The Iconic Exit Of Chinua Achebe

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Chinua Achebe died at exactly 11:51pm (US time), that is 4.51am (Nigerian time), on Thursday, March 21 at the Harvard University Teaching Hospital, Massachusetts, USA, aged 82. It was one death that shook the entire world as tributes came pouring in from all the continents of the world, from presidents down to paupers. 

      *Pix by Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye (2013)

For some of his admirers, the world stood still, yet for orders events moved at a frenetic pace, culminating to the Thursday, May 23 interment of the icon in his native Ogidi, Anambra State. The one-storey home of Chinua Achebe looks quite modest from the outside but it has a lift inside. The building for me captures the essence of the great progenitor of African literature: the quality of what is within is greater than any showiness outside.

 The mausoleum constructed to the side of the frontage of the building bears the heavy burden of the memory of Mother Africa in the buried remains of Professor Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, the inimitable author of Things Fall Apart. 

Achebe was interred at 4.30pm in a marble tomb in his Ikenga village ancestral home of Ogidi town in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State. He was given an elaborate Christian funeral service at St. Philips Anglican Church, Ogidi, as opposed to the African mores he championed in his novels.

America: In Lust We Trust

Banji Ojewale

This article is a dirge for the soul of the United States of America. It died on June 26, 2015 when the US Supreme Court, covertly and overtly, prompted by President Barack Obama, legalised same-sex marriage. The judges’ slim 5-4 verdict severed the country from the hallowed grounds of the conjugal institution established by God, Creator of Heaven and Earth along with all their inhabitants.

His inviolable decree on marriage says it must be between two consenting opposite sexes, not among like gender. His law has worked for His plan for the perpetuation of the human race. In other words, the marital relationship involving the male and his opposite number gives life, supports life, sustains life and satisfies life. Its breach on the other hand, brings death, breeds destruction and begets disaster and sexual bedlam. How would same-sex reproduce life, if its promoters, votaries and practitioners were to have their way? It is death for those taking that road.

Their way threatens mankind with extinction since the reach isn’t for procreation but for bestial and unproductive pleasure. Obama and the US are proving to be successors of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, luring millions to their graves with effete gay music. The American leader joined several others in rhapsodic celebration to hail the Court’s ruling. He topped it by interrupting a live TV programme as he phoned a gay fellow who was on set, felicitating with him on the occasion of the judicial decision.

Coupled with how he has always heckled African nations to embrace the ideology of the LGBT throng or be deprived the US aid, this macabre dance of Obama has made some discerning observers to wonder if the American leader and his ilk are not closet gay persons.