Chinua Achebe, Nobel Prize And African Literature

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

March 21 was here again recently. On this particular day in 2013, Professor Chinua Achebe, one of the world’s most distinguished writers and intellectuals took his last breath in Boston, Massachusetts, mourned and celebrated by his teeming readers, critics and divers people across the globe on whom his work and life had significantly impacted in various ways. I have decided to use this period to examine some of the important discussions that have continued to circulate around Achebe, his work and African literature which appear to have even gained considerable weight since his demise and have also distinguished themselves by the largely tantalizing distortions, half-truths and deliberate misinformation that have been carefully injected into them.

*Achebe 

This service is for the benefit of students, younger professors and scholars   who were yet to be admitted into the African literary household when some of the events stoking these discussions took place and who are innocently gobbling up the horribly deficient accounts being fed them by those who either do not have any better grasp of those aspects of the African literary history themselves or are on a deliberate mission to distribute misleading concoctions.

It seems so natural to commence with Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Literature Prize given that discussions on it have stubbornly refused to go away even after over a decade of Achebe’s passing.

*Achebe and the Nobel Politics  

By 1986, it was very obvious that the Swedish Academy which annually selects the recipients of the Nobel Literature Prize had decided to bring it to Africa. But to actualize this, they did something that viciously affected the credibility of that year’s prize. They summoned African writers to Stockholm to discuss African Literature before them. While several African writers including the illustrious Wole Soyinka who won the prize that year trooped to Sweden to attend the conference which held from 11-17 April, 1986, Chinua Achebe thought that such an event was not worth his time.

In his message to the Nobel Committee rejecting their invitation, Achebe wrote:

“I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for African writers to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders.

“The fault, however is not with the organizers such as yourselves, but with us the writers of Africa who at this point in time should have outgrown the desire for the easy option of using external platforms instead of grappling with the problem of creating structures of their own at home.

“…I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that belong to their peace…” (See “Ikejemba: He Had in Him the Elements So Mixed” by Professor Michael Thelwell, Usaafrica dialogue google groups).

One wonders what the astounded Nobel Committee members must have whispered to each other after receiving this letter.

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.

Nigeria: Let There Be Light!

 By Chris Anyokwu

The man of God, Pastor Humphrey Erumaka, had taken the microphone that beautiful Sunday morning during the worship service and the congregants, as usual, were looking forward with taut anticipation and great expectation to receiving a “Word From God”, on, say, prosperity, healing, salvation, or, total deliverance, a church favourite in the age of feel-good, easy believism. 

Nobody saw it coming and when he announced the topic of the day’s sermon as “Let There Be Light”, you could hear the church exhale a collective sigh of relief.  Thank goodness, the message is familiar; at least, it’s likely to be about the Act of Creation at Genesis.  But that’s where the man of God played a fast one on his congregants, again.  As it had turned out, the message had absolutely nothing to do with the Hebraic myth of creation or the house-keeping fumblings of the Primal Pair, Adam and Eve. 

President Buhari’s Year Of Sleaze

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It would have been an intriguing surprise if this year were to end without the government of President Muhammadu Buhari being further begrimed with its scandalous quest for $1 billion to fight insecurity. It is not unexpected that since the Buhari government has been bogged down by cases of corruption from the beginning of the year, it is ending it with the controversial $1 billion quest that betrays the vacuity of its claims to zero tolerance for corruption.

*President Buhari 

We should remember that the Buhari government has gleefully touted its successful trouncing of Boko Haram as a validation of its electoral mandate and a loud rebuke of the government of Goodluck Jonathan who floundered in the face of the insurgents. Now, the same Buhari government wants to deplete the Excess Crude Account by $1 billion to fight the already defeated insurgents. And this is after reportedly paying three million pounds for the release of some Chibok girls.

Lingering Issues In Chinua Achebe's Female Characterisation

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

Recently, (Saturday April 12, 2008), I was at the National Theatre, Lagos, because of Prof Chinua Achebe, Africa’s best known and most widely read author, who many regard as the indisputable father and rallying point of African Literature.  The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) had organised a forum to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Achebe’s classic novel, Things Fall Apart, published in London by William Heinemann in June 1958. 

*Chinua Achebe 

I was held back at the office by some engagements and so by the time I arrived at the venue, I had missed a substantial part of the ‘Interactive Session’. I came in while Mr. Segun Olusola, a former ambassador and arts enthusiast, was concluding his speech. As I sat down, I heard him paying glowing tribute to Achebe and his novel and saying how happy he was to be at the event. He then announced that he would also grace the Awka event in honour of Achebe and Things Fall Apart coming up more than a week later.  

Achebe evokes a very special kind of feelings in most people that have read either his novels or essays. And this was evident in the emotion-laden speeches made by various speakers at the National Theatre that day. The literary patriarch and icon was absent at the ceremony, but his image loomed large everywhere, and this, mind you, was not because of those large posters and billboards bearing his photographs (and, of course, the emblem of the main sponsors, Fidelity Bank Plc) displayed at strategic points by the organisers. 

His wit, deep insights, the wisdom he conveys with such sagely precision, the simple, subtle diction and disarming style, the impressive imageries he effortlessly conjures and the pleasant local colour he so generously splashes on his narratives, never cease to overwhelm. Achebe is one writer whose reputation and looming image was neither built nor enhanced by any prize. What further glamour can occasional decorations add to an already very colourful and ‘big masquerade’? The man rather dignifies any prize he decides to accept and not the other way round. For instance, as Achebe and Things Fall Apart are celebrated across the world this season, only a few, perhaps, might consider it necessary to recall that a few months ago, he was awarded the Man Booker Prize – a very important prize, no doubt.  Such information, though great in its own right, makes little or no difference to the man’s already solidly established stature.    

It is impossible to read Things Fall Apart without visualizing the village of Umuofia in its alluring freshness in the warm embrace of rich nature in its most exciting vivacity and purity.  This is the only novel I know written by an African that has acquired such a stature and influence, as to be so celebrated in such a grand fashion.

No, doubt, Chinua Achebe is Africa’s rare gift to the world and Nigeria should never cease to be glad and grateful that this giant emerged from its loins.

With his novels, superb lectures and rich essays, Achebe has been able to compel the world out there to significantly alter their entrenched warped views about Africa.

After a speaking engagement in Canberra, Australia, in the summer of 1973, Professor Manning Clark, a distinguished Australian historian wrote to Achebe and pleaded: “I hope you come back and speak again here, because we need to lose the blinkers of our past. So come and help the young to grow up without the prejudices of their forefathers…”

I find this display of sincerity very touching.

Part of the greatness of Things Fall Apart is the significant readership it enjoys across cultures and races; its message continues to register lasting impacts that are rare and peculiar. Not a few Nigerians can recall the instant celebrity status they had suddenly assumed or even some favours that had come their way in one remote part of the world or the other just because they had let it be known that they were from Achebe’s country.

*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

Achebe has also remarkably excelled as a critic and essayist. His 1975 Chancellor’s Lecture at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, entitled, “An Image Of Africa: Racism In Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness,” which I am never of tired of re-reading, has not only significantly altered the nature and direction of Conrad criticism, but is now widely regarded as one of the significant and influential essays in the criticism of literature in English.

As I listened to several speeches at the National Theatre on that Saturday, I could feel the depth of admiration displayed by the various speakers towards Achebe and his work.  The whole thing was moving on well until one lady came up with elaborate praise for Achebe for the significant “improvement” his female characters achieved in Anthills Of the Savannah, unlike what obtained in Things Fall Apart, which we had all gathered to celebrate that afternoon.

 Now, I would easily have ignored and quickly forgotten this comment as “one of those things” one was bound to hear in a “mixed crowd” if I had not also heard similar thoughts brazenly expressed by some female scholars whom I thought should be better informed. For instance, I was at a lecture in Port Harcourt some years ago when a female professor of literature announced with the excitement of someone who had just discovered another earth: When Achebe created his earlier female characters, she said,  we complained; then he responded by giving us Clara (in No Longer At Ease) and we still complained; then he gave us Eunice (in A Man Of The People) and we still asked for more; and then he gave us Beatrice (in Anthills Of The Savannah)! Unfortunately, I have encountered thoughts even more pedestrian than this boldly flaunted in several literary essays by women and some men.