Achebe, the rejected
Great Achebe
By Emeka Umeagbalasi
The irreparable death of the literary giant and social
reformer of our times, Professor Chinualumuogu Achebe on Thursday, March 22,
2013 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, has come and is going, but the breaking
news is that prayers and wishes in torrents, offered for Achebe De Rejected by
reigning Nigerian politicians and military apologists are expressly being
cerebrated in Hell and shielded from contaminating soul by the Angels of the
Heaven. For records, Professor Chinua Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 at
Ogidi, Idemmili North LGA, Anambra State, Southeast Nigeria.
He was a student of the famous and, some say infamous Government
College, Umuahia, Abia State, Southeast Nigeria, between 1944 and 1947.
His experiences
in the hands of his white tutors, who forbade African way of life and promoted
un-African way of life, motivated him, to an extent, if not more, into writing the Things Fall
Apart in 1958; No longer at Ease in
1960; and The Arrow of god in 1964.
He further wrote The Problem with Nigeria in 1983 and The Anthills of the Savannah in 1988. In
2012, he wrote There Was A Country (a personal history of Biafra), which
earned him thunderous accolades from
millions of young thinkers home and abroad as well as coordinated attacks from
other side of the divides particularly the Southwest Nigerian press, which many have described as the anti
Igbo emancipation media industry. He won
many local and international literary awards, prominent among them, was Man
Booker Award given to him in 2007 during which the South African writer and
Nobel Laureate in Literature, Nadine Gordiner, described him as The Father of
Modern African Literature, a title attached to him even in his irreparable
death.
But for the Government of the United States of America,
directly or indirectly as well as humanists resident in overseas, Professor
Chinua Achebe would have died 23 years ago-1990 in a Nigerian hospital owing to
total neglect and quackery in the country’s public and private healthcare.
Professor Achebe’s fatal road accident took place sometime in 1990 and he was
abandoned to die by the military administrations at federal and State levels
with their civilian aides and associates who, mostly, are today’s political
office holders in Nigeria. Then he was on professorial appointment with the
Federal Government of Nigeria.
Most of the politicians praying for him and
wishing him farewell in death today were either ministers, commissioners,
contractors, SAs or members of the five fingers of a leprous hand and two
pillars of a yam tendril during the military regimes of 1990 to 1998, yet
Achebe De Rejected was abandoned to die like a street destitute. Today, prayers
and wishes from the same hypocritical politicians and military apologists have
rented the air in the form of Adieu, Achebe the Great, An Iroko Has Fallen, No,
Achebe cannot die, Achebe can never die, A
Giant has fallen, We have lost a genius, to mention but a few.
The abandonment of the erudite professorial scholar in
literature in the intensive unit of his hospital bed by those conscienceless
mortals is not only the grouse Achebe De Great, his teeming friends and
associates had and still have against them, serial corruption, abuse of office,
unabated massacre of the Igbos , insecurity and mis-governance of highest order
are other legitimate grouses. In 2004, some renegades as described by him, with
federal backing, ousted a roguishly sitting governor of Anambra State, his home
State, and later burnt down sacred public institutions including the sacred
judicial, legislative and executive seats of power, which the roguishly sitting
governor putting the cost at N30Billion.
While N1billion was earmarked in the
2006 appropriation Law of the State for their partial reconstruction, the
government that succeeded it in the same year spent N325million to reconstruct
all that were burnt. This commendable act of the latter earned its governor an
inglorious impeachment which was reversed by the courts of law in December 2006
and February 2007.
To these effects, vagabonds and vagrants, heavily backed
with the federal might, took over the public affairs of men and women in
Professor Chinua Achebe’s home State of Anambra
with reckless abandon while the political noble class in the State took off and
fled.
These were the grounds for his rejection of the highly
tainted Honour of the Commander of the Federal Republic
award in 2004 under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, himself a chief
accomplice in the Anambra political brigandage.
Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe’s rejection of the 2011 tainted national
award of same category by President Goodluck Jonathan was incontestably based
on three major grounds: first being that the country’s corruption index was at
its peak with over $100Billion domestic and foreign public debts; over
$500Billion stolen public funds stashed in overseas; over 70 percent of annual
national wealth going into recurrent spending; and steady decay in public
infrastructures.
The second incontestable ground for rejecting the
un-meritorious award was the unabated massacre of Igbo sons and daughters in
different parts of the country particularly in the northern parts. Erudite
Professor Achebe must have been saddened that the Igbo race is not safe both in
the hands of the Nigerian security forces particularly the Police and illegally
armed brigades such as Boko-Haram and Asaru militant Islamists. The third
reason is the high incidence of insecurity in Nigeria
as well as uncontrollable proliferation of small arms and their illicit bearers
in Nigeria.
A UN body recently estimated that there are 5.7million small arms in
circulation in wrong hands in Nigeria.
Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe’s love for Nigeria and particularly his Igbo
race is inestimable. His belief in the Nigerianess of unfettered equity knows
no bounds. In 1961, barely one year after Nigeria’s independence
proclamation, he accepted and received the Nigeria National Trophy for
Literature award. In 1979, he accepted and received the Nigeria National Order
of Merit and the Order of the Federal
Republic awards. In 1999, hoping that the exit or planned exit
of the military’s inglorious epoch would bring a social salvation for Nigeria; he
accepted and received the First National Creativity Award. Years later, he was ferociously attacked by
the Southwest Nigerian press for daring to express his displeasure over the
continued massacre of the Igbo race, which lost over 1million of her sons and
daughters in the 1967-1970 Nigerian-Biafran Civil War and has lost thousands to
ethno-religious and extra judicial killings since 1999 in the hands of Nigerian
security forces, civil butchers and armed opposition groups.
For instance,
following his 2012 cerebral book-There Was A Country (a personal history of Biafra), the News Nigeria Magazine, controlled by the
Yorubas of the Southwest dedicated three editions attacking him. Series of
sponsored editorials, columns and articles were also written against him with
rebellious descriptions of his person. Today, to them, Achebe De Rejected and
Achebe De Vilified has suddenly become a hero, an iroko, a colossus, a giant,
an icon, to mention but a few.
These information warfare mongers have joined
those that Erudite Professor Achebe despised while alive such as unrepentant
political profligates, election riggers and electoral robbers, failed public
administrators, political tea makers and flute blowers, abusers of public
offices and butchers-in-chief to offer wishes and prayers of the graveyard for
Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe’s gentle soul which already got bedded place in
Heaven long before its master’s demise.
We thank immensely the Government and great peoples of the United States of America particularly the University of Massachusetts for taking good care of
our erudite literary professor in the last 23 years. The Nigerians in
Diaspora particularly the
Igbo-Nigerians in the United States are immensely commended for standing behind our Great Professor as
well. We must not forget to thank the
present Government of Anambra State led by Mr. Peter Obi for remembering and
acknowledging the great roles of the forgotten heroes of our times both while
they live and after they have died. From those who served our State at high
capacities both meritoriously and un-meritoriously, such as the Aniagolus,
Ezenwas, Enenchukwus, Amechis, Ikpeazus, Mbadinujus; to the irreplaceable
heroes of our times such as the Ojukwus, Chike Obis, Kenneth Dilkes and the
Achebes.
If our erudite professor is
given a befitting federating unit burial, he will eternally rest in peace and
swear to come from our great State of Anambra
and Southeast when next he re-incarnates. We thank pricelessly the Great Angels
of the Heaven and our Heavenly General Overseer for shielding the soul of
Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe from being tainted and contaminated by Hell-bound
prayers and wishes of Nigerian politicians above categorized. The demonic gate
keepers of the Hell are congratulated for express reception in torrents of the
prayers and wishes above mentioned. We suggest that our Erudite Professor
Chinualumuogu Achebe should be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize in Literature
if applicable.
*Emeka Umeagbalasi is Chairman of Board of International
Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Nigeria, a civil society group
based in Onitsha, Anambra State.
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