Power And Politics Of The Written Word: The Legend of Chinua Achebe

Keynote Address - 2022 Chinua Achebe Literary Festival and Memorial Lecture, Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at Prof Kenneth Dike Central E-Library, Awka, Anambra State 

By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Chinua Achebe lived in glory as the one-man institution who conquered the world for Mother Africa, and the great Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiongo, put it in these words: “Achebe bestrides generations and geographies. Every country in Africa claims him as their own.” 

On November 16, 1930, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born to a teacher-cum-evangelist father of the Anglican Communion in the town of Nnobi, near his hometown of Ogidi, in present-day Anambra State.

Buhari’s Legacy And Tinubu’s Albatross

 By Shaka Momodu  

Fellow Nigerians, it is the season of politics and another election cycle is upon us. Candidates are presenting themselves to the electorate to be considered for various positions. But this cycle is looking more and more like 2015 when men and women, young and old, reasoned in reverse order. All efforts to make them see the danger and demagoguery that then-candidate Muhammadu Buhari represented proved futile. They were deaf to reason and blind to the red flags.

  *Buhari and Tinubu 

Today, we are all experiencing the consequences of electing incompetence dressed in borrowed robes as president. See the mess that Nigeria has become – a tragedy of monumental proportions. In just eight years, Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) have turned Nigeria upside down, a land flowing with milk and honey, has been turned into a famished land. They say once bitten, twice shy, but strangely, many are at it again, eager to repeat their foolery.  

Nigeria Is On The Precipice, Dangerously Reaching A Tipping Point – Obasanjo

*Gen Obasanjo and President Buhari 

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Dear President and General Buhari,

Open Letter To President, General Muhammadu Buhari

I am constrained to write to you this open letter. I decided to make it an open letter because the issue is very weighty and must be greatly worrisome to all concerned Nigerians and that means all right-thinking Nigerians and those resident in Nigeria.

Since the issue is of momentous concern to all well-meaning and all right-thinking Nigerians, it must be of great concern to you, and collective thinking and dialoguing is the best way of finding an appropriate and adequate solution to the problem.

Buhari, Onnoghen Et Al And Their Common DNA

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Except the unabashed pretenders to the throne of equity and transparency, Nigerians need not be shocked by the murkiness and ravenous appetite with which the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, has been identified. If the alleged fraud of Onnoghen centres on his not claiming what is his, a greater tragedy is the Nigerian state and its leaders claiming what is not theirs.

*Justice Onnoghen 

In that case, how could it be strange that the chief judicial officer allegedly pleaded amnesia to mitigate his culpability when the entire fabric of the Nigerian nation is steeped in fraud? It was fraud that actuated the cobbling together of Nigeria in the first place.

Restructuring And Its Feasibility

Folk food for thought and some hard knots and nuts to crack (5)

By Chinweizu, the Back Room Boy.

Sundoor999@gmail.com

Despite evidence of an incipient southern solidarity, pessimists are likely to believe that hoping to restructure Nigeria is utopian this late in the day in the Caliphate agenda when it is almost game, set and match to the Caliphate Jihadists.

2019: The Irony Of Buhari’s Second Term

By Evaristus Bassey

If all politics is local, there must be an exception in Nigeria. Here, all politics is selfish, especially southern Nigeria politics. If President Muhammadu Buhari wins another four year term, it wouldn’t be because of any stellar performances; it would be because of southern Nigeria politicians. Buhari has always won large in the North East and North West until the 2015 momentum thrust victory into his hands largely because he teamed up with Tinubu the strong man of the South West.

*President Buhari 

Just a few months ago the Senate President Saraki confirmed my earlier suspicion that Tinubu’s aggressive support for Buhari for 2019 after a lull in their relationship was essentially because he hoped for Buhari to handover to him in 2023. Tinubu is quoted by Saraki as saying that he would support Mr. President for 2019 even if he Buhari was on a stretcher because it was the surest way to guaranteeing his own 2023 ambition of being president.

2019: Is Buhari Deliberately Running To Lose?

By Richard Maduku

There is hardly any good thing that we Africans don’t corrupt. Sometimes, we practise only the negative aspect of almost every good thing. Clocks or watches for instance, are meant to ensure punctuality but in Africa they are used mostly for the opposite. It is called African Time. The Internet is meant for fast communication but in Nigeria many youths have turned it into a farm where they reap what they did not sow. It is called yahoo yahoo. Churches have been so corrupted in Africa especially in Nigeria that our traditional shamans blush with envy at the tricks church leaders of today play in order to exhort money from their gullible members.

*President Muhammadu Buhari 

 Democracy in most African countries has also been badly mangled due to the way most sitting Presidents or Heads of Government in Africa operate. They don’t only harass prominent members of the opposition in their respective countries they also brazenly rig supposedly democratic elections in order to remain in office. This has in turn made winning a re-election by a sitting President to be viewed with utmost suspicion. As a result, whether an election was free and fair, a sitting President conceding defeat was now more acceptable to the world especially to the West. 

APC Crisis: Oshiomhole Is Becoming A Problem, Not The Solution

By SKC Ogbonnia

The most compelling attribute of Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole, the new chairman of our great party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), remains the doggedness in which he organized protests during the democratic regime of then president, Olusegun Obasanjo. But events thus far are revealing the hard truth: trade union activism is far from party leadership. This point is that, Oshiomhole, who was brought in to stave off crisis and lead the party to victory in 2019, is already becoming a problem, not the solution. 

*President Buhari and Adams Oshiomole

Recall that the first turmoil that greeted Oshiomhole’s chairmanship was the splinter group, the Reformed APC (R-APC). Instead of exploring meaningful avenues for peace at the time, the new party chairman heightened the crisis by attacking the group’s credibility. To Oshiomhole, the R-APC was inconsequential, boasting that the party would win in 2019 regardless. He went further to dismiss the group merely as a “counter force” against “President Muhammadu Buhari’s resolve to fight corruption.” 

Nigeria: Restructuring More Urgent Than 2019 Elections

By Nwokedi Nworisara

Election is a function in the process arising from the structure. It is defined by the structure and serves as a vehicle to achieving the goal. Now when you have a wrong structure,a distorted goal emerges leading to a purposeless election which cannot further democracy no matter how you define it.

*President Buhari 

Before now I had called for restructuring before the 2019 elections to make its outcome meaningful. I called on the National Assembly to initiate bills to ensure true federalism before elections. I called for the states to join themselves along the three original regions in line with the 1963 Constitution.

Nigeria: President Buhari’s Greek Gifts

By Sunny Awhefeada

June 12th 1993 was a Saturday and it met me in Ughelli.

June is a month of unpredictable rain, but that day was bright; bright and fair.

We trooped out to vote for a new dawn. 

 I was then an impressionable undergraduate of the University of Benin possessed by ideals instilled by youth.

*President Buhari 

The buildup to that day was momentous and exciting. The military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida had embarked on the rigmarole it called transition to civil rule programme.

In the course of that tortuous experience, political parties were formed and disbanded.

Politicians were classified as new breed and old breed and they were banned and unbanned.

Nigeria: Their Tomorrow Will Surely Come!

By Dan Amor

Are Nigerians hopeful of the day after? The collective answer to this rhetorical question is a resounding NO. If Nigerians are no longer hopeful of tomorrow, they deserve pardon. For, never in the history of mankind have a people been so brutalized by the very group of people who are supposed to protect and take care of them. They ought to be pardoned knowing full well that their manifest state of hopelessness has extended beyond disillusionment to a desperate and consuming nihilism. Which is why the only news one hears from Nigeria is soured news: violence, arson, killing, maiming, kidnapping, robbery, corruption, rape.

*Buhari, Obasanjo and Abdusalami

It is sad to note that Nigeria is gradually and steadily degenerating into the abyss. Even in a supposedly democratic dispensation, a sense of freedom, a feeling of an unconditional escape, a readiness for real and absolute change, is still the daydream of the whole citizenry. Everything is in readiness for the unexpected, and the unexpected is not in sight. You cannot possibly conceive what a rabble we look. We straggle along with far less cohesion than a flock of sheep. We are, in fact, even forced to believe that tomorrow will no longer come. Quite a handful of us are simply robots without souls, as we are hopeless because we are conditioned to a state of collective hopelessness.

The 1985 Coup In Nigeria

By Ray Ekpu

The August 1985 coup in Nigeria was regarded as a palace coup, a smooth changing of the guards. I have no idea if anyone died in the operation but the event itself has refused to die, thanks to President Muhammadu Buhari. The victim of that coup, Buhari, has reminded us from time to time that he was unfairly removed as the head of state and kept in detention for three years by the Ibrahim Babangida boys. Let us roll back the tape a little bit. On December 31, 1983 as Nigerians were at various prayer venues asking God to make 1984 a better year than 1983, they had no idea that Buhari and his co-conspirators were on the verge of removing a legitimately elected civilian government headed by President Shehu Shagari.

*President Buhari

Many Nigerians may have been amazed at the scale of rigging in the October 1983 Presidential elections but may not have expected a return of the military to the presidential podium after 13 years of brutal military dictatorship. Nigerians woke up on January 1 not knowing whether to say to each other a ‘Happy New Year’ or a ‘Happy New Government’ since they were uncertain what was in the belly of the coup. One year and eight months later, Buhari was overthrown by the same Babangida Boys who put him on the throne. Babangida now took over the presidential chair and kept Buhari in detention for about three years. Apparently, Buhari has not been able to bring himself to forgive or forget since then. 

That Danjuma’s Significant Outburst

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

We mean to hold our own.  I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire, said the indefatigable Prime Minister of Britain during World War 11, Winston Churchill, in 1942. But unfortunately, that was what he was compelled to do as recounted by Peter Clarke in his book titled: The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire. In a rave review of the book, Allan Massie surmised that Churchill rightly dominated the book as he was shown, warts and all, from the drawing on the diaries of Alan Alanbooke and Sir Alec Cadogan, as infuriating, often boring, sometimes wandering, arriving at meetings without having read his briefing papers, often unrealistic in his demands, hell to work with.

*Gen Danjuma

Curiously, the more Churchill’s weaknesses were exposed, the more splendid he seemed. According to Massie, If at times Alanbrooke and others wondered how they could win the war with him, they all knew it would have been impossible without him.  To be sure, Churchill, soldier, writer and politician, was one of Britain’s greatest heroes, particularly remembered for his indomitable spirit while leading Great Britain to victory in World War 11.  Churchill wrote his war memoirs and titled the last volume: Triumph and Tragedy. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 among other great accomplishments.

Hello, Buhari Is Beatable In 2019

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

In 2015, serial presidential contestant, Muhammadu Buhari, emerged victorious through the instrumentality of enclave politics to which the north adroitly resorted in the face of plans by Goodluck Jonathan to ensconce himself in power for another four years. Had Jonathan succeeded, the north, barring any unforeseen circumstances, would have been out of presidential power for ten unbroken years following the demise of President Umaru Yar’Adua.

*Buhari 

 That cold fact apparently nudged the north to throw everything into the mix of 2015 presidential power politics. Many key northern elements in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deployed political brinkmanship, dismantled loyalty that characteristically underpins leadership-followership construction, betrayed trust and deceived Jonathan in the utilisation of campaign and election funds in order to ensure the defeat of a sitting president, for the first time, in the annals of Nigeria’s presidential election.

'Abandoned Property' Was Coined By Those Intent On Perpetrating Daylight Robbery' – COL. ACHUZIA

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THE CHINUA ACHEBE FOUNDATION INTERVIEW SERIES 
November 2005
All Rights Reserved ©

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Joe Achuzia 

*About Col. Joe Achuzia

Born seventy years ago, in the present day Delta State, Col Joe Achuzia has been involved in the programmes and activities of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, the apex socio-cultural organization in Igboland, for the past fifteen years. Since he assumed office as the Secretary-General of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, he has been distinguished by his frankness in public communications and the passion with which he canvases the Igbo position on matters of national and regional interests. He believes strongly in one, united Nigeria, where equity, justice, fairness and mutual respect for one another are unreservedly operational at all levels of governance and social interactions. He is of the opinion that the deterioration in the country is as old as the country itself and that the only way to ensure harmony and progress in the nation is to convoke a conference of ethnic nationalities where the thorny issues plaguing Nigeria could be properly addressed.

After the Biafra/Nigeria in which he played a prominent role, he was detained by Nigerian authorities. Fearing he might not survive the incarceration, he wrote his book, Requiem Biafra, to articulate his role in the war, and check attempts by later writers to, in his own words, “superimposed falsehood” on him.

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Excerpts:

Col Joe Achuzia in Conversation with Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

THE CHINUA ACHEBE FOUNDATION INTERVIEW SERIES 
November 2005
All Rights Reserved ©

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*Achuzia

*About Col. Joe Achuzia

Born seventy years ago, in the present day Delta State, Col Joe Achuzia has been involved in the programmes and activities of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, the apex socio-cultural organization in Igboland, for the past fifteen years. Since he assumed office as the Secretary-General of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, he has been distinguished by his frankness in public communications and the passion with which he canvases the Igbo position on matters of national and regional interests. He believes strongly in one, united Nigeria, where equity, justice, fairness and mutual respect for one another are unreservedly operational at all levels of governance and social interactions. He is of the opinion that the deterioration in the country is as old as the country itself and that the only way to ensure harmony and progress in the nation is to convoke a conference of ethnic nationalities where the thorny issues plaguing Nigeria could be properly addressed.

After the Biafra/Nigeria in which he played a prominent role, he was detained by Nigerian authorities. Fearing he might not survive the incarceration, he wrote his book, Requiem Biafra, to articulate his role in the war, and check attempts by later writers to, in his own words, “superimposed falsehood” on him.

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Excerpts:

WHERE THE RAIN BEGAN TO BEAT US

Do you think it is possible to identify a particular period in Nigeria’s history when the deterioration commenced, or should we assume the downward slide is, perhaps, as old as the nation itself?

Nigeria, in my opinion, started deteriorating from day one. The gladiators who fought for our independence made all the classical mistakes. They failed to understand that those who pitch themselves in mortal combats to gain independence for the people should quit the stage for peaceful gladiators to take over. You cannot be a warrior and a peacemaker at the same time. No. But, they tried to combine the two, and so failed woefully. And we’ve been going down ever since.

Why then does your generation speak nostalgically about the good old days?

The good old days is a cliché used by people reminiscing about their secure lives as adolescents, and referring to the past as “the good old days...”The bad old days then begins when they have to start taking responsibilities. (Laughter)

So, there have been no good old days in Nigeria?

No, there has been nothing like that.

I See Buhari Going The Jammeh, Mugabe, Zuma Way

By Reno Omokri

The news that the South African President, Jacob Zuma was resigning with immediate effect came as a bolt of lightning on Wednesday the 14th of February. It was a Valentines Day special for all of Africa.

*Ex-President Zuma and President Buhari

Apparently, to stave off a vote of no confidence on him by his own party, the African National Congress (ANC), Zuma, quit the stage while the ovation was lowest. In the space of just s little over a year, Africa got rid of some of its worst performing leaders (if you can call them that). First Jammeh, then Mugabe, and now Zuma. 

Will President Buhari’s 2019 Ambition Ruin His Anti-Graft Agenda?

By Martins Oloja

Verily, verily, we should say it to President Muhammadu Buhari and the men and women who are assisting in running his government that this is not the best of time to say ‘silence is golden’. Surely, silence can’t be a strategy in Nigeria at this time when there are serious concerns and questions about the future of the most populous black nation on earth.

*President Muhammadu Buhari 

Before the president’s reputation managers start screaming blue murder and resume their blame game on the previous administration, the concerns raised today are not about them. They (concerns) are about the office of the president from the office of the citizen. The president and his men should note that before they begin to raise huge funds for the 2019, there are weightier matters of governance, especially about corruption that they should settle quickly, lest they will be the last in 2019.

Indications are daily emerging that politicking around 2019 is beginning to becloud sound judgment in the presidency. As I noted here last week, there is no need reading the president’s lips anymore: I advised us to read his leaps in Kano the other day. 

Mugabe: Sleeping With The Dragon-Queen

By Dare Babarinsa

Finally, Robert Mugabe is separated from power. One impertinent journalist was said to have once asked the perennial president: “Mr Mugabe, when are you going to say bye-bye to the people of Zimbabwe?”

He replied: “Where are they going?”

*Robert and Grace Mugabe 

 Finally the people of Zimbabwe, who once regarded him as the ultimate hero, left him. It took a non-coup by the Zimbabwean military and the nudging of South Africa to convince Mugabe that the game has ended and it was time for the big masquerade to return to Igbale, the portal of the dead. What years of diplomatic isolation and protests by fractious opposition could not achieve, Grace, Mugabe’s graceless dragon-queen achieved. She wanted a dynasty and sought the hero to make her the queen after his long reign must have ended. She worked hard to change the tide of history using the old weapon of bottom-power to her advantage. She failed.

Nigeria: Eighteen Years Of Threatened Democracy

By Alabi Williams

After 18 years of democracy, we do not need to search very far to know how well the journey has fared. The glaring evidence of how troubled it has been is the very fact that we are still discussing the idea of a coup, no matter how embryonic and remote it may have been. That some people still nurse nostalgia for the salvation procurable via coups suggests that this democracy is not offering what it was programmed to deliver. There is sufficient amount of desperation that triggers a search for alternatives. Unfortunately, the one ready alternative people tucked somewhere in their psyche, is the military, with capacity to obliterate the present nonsense and begin afresh. Very tempting.

But many have rushed out to condemn the thought of a coup because of very ugly past experiences. The military has so debased itself that its original messianic capacity has been squandered. At the point it was forced to exit from civil governance, the military had transformed into a rampaging occupation force, abusing rights of citizens and stealing their money.