to him; he explained what happened when we left Umuahia, because he was very good in many subjects. He entered for Medicine and after one year, he left medicine and went into English and Classics. He said so during the Ahiajioku lecture. The way he said it, he said I remained in agriculture because I was interested in biology all the time. He, himself, went into medicine and later changed it while I remained in the same line.

Did you cross paths with Achebe when you were working?

We didn’t cross paths much until during the war. We came back during the war and that was where I started meeting him again because they wrote news.

And that time, there was one Okokon Ndem who was in the news section of

the Biafra Radio but I was the coordinator of the Biafra land army. When the war started, I was in the food production directorate but I was later transferred from Nsukka to Umudike. What happened was that when the federal troops bombed Afougiri market and killed about 500 people in 1968, Biafra launched the land army and I was made the coordinator and then sent to Umuchakwa. When I was at Umuchakwa, my accountant was K.U. Kalu who later became chairman of Union Bank and the military man in charge was one Major Alele. We relocated to one school in Umuchakwa and we were training people in emergency food production section and also in camp base. And the interesting thing was that Mrs. Adebimpe Ike was my land army representative at Aguata. She was already married to Chukwuemeka Ike and was on the Biafran side during the war. We were there until federal troops chased us out of Umuahia.

Biafran troops had a refinery at Ovim.

Let’s talk about your cousin, Christopher Okigbo. Achebe mentioned him profusely. They were like soul mates. What do you know about them?

What I may say as Achebe mentioned in the book is that Christopher was very good in cricket and he was an allrounder. He was somebody who didn’t fear anybody. So, when they went over to Ibadan; I didn’t go to Ibadan. The reason was that when Ibadan started, my uncle indicated that he was not in a position to pay for me and also for his son. So, when he went into Ibadan, he met Achebe. But when Achebe started science, he didn’t associate so much with Christopher, Soyinka, Ike and others as he did when he changed his subject after the first year. He started to do English and Classics, and from that time, they were under the same lecturer doing the same subjects and showing interest in literature with Soyinka, J.P. Clarke and others.

DAILY SUN

41

May 23, 2013

Tribute

Rhythms of the Master

Chinua Achebe: Eagle on Iroko

Achebe

‘I know of no African writer, living or dead – and few writers from anywhere – whose single book has acquired the universal fame or achieved the global impact of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart’

By OKEY NDIBE okeyndibe@gmail.com

C

hinua Achebe was at once an extraordinarily unique celebrity and uniquely anti-celebrity. If this claim suggests a contradiction, I’d argue that none exists. Invoking the famous opening lines of his most famous novel, one can say, Achebe was well known throughout the seven continents and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements as a writer and cultural warrior. As a young man of twenty-eight, he had brought honor to Africa by helping tell its story, frequently distorted by the scribes of empire.

Achebe used the resources of memory and history to write novels and works that chronicled our experience and probed our predicaments. Taken together, his five novels, collection of short stories, essays, war memoir and poems constitute a veritable spectrum of Nigeria’s astonishing political biography. Not only was he steeped in history, he was also a prominent figure and player in historical events.

Up till the very end, he confessed to being somewhat mystified that his books – especially the first one – would achieve their awe-inspiring reputation. That sense of surprise did not emerge from diffidence. He was clear that the story he had to tell – that

of Africa’s encounter with imperial Europe, with the deep and lasting consequences of that event – he was aware of that story’s absolute importance. But that the story would then seize the world’s imagination as it did, that it would catapult him into legendary company, was an outcome that he never imagined.

His life was not an unbroken streak of cheer, fortune and success. He had interruptions of scars and misfortunes. The Biafran War claimed the lives of some of his closest relatives and friends, among them the poet Christopher Okigbo with whom he collaborated to found a publishing house. One of the small consolations in the timing of his death was that it happened a few months after he completed work on There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra. In it, he not only bore witness to the most tragic chapter in Nigeria’s troubled history, but also offered his countrymen and women an opportunity to begin a conversation around the vexed, unsettled issue of their national identity. In my view, that opportunity was frittered away, but that’s a different subject.

Few remarked on the fact – and mystery – that Achebe died on March 21, virtually on the twenty-third anniversary of the automobile accident that left him paraplegic.

Achebe’s response to that accident was stoic, and wholly in character. When a group of my friends and I interviewed him in 2008, he told us of a friend who visited him in London shortly after the terrible accident.

The friend asked Achebe, “Why you?”

Achebe left the man speechless by asking if he knew of others who were more deserving of the injury.

In 2010, the trustees of the Gish Prize described Achebe as a writer whose work had contributed to making the world a more beautiful place. In response to a confetti of praises that rained on him on the day, Achebe stunned the audience by calling himself “a lucky man.” Many in that packed hall who heard him came away with a renewed sense of our sheer luck to have had such an imperishable spirit dwell among us.

Achebe, who spent his last four years as the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of Africana Studies and Literary Studies at Brown University, was instantly recognizable around the world. Yet, to encounter him in person was to meet modesty and self-effacement personified. He was at once the owner of words, and yet extremely prudent in his use of words.

Sometimes people seemed to wait at his feet, beseeching speech. He often seemed bemused by all the attention, indifferent to his great fame.

I’ve said it elsewhere that Achebe was the least waster of words that I ever knew. Put a different way, he possessed an amazing sense of economy in relation to words. He was not one to crave a platform for egoistic reasons; he was never in a hurry to demand the microphone, and he was one of the world’s greatest geniuses of the short, meaningful speech. For the better part of fifty years, he was one of the world’s most venerated literary stars. Yet, he never set out to achieve that status or to earn the halo and cult that came with it. Thankfully, he was too self-possessed to permit the fuss around him to reshape – in other words, misshape – him.

To be in his presence when he spoke was an event in itself. His hands gently kneaded the air as the words came out, slowly, sometimes in no more than a whisper. It was as if he weighed each word, rolled it on his tongue, before uttering it – the better to

decide that it was the clearest word he could use – and the exact word that best conveyed what he had in mind.

His first novel, Things Fall Apart, is so widely known that it’s often one of the top topics to come up when Nigerians meet people from different parts of the world. One of my favorites was an American who told me he’d read Things Fall Apart. Then, he asked, “Did you know that guy, Okonkwo?”

He pronounced the protagonist’s name as if it contained twice the number of syllables.

I know of no African writer, living or dead – and few writers from anywhere – whose single book has acquired the universal fame or achieved the global impact of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Like its author, that novel is a marvel of luminosity, its complex drama often masked by the plain-spoken, doggedly unpretentious, seductive style of its narration. The few contemporary novels that could be mentioned in the same breath – say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude or Toni Morrison’s Beloved – appear to derive their cultural funds and literary powers from invoking a magical tableau and fantastical flow of events (in the case of One Hundred Years of Solitude) or – as it pertains to the second novel – through, one, the deployment of an intensely emotional linguistic register and, two, an unflinching dramatic representation of the peculiar horrors of New World racism.

The particular power and appeal of Achebe’s writing lie, in large part, in the late author’s insistence on clarity. For him, it was a matter both of stylistic choice and ethical preference. Though inhabiting a time and culture where obfuscation was trendy, he adopted a clear, uncluttered style that was not crusted up by meaning-choking verbiage. That vein suited Achebe’s character, and accorded with Malcolm X’s famous admonition to “make it plain.”

I remember asking the late Esiaba Irobi, a student of Achebe’s at the University of Nigeria, to describe the experience – the atmosphere – of an Achebe classroom.

Esiaba began by talking about professors who electrified the classroom with their sense of drama and exuberant style. Then, he spoke of Achebe as a priest-like figure in the classroom. Here’s a paraphrase of Esiaba’s words: “You leave Achebe’s class feeling as if you’re an initiate and have just gone through a spiritual experience.”

I didn’t have the fortune of being Achebe’s student. Even so, in the thirty years that I knew him, he came to represent to me a teacher in the deepest, broadest sense. I treasured the countless times I visited his home in Rhode Island to talk about Nigeria, about Africa’s woes and her promise, about US and world affairs, and – especially – about literature. He was a soft-spoken man, his priest-like mien accentuated by that quiet smile that would often light up his face, and his sparing manner of his speech.

Sometimes, a name seems fitted to a man’s character. The author of Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, No Longer At Ease, Chike and the River, Home and Exile, Beware, Soul Brother – to name some – was fittingly named ChinualumoguMay my Chi fight on my behalf. Later in life, he was given – or rather earned – the praise name of Ugonabo. He was like two Eagles; and he was perched on the Iroko tree.

Dr.Okey Ndibe is a Professor at Brown University,United States of America.

42 Reminiscence

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

Achebe and Umuahia

Recollections of an Old Boy side over the liquidation of the noble ideas and concrete achievements of those who could be truly called our heroes past.

The best tribute Umuahians can pay to our own Chinua Achebe is to vow to go back to the basics, as they say, and bring back the glories of the past. It is not too late for us to come together to design ways of making Umuahia the center of excellence in character and learning envisioned and actualized by Rev. Fisher. The first stanza of our school anthem goes thus:

–By C. ONYI ANYAOHA s the world prepares to bid the final farewell to the literary colossus of our time, Chinua Achebe, it is pertinent to galvanize a particular constituency of his that meant so much to him in life into responsive action. Government College, Umuahia, Nigeria’s version of Eton College, was where the literary guru had his secondary school education.

Achebe was so attached to his Alma Mater that even when he had the crippling crash that left him in physical limbo, he had occasions to relate to the yearnings and expirations of the school, even if in informal terms. It is not surprising why that was so. Umuahia (as the school is referred to) was a place of hope. Umuahia was a fountain from which the intellectually thirsty drank volumes. It had the eclectic quality of imbuing even the basest of mortals with refinement unassailable. From all parts of Nigeria, even the Cameroons, and particularly from the then Eastern region boys came from diverse backgrounds and cultural persuasions to be part of an academic revolution engineered by Reverend Robert Fisher as an eternal service to humanity. Rev. Fisher was not cast in the usual mould of the colonial snob who saw in the Africans a brood of savages fit only for half hearted training before being deployed for menial engagements for the enhancement of his or her majesty’s agenda.

Rev. Fisher was a thoroughbred Anglican Priest who saw humanity as created in God’s own image, and deserving of respectable treatment. Strong foundations in academic excellence and moral rectitude were laid by the founding fathers, and up to my own generation those foundations endured.

The result was manifest in terms of producing men who have shone brightly in the firmament of their diverse callings. Apart from Achebe, the literary world is tapping from the seminal works of Umuhaians ( as the students are called) such as Chukwuemeka Ike, Elechi Amadi, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Ken Saro Wiwa etc. The academic world is bestrode also by notable Umuhaians such as professors Laz Ekwueme (Nigeria’s first professor of music), Ben Enwonwu ( the renowned sculptor) Ephraim Okon and others too numerous for mention.

The oil and gas sector of Nigeria’s economy was developed by the sublime inputs of Ben Osuno, Lolomari Chamberlain Oyibo, Edmund Dakoru etc, all Umuhahians. The top echelon of the civil service was peopled by the like of Sir Jerry Enyeazu (the man who formed Enugu Rangers) Moses Udebiuwa, Vincent Aniagor etc. In polititics, the Menakayas, the Okwesilieze Nwodo’s, the Vin Ogbulafor’s, Achike Udenwa and Orji Uzor Kalu, loom large, among others. The finest crop of officers of the early Nigerian army had Umuahians such as Alex Madiebo, Eze, Tim Onwuatuegwu etc. In Medicine, Law, Engineering and the others the story is the same. Suffice if to say that the pantheon is overflowing with mortals of immense attributes garnered from

A

We Lift our voice to thee, o Lord To thee we sing with one accord To grant us through thy son adored The will to shine as one

Achebe the pedagogic vision of a school that was established to enrich the world.

The essential genealogy of Umuahia is defined in terms of the ancient, the medieval and the modern. Each stage of the evolution has done it’s best to sustain a mantra of perching high on the totem pole. However, whereas the earlier stages enjoyed a climate of conscious effort at making the best out of men, the present stage is in dire straits, reeling under a very suffocating climate of decay and abandonment.

A visit to Umuahia in its present state leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.

Umuahia now reflects the pillage and decimation of values characteristic of our present education sector. Gone are the days of excellence and dignity. Gone are the days of discipline as the bedrock for the making of a complete man. One hardly hears of very spectacular feats by students of Government College, Umuahia, that confounded the entire academic landscape. The school has sunk into ordinariness, overwhelmed by a deliberate conspiracy to take the shine off.

The rain started beating the pride of the eastern region when policy somersaults encouraged a system whereby entrance into such schools was no longer

through rigorous and competitive process, but by a wholesale admission of just anybody. The school became localized as against the earlier practice of having the best chosen from all parts of the region and beyond. With localization, the boarding system took the back seat, and, therefore, the school does not just have the entire students within its compass and radar. The very beautiful dormitories, the well kept gardens and hedges, the lawns of old that ensured aesthetic splendor were allowed to collapse and rot away in a manner akin to the chaos that has engulfed almost every part of our milieu.

However, it is no use dwelling much on the blame game. All have sinned in a conspiracy of silence in the face of pernicious degradation. As it is with Umuahia, so it is with other schools of equal pedigree. The symptomatic festering of the toga of a failed generation stares us all in the face. Some of the old boys of means would rather send their children overseas to study in schools that, in comparison to Umuahia of old, would pale into insignificance; instead of rising to the challenge of maintaining the excellence of yore. After all, some of them had been in positions of putting the school back to life. They chose to pre-

There was among the old boys, Achebe inclusive, a policy of annual homecoming which saw them coming into school to spend time. That afforded the opportunity of engaging the extant system in dialogue on how best to go about things and to ensure that the glory never departed. That practice of homecoming was instrumental in many ways to the maintaining of standards up to the 70’s and 80’s. The challenge is now on the renascent generation to be responsible and responsive enough; to muster the courage and re-launch Umuahia to winning ways, by doing those things that worked in the past. We must shine as one to propel and appropriate our diverse energy in a synergy of actions and aspirations. The global benefits of technology are at our disposal to reach out, communicate, commune, and act.

Even in death, Achebe would continue to speak to the world in his eternal works. The eulogies are still pouring in, extolling the nobility of a man who saw Nigeria, Africa, and, indeed, the world in the past, present and future. In every modern society, together with those of remote and proximate antiquity, there is an Okonkwo that embodies the interplay between arête and hubris. Things would always fall apart if the forces of evil are allowed to prevail and assail the finer virtues of existentialism. The world will never be at ease until there is a reasonable return to Godliness as opposed to the aberration of an alien and familiar people clutching their gods of greed, deceit and wickedness. Similarly, unless the trouble with Nigeria is addressed by the resolve of the leadership to do the needful by acts of patriotism and incorruptible transparency in the interest of the greater number, the cataclysmic repercussion could be such that centrifugal forces would point at Nigeria from afar and say there was a country.

“The good are oft interred with their bones”, so let it be with Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, the quintessential Umuahian. Even in death, Umuahians are saying. In Unum Luceant. Good night our worthy ambassador, our past school captain and our visionary icon of world acclaim.

C. Onyii Anyaoha is an Umuahian of the 1974-79 set. onyianyaoha@yahoo.com

DAILY SUN

43

May 23, 2013

Review

Rhythms of the Master

The writings of Chinua Achebe

By Dr. ADETOKUNBO PEARSE

I

t is incontrovertible that the fame of Things Fall Apart is well deserved; built on solid ground as we would say in Achebean Lexicon. But as Achebe himself had cautioned on several occasions, Things Fall Apart through his first novel, is by no stretch of the imagination his only work. Four more novels followed the publication of TFA in 1958, No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah, (1987). And although his last novel, Anthills of the Savannah was written some 25 years before the world heard from him again in 2012, with his. There was a country: a personal History of Biafra, Achebe was quite a prolific writer. His versatility is evidenced in the other genres in which he published, poetry: Collected Poems, Christmas in Biafra, Beware Soul Brother (b) Short stories: The Sacrificial Egg and other stories, Chike and the River, Girls at war and other stories, The Flute, The Drum, How the Leopard Got His Claws (with John Iroagonachi), Another Africa (with Robert Lyons), Winds of Change: Modern Short Stories From Black Africa (coeditor) and African Short Stories (editor, with C.L. Innes) (c) Critical Essays on Literary Trends: Morning Yet on Creation Day, Home and Exile and Hopes and Impediments. (d) Socio-Political Treatise: The Trouble With Nigeria and There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra.

His novels for which Chinua Achebe is most famous can be studied as a commentary on life in Nigeria; each one based on a particular historical period in the evolution of the country. Things Fall Apart deals with the cultural history of Nigeria in the years immediately following the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference. It was at that Conference in Germany that the European Powers structured the partitioning of Africa, and legalized their notorious take over of African countries. Part of Great Britain’s share of the booty was the loose contraption called Nigeria. Achebe’s first novel dramatizes the initial contact between the colonizer and the colonized. The white man, whom some thought was an albino came to Abame on an “iron horse”. The people of the town, believing they had perceived an abomination, killed the white man, and tied his bicycle to a tree.

Retaliation was swift as the colonial government which was already stationed on the coast mobilized forces to Abame, and raised the town to the ground.

From the take over of Abame, the British Colonial government began its penetration of the other villages. The exercise was fairly easy because of the colonialists’ application of the strategy of ‘the carrot and the stick’. The ‘stick’ being the brutal force unleashed on Abame, and the carrot being the message of peace and goodwill preached by the Christian Missionaries.

Converts to Christianity began to grow as did the acceptance of the colonial government. Some acquiesced because to them, the Christian religion was more favourable than the old dispensation of traditional culture, and others out of fear of colonial retribution. Leaders like Okonkwo, the protagonist of the novel who tried to halt the Colonial advance soon found that it was too late.

Many of their own people, even titled men had joined ranks with the white man. It was out of the realization that the old traditional order had been swept aside by the colonialists that Okonkwo’s friend, Obierika opined that ‘Things have fallen Apart’.

Out of frustration that he was powerless to stop the Whiteman and that the people of Umuofia were unwilling to join him in rebelling against the colonial encroachment, Okonkwo kills himself.

The death of Okonkwo is quite symbolic, as it signals the end of active resistance to the Colonial enterprise. This is why at the end of the novel, the District Commissioner begins to contemplate the ‘pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger’Achebe’s other rural novel, Arrow of God narrates the pacification activities of the colonialists, and the implication of such policies on the Igbo Community of the novel.

The historical period in which Arrow of God is set would be the 1930’s. After resistance to its

Achebe dominance has been subdued as in Things Fall Apart, the colonial government proceeded to put proper structure to its governance. Since the number of British Government officials in the colonies was limited, the colonial government depended on surrogates to carry on its rule. This system, known as the indirect rule policy called for trusted British allies among the indigenous people to keep their communities in check, with the application of British rules and regulations, under the legal system of Britain, and under the British monarchy and government. In eastern Nigeria, such surrogates were called Warrant Chiefs.

Central to the tragic drama of Arrow of God is the effort by the District Commissioner, Winterbottom to appoint Ezeulu, the novel’s protagonist as a Warrant Chief. Ezeulu is summoned to Okperi, the colonial Headquarters, and detained there when he refused the offer to be the Whiteman’s surrogate. Angry at what he regards as insolence, the Acting District Commissioner, Clarke exclaimed; “What’… ‘Is the fellow mad? ..what cheek! Awitch-doctor making a fool of the British Administration in Public!” (175). But Ezeulu is not any religious peon. He is the Chief Priest of Ulu, the principal deity of Umuaro. And in his capacity as the earthly agent of the powerful deity, it is his responsibility to call the seasons.

It is he who announces the time to plant and the time to harvest. He does this by reading the movement of the moon from a vantage point in his hut. The Calendar as the deity reveals through the cycle of the moon then determines for Ezeulu when to announce the festivals. On this occasion, this year Ezeulu could not keep proper count as he had been away from his shrine in detention for thirty two days.

Ezeulu is angry that his people had not challenged his detention. As he puts it, “I will not hide

anything from you. Ulu did say that two new moons came and went and there was no one to break kolanut to him, and Umuaro kept silent” (208). But Ezeulu and his deity had many powerful detractors, and when he refused to announce harvest, these rivals like Ogbuefi Nwaka openly encouraged the people to save their economy by going to the Christian missionaries: “So the news spread that anyone who did not want to wait and see all his harvest ruined could take his offering to the god of the Christians who claimed to have power of protection from the anger of Ulu” (216). This event signaled the end of respect for tradition. From now on, the people took orders from the Christian missionaries and the colonial government. Unable to comprehend or accept this stressful turn of events, Ezeulu collapses into madness.

Chinua Achebe’s next novel in order of chronology is No Longer at Ease. Set at a period of the pre-independence years, around the 1950’s the novel depicts the experience of Obi Okonkwo a first generation Nigeria studying abroad on his return home after graduation. Obi finds out that his idealism is unable to withstand the power of old habits and prejudices. Obi believes that marriage should be based solely on love between partners, but when he falls in love with Clara his parents blackmail him into withdrawing from the relationship because Clara is an ‘Osu’. Achebes description of the Osu outcast in his earlier novel, Things Fall Apart, is a masterpiece of prose writing. “He (the Osu) was a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart-a taboo for ever, and his children after him. He could neither marry nor be married by the free-born” (156).

In addition, to the ethnic prejudices which Obi had to contend with, Achebe introduces another challenge to the National consciousness, the

question of corruption. Obi had arrived from England filled with contempt for the older civil servants whom, he saw as corrupt and inefficient.

After a few years in the Civil service he is unwittingly sucked into the social quagmire. He is under pressure to do favours for his clansmen. He is expected to support his parents and siblings in the village. He is expected to live large like a member of the senior service cadre. Eventually, Obi begins to take bribes, and accept sex for favours. He is caught, tried, and jailed.

The theme of ethnic retrogression and social political dishonesty introduced in No longer at Ease is revisited in A Man of the People, a novel which covers the 1960’s historical period. A man of the People, is a political satire which portrays politicians; a thin disguise for First Republic Nigeria politicians, as clueless, narrow minded, morally bankrupt leaders. And Chief the Honourable, M. A. Nanga, M.P; the selfacclaimed ‘Man of the People’ is the worst of them. Nanga comes across as a vindictive, materialistic, self centered, and an immoral philander.

The irresponsible behavior of the politicians throws the fictitious country into chaos, as their private militias turned local communities into war zones. The prevailing dislocation of society, and insecurity to life gave the military the opportunity to seize power.

The military coup de tat which Achebe depicts in A Man of the People turned out to be an ominous prophesy which will haunt the Nigerian body politic, and damage, perhaps irreparably the country’s democratic foundation. Barely weeks after Achebe submitted the manuscript of A Man of the People for publication, the first coup occurred in Nigeria on January 15, 1966. A counter-coup took place in July 1966, and from then on it was one military coup after another, culminating in arguably the most brutal of them all, that of General Sani Abacha, between 1993 and 1998. In Achebe’s fifth novel, Anthills of the Savannah, the reader is presented with a fictional dramatization of military dictatorship reminiscent of regimes across the African continent, from Bukaso to Central African Republic, to Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, to Sani Abacha of Nigeria.

Virtually all the government officials in Anthills of the Savannah are cowardly sycophants. They are preoccupied with showering encomiums on Sam, the supreme leader himself portrayed as a callous dictator. An insecure, and egocentric character, the military dictator’s interest in governance is holding on to power, for the sake of power.

Service to the people is the farthest thing from his mind. In fact any request from the people for equity or fairness is regarded as criticism of the regime. And criticism of the regime viewed as treason punishable by imprisonment or even death. Sam’s government has the reputation of being a repressive and insensitive government which has no qualms about being perceived as an enemy of its own people. Sam’s philosophy is in fact the application of fear as a means of control.

Although the people of Kangan are themselves criticized as gullible citizens who are “famous, for dancing in the streets at every change of government” (218), the greater condemnation is reserved for the leaders of government, particularly Sam, the Head of State. One of the most devastating exposures of the Kangan leader as contemptible is Achebe’s description of the leader’s physical appearance as identical to that of a notorious armed robber, sentenced to die by public execution. The implication being that the Head of State is no better than the armed robbers whom he is eager to prosecute as enemies of the state.

Three publications, Morning Yet on Creation Day, Home and Exile, and Hopes and Impediments represent Achebe’s foray into the area of literary theory and criticism. In these works, he discusses key issues in academic literary discourse. His insight into topics of concern to literary scholars is as impressive as the storytelling skills and craft of creating believable characters witnessed in this novels, short stories and poetry.

Together the critical essays enable us to see Achebe’s abiding concerns in literature and the

Continued on page 44

44 Review

DAILY SUN

May 23, 2013

Rhythms of the Master

Continued from page 43 arts as well as in wider social debates such as racial discrimination, and humanism. Achebe in this genre is preoccupied with ideas such as the role of language in literary outputs, the relationship between European literature and African Literature, Background to his own writing, the relationship between the African writer and his community, the role of the creative writer in education, and the validity of fiction in comparison to facts of history. In some cases, Achebe delves into in-depth analysis of specific texts, and authors.

Students and teachers of literature will find the theoretical writings of Achebe both fascinating and greatly informative.

The other genre in which Achebe wrote, the area of socio-political treatise is where he is most controversial. Discussions in The Trouble With Nigeria centre around what Achebe believes to be the reasons why Nigeria has failed to achieve its potential for growth. In his opinion, paucity of positive leadership is the bane of the country. His review of Nigerian history informs us of the pessimism of the country’s founding fathers. Neither Azikiwe, nor Awolowo or Ahmadu Bello believed that the amalgamation of 1914 would forge a unified nation. Looking at contemporary society, The Trouble With Nigeria places the blame, for political instability, and poor quality of life in Nigeria squarely on the shoulders of corrupt, and second-rate leadership. As Achebe puts it, “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership”.

A similar subject matter; the concern that Nigeria is failing to develop an egalitarian society forms the issues under consideration in Achebe’s last work, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. At its publication, the memoir generated heated debate in particular over Achebe’s allegation that General Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s Head of State at the time of the NigeriaBiafra war, and especially Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his minister of finance deliberately starved the people of Biafra in order to force them to surrender. Awoists were quick to challenge the allegation of genocide against the late sage, and the debate soon polarized the nation into camps of pro-Biafra and anti-Biafra elements.

Some of the Awoists who objected to the classification of Awolowo as an enemy of the Igbo people, actually sympathized with Biafra. But surely, these people can understand the reluctance of former Biafrans to acknowledge that there is a fair way to lose loved ones. No type of heavy bombardment leading to high number of casualties can be regarded as fair play, and all strategy that leads to resounding defeat can be viewed as genocide. This is why we must eschew war, and war mongering. Ultimately war is beneficial only to the undertaker.

It would be a disservice to reduce There was a Country simply to the genocide question, because the memoir is much more than that. The work addresses many of Achebe’s old preoccupations; his criticism of ethnocentricism, nepotism, mediocrity in the society, greed and graft of people in positions of power, and complacency of the masses. In his fictional writings, as well as in his polemical workings Achebe functioned as the conscience of Nigeria. What differentiates There was a Country from everything Achebe had ever published, and the reason why the book is likely to perpetually generate controversy is that unlike in previous texts where he maintains an idealist and artistic neutrality, in There was a Country, Achebe seems to suggest that the Igbo people are innocent victims in an iniquitous country called Nigeria.

Dr.Adetokunbo Pearse is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Lagos. He first met Professor Chinua Achebe in 1964 as an SS3 student of Mrs.Christie Achebe at St.Gregory’s College Ikoyi,Lagos.At that time,Chinua Achebe was Director of External Broadcasting at Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) Ikoyi,Lagos.Dr.Pearse met Professor Achebe and Mrs. Achebe again at a Conference in honour of Langston Hughes and Chinua Achebe in 1993 at City University of New York.

Why Achebe must be immortalized with monuments, not warped honours

Achebe

By C.DON ADINUBA hen Chinua Achebe was returning to Nigeria for the first time in 2001 since he had a car accident in 1990, I advised the then governor of Anambra State, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, to name a very important street in the state capital for the distinguished man of letters. The governor accepted enthusiastically. He went to see Achebe in his hometown of Ogidi with his commissioners and principal officers of the state legislature. On seeing Achebe in the wheelchair, Mbadinuju burst into uncontrollable tears. The governor managed to announce that Anambra’s Three Arms Zonethe road which connects the state judiciary, legislature and Government House—would henceforth be known as Chinua Achebe Avenue. This event was well reported in the media. A lot of people hailed the christening.

Alas, you can never understand the ways of Nigeria politicians. Mbadinuju, a Britishtrained lawyer who holds a doctoral degree in political science from Cornell University and was even head of the Department of African Studies at the State University of New York, decided to reverse himself without any sense of embarrassment.

Afew months after he paid a courtesy call on Achebe and announced the naming of this very important street for him, President Olusegun Obasanjo visited Anambra State.

Christian Uba, a pipsqueak created by the Obasanjo Government to ruin values in the state, advised the governor to change Chinua Achebe Avenue to Presidential Avenue so as to—wait for it—make Obasanjo happy.

Mbadinuju accepted the advice from this barely literate young man, a leader of the coterie of nasty characters whom Achebe was to describe in 2004 as renegades desperate to turn Anambra State into a lawless and bankrupt fiefdom.

With the change of name, Mbadinuju’s Anambra State lost an excellent opportunity to make a powerful and far-reaching statement about Nigeria’s social values, about the new direction in which the Nigerian social order should be going. No street or monument has, to this day, been named for any Nigerian writer, living or dead. Since the 1990s in particular, writers and artists have rarely been recognized in the country, as all honours are now bestowed on only people of power and money.

In countries like France, where writers and philosophers are well regarded, streets, roads,

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monuments and other important places are named for them, and not politicians. It is, therefore, gratifying that the Nigerian Senate, despite being peopled by crass philistines, has passed a resolution asking the executive arm to name the National Library in Abuja after Achebe.

The naming of significant places after credible and worthy individuals constitutes what French scholars call places of memory or institutional memory. It says a lot about the values of any given people. Like blood, which is central to our survival, values are not always visible but without them no society can exist.

Writing in the forward to The Closing of the American Mind, a tour de force by the preeminent American conservative thinker, Allan Bloom, the American Jewish writer and Nobel prize winner, Saul Belo, describes values as

Tribute the standard by which a society judges an action or idea, accepts or rejects it. It is revealing of our warped values that the Anambra State Government, during the military era, changed Achalla Road, one of the biggest streets in Awka, to Prince Arthur Eze Avenue.

Eze, the government contractor who said that Nigeria would cease to exist if Sani Abacha did not transmute to civilian president in the late 1990s, was awarded ADB contracts for the supply of portable water and provision of electricity in rural areas in Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu states as well as for the building of an industrial park in Awka-all totaling $110m.

But he-for want of a better expression-made a mess of a boiled egg. His chairmanship of Premier Brewery-the third largest brewery in the country after Guinness and Nigerian Breweries, both in Lagos-led to the death of the Onitsha-based firm. His assumption of the Orient Bank board chair resulted in the death of the bank, with Paul Ogwuma’s Central Bank banning him from being on the board of any Nigerian bank. Still, the same contractor was, last year, given a high national honour.

Obasanjo began the aggressive and brazen process of devaluation of national honours and, by extension, our values. Three months after The News magazine published, in 2003, damning reports, complete with photos and verifiable addresses, about monumental personal corruption by the then Inspector General of Police, Obasanjo conferred a high national honour on Tafa Balogun, only for the latter to be tried and jailed for unconscionable graft when he fell out of favour with Obasanjo.

Three months after he was nominated to be a minister, Nasri el-Rufa’i accused the then Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu, and Senate Chief Whip, Dr. Jonathan Zwangina, of demanding a N54million bribe before he could be confirmed. Still, Obasanjo gave both Mantu and el-Rufa’i national honours at the same ceremony.

This was in 2004.

Achebe was also nominated for another national award on this occasion, and he promptly turned it down in protest against the awful manner the country was being run. As though to exacerbate the devaluation of our values, Obasanjo chose the eve of his departure in 2007 to give the country’s two highest national awards to incoming President Umaru Yar’Adua and his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, “in anticipation that they will do well”!

Achebe’s rejection of two attempts to honour him since 2004 were greeted with deafening national applause because the national honours do not seem any more to be worth the papers on which they are written. Things have gone pretty bad in the last 14 years. In 1979 when the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) was instituted in recognition of outstanding academic, intellectual and artistic achievements, Achebe was the first laureate, and he was subsequently bestowed the Member of the Niger (MON) award. Despite receiving innumerable international and foreign awards, the only ones on Achebe’s personal letterhead were the Nigerian ones, namely, NNOM and MON. But when our honours and values became bastardised on a grand scale, Achebe began to dissociate himself as much as possible from the Nigerian government awards.

Still, it is imperative that Nigeria honour Achebe in a big way in death. Restoration of the very honours he rejected in life is utterly out of the question. Rather, a significant institution or monument has to be named for him, in consonance with the French philosophical practice of “places of memory”. Let us show for once that it is not only politicians who should be immortalized in Nigeria. The Chinua Achebe memorial needs be institutionalized on the national level. Achebe was, for decades, a worthy ambassador of the African world on the global scene.

Adinuba is head of Discovery Public Affairs Consulting.

Editor’s note:The Achebe Tribute Magazine continues in SUNDAY SUN.