"There was a Chinua"

My protagonist my hero the “patriarch of the Africa novel”. Born on 16^th November 1930, in the Igbo town of Ogidi, eastern Nigeria. Albert Chinualumogu Achebe schooled in public schools and later graduated from the University of Ibadan in 1954.  He published his ground breaking novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958. He later authored 17 books and 5 standout novels. Today, Chinua Achebe is six feet under. Dead men are remembered based on what they did while their heart beat. I want us to learn three things from Achebe’s life and times, part of what made him the “father of African literature”

He started small then settled for more - Achebe started publishing short stories while in the university. Triumphant people confine into one thing then spread their wings to reach out to the world - and that was Chinua. He never scattered his focus and energy hence the reason we should pontificate him. From Korea to England, from United States to Australia, New Zealand and back to Africa, Achebe traversed the world in the name of literature. An unflinching look at the discord of his life gives you a startling success of this African child. Not so much because his writings dint have critics, but for holding together the African literary culture for generations.

Achebe never allowed tragedies of life cut short his mission. One day on a chattered vehicle from Enugu to Lagos, the wagon lost its axle and somersaulted several times before crash-landing with a deadly thud. It was a horrific sight as shrieks and blood melded on the scene of the accident living on its trail, a wreck vehicle and mortal agonies. The accident left Achebe paralyzed waist down and confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, yet he lived to receive over 30 honorary degrees from universities across the globe. According to Nelson Mandela Achebe brought Africa to the world.

Achebe was open minded – he said it as he saw it - Crossing the Rubicon and as brave as a lion Chinua published story of the Biafran Genocide. He laments that since independence his country blatantly denied people their rights; ushering in all manner of banality and ineptitude and destroyed the principles and systems that reward excellence and respect talent. According to Noo Saro Wiwa, a reporter with the Gardian, Achebe believed that the Igbo people were stifled by corrupt elite that preferred power and mediocrity to meritocracy. In Dr Enekwechi’s remarks, the Igbo holocaust left 3 millions Biafrans dead and provided the 20th century replica for Rwanda’s genocide, and Darfur atrocities. It equals the starvation and gassing of six million innocent Jewish men, women and children in the concentration camps by Germany’s Hitler. The story of Igbo genocide buried for forty years is finally being told by the victims and the pictures of “starved Biafran children” on You Tube.

He beat his enemies at their own game - Despite his controversial book, Chinua was given a state burial. All his adversaries sent condolences having realized what a noble man and an enormous icon the literary world had lost. Few weeks ago Prof Wole Soyinka lamented that Chinua is entitled to better than being escorted to his grave with that monotonous hypocritical aria of deprivations lament, orchestrated by those who dye their mourning garments a deeper indigo than those of the bereaved. Cheer and jeer greeted the obituary published under the title ‘There was a Chinua’. Achebe twice turned down national honors and think those who want a posthumous recognition for him should let him be and rest in peace. Otherwise, he may turn in his grave and reject the recognition for the third time. Chinua Achebe died on March 21, 2013, at the age of 82, in Boston, Massachusetts. Four presidents and the Archbishop of Canterbury graced his farewell when Achebe’s body finally kissed his father’s soil. Chinua’s story of Biafra, and of man’s inhumanity to man – was like a thunderous exclamation mark on his life as a writer!

The three things we learn from Chinua’s life and times; He started small, then settled for more, He was open minded and he beat his own adversaries at their game. As I conclude, I stand in humility, in the shadow of his greatness and, yes, of his almost Biblical stature! In the language of the poet I ask, when comes such another? There was a Chinua!

           (Some of the excerpts of this blog have been borrowed from other publications)