Achebe: Fall of a mighty Iroko

BY IKEDI OHAKIM

I was suffused with sorrow when the news of the passage of Prof. Chinua Achebe, of an icon and legend of our time, was broken to me. Achebe (16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) died at a Boston hospital, at the age of 82. Chinua Achebe, the undisputed grandfather of modern African Literature, was indeed, a master story teller of incomparable pedigree, poet, essayist, critic, editor, broadcaster, publisher, historian, anthropologist, teacher, leftist political activist, humanist and seer.

Over 50 years ago,
Achebe wrote the classic novel, Things Fall Apart, which has made the Igbo story a universal story. The novel, has been translated, as at the last count, into 50 different languages and has sold over 10 million copies! Chinua Achebe went on to edit Okike, African Writers Series and UwaNdigbo.

As editor of Okike he influenced a formidable literary circle at the University of Nigeria Nsukka and as editor of African Writers Series he nurtured the growth of modern African literature. He published “African Commentary”, a scholarly international magazine. He was the founder of Achebe Foundation and the Dialogues Series that gave important African leaders a platform to speak on topical issues.

His latest contribution to the African discourse was the annual Achebe Roundtable Conference. Achebe received every Honour and Award that was worth his while from around the world. In 1979, he received the first ever Nigerian National Merit Award. Twice he rejected the National Honour bestowed on him by the Federal Government as a political protest.

When another Africa’s global icon, Nelson Mandela, described Achebe as the writer “in whose company the prison walls fell down” he knew what he was saying. Xeroxed copies of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart were companions of the African freedom fighters during the anti-apartheid struggle as the story of resistance it painted gave black South Africans fillip and hope of victory. I came very close to Chinua Achebe and his family when as Governor of Imo State, I invited him to deliver the 2008 lecture of the re-branded Ahiajoku Lecture series in Owerri.

It will be recalled that Achebe had a motor accident in 1990 which confined him to a wheelchair. His experience during his first trip to Nigeria after he relocated to the United States left him very bitter. So when I said that he was coming to deliver the Ahiajoku Lecture, many people had reasons to be sceptical about it. Indeed, it was a daunting logistics to bring the Eagle on the Iroko to Owerri. But in Owerri then, we were never afraid of the seemingly impossible.

So we were not discouraged. We simply shifted the date from the November 2008 to 23 January 2009 in order to work extra hard to accommodate the peculiarity of the Achebe physical condition. After sleepless nights and anxious days during which we had to monitor every step of his journey to Nigeria, with Ike, his eldest son, threatening at every juncture to abort the trip, Achebe and his family were in Owerri with the global media beaming the re-branded Ahiajioku Lecture live to the global audience! From that encounter, we struck a very lasting relationship. When his latest book, which is still ruling the waves,

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, was released, I was one of the first people he sent autographed copies to. Like every human, Achebe may have had his faults and may not have pleased everybody, but the consolation is that this fearless and honest patriot left us a rich harvest of his creativity, artistry and passion for a great Nigeria. We will certainly miss his respected voice which from time to time spoke truth to power and his wisdom which was strident even in its silence.

It is significant that Achebe left us at the heat of the controversy which his last book, There Was a Country…, generated. Going by the dimension of the debate, it means that Achebe left for us much food for thought. That Nigerians took so much interest in the work means that the late literary icon raised issues which we cannot, as a nation, ignore at least in the near future. Unfortunately, Nigerians left the real intent of that literary master piece to quarrel over their own interpretation of the work.

In the midst of the controversy, Achebe came out to say that since he had lived all his life in the hope of a better Nigeria, his dream had been to release the book to confront the injustice that resulted in the war and which still persists, thus militating against the progress of the Nigerian nation. In short, the whole essence of “There Was a Country…” was, according to Achebe, for a better and unified and healed Nigeria. What better legacy can any one leave behind for his country? I would like to re-echo the sentiments expressed by some well meaning Nigerians to the effect that Chinua Achebe is not really dead. Achebe is immortal and, according to one of his closest associates, Professor Uzodinma Nwala, we “cannot grieve over an outstanding man who lived fully and left so much mark in history”, because such a fellow can never die.

Of further significance is that today we are celebrating the exit of not a former president, a former governor or former party chairman but the departure of a fellow who made a mark in scholarship and academic pursuit. This should be a reminder, especially to the younger ones, that contrary to the current trend in our country, politics and political office are not the only avenues through which Nigerians can actualise themselves.

Today, scholarship has taken flight in our country. Today, we have a situation where our scholars, perhaps for reasons that are not entirely their making, have one leg in the classroom and the other in political party offices. In people like Achebe, we have consolation that scholarship has not, after all, become something only for those who cannot “struggle” to make it in the Nigerian sense. As we mourn Achebe, we celebrate scholarship and academic excellence and above all a life of dogged determination to uplift one’s country without seeking for political patronage. Goodbye, great teacher!

Source- The Sun News