23rd March 2013
We join the rest of the world to mourn the exit of a global icon, literary giant and great patriot, Professor Chinua Achebe who reportedly died on Thursday March 21st, 2013 in Boston USA after an illness.
We bear witness that the Late Chinua Achebe had long been an upbeat patriot and a pan-African optimist at a time it was risky and unpopular to do so. It is true that founding fathers like Dr Nnamdi Azikwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Raji Abdallah, Mokgukwe Okoye and Mallam Aminu Kano truly politically decolonized Nigeria. But Chinua Achebe almost single-handedly culturally liberated Africa. “Things Fall Apart” written in 1958 is the first original conscious African
narrative that brought to the fore the pre-colonial African values of hard work, enterprise, dignity of labour, worship, family, community, successes and tragedies, contrary to the colonial received wisdom that Africa had no history. Many thanks to the late Chinua Achebe for audaciously blazing the trail for African Writers Series.
It is misleading to assess Achebe post-humously based on his last controversial work; civil war memoir, entitled “There Was A Country.” The late great chronicler had himself modestly accepted as much that “There is some connection between the particular distress of war, the particular tension of war, and the kind of literacy response it inspires”. Essential contributions of Achebe are contained in great nation-building books like Things Fall Apart (1958) No Longer At Ease (1960) and The Trouble with Nigeria, (a powerful essay on crisis of leadership in Africa) among others.
The life and times of Achebe celebrate dignity of labour. He did not live on graft and stolen goods but his mental labour. He was really a global working man.
To honour Chinua Achebe, Things must just Fall in place for Nigeria. While we legitimately agonize over the death of the literary icon, it is time we organize the nation I s energies for development, development and development. We must replace Corruption agenda with Development agenda. We should remember that Chinua Achebe had a fatal accident in Nigeria
in early 1990 on one of the ever murderous roads of Nigeria. Let’s fix the roads and save many who are not as lucky like Achebe who nonetheless successfully had a value-added life for decades on a wheel chair in United States of America. Let us re-industrialize and get millions of youths productively engaged and get them off the terror, kidnappings and senseless violence. This is the way to honour Achebe.
Indeed when alive Achebe had audaciously damned vain glorification. In a country where too much emphasis is laid on dubious unearned honours, the late Chinua Achebe rejected the prestigious national honour of the ‘Commander of the Federal Republic’ (CFR) conferred on him by the Obasanjo administration in 2004. Similarly he rejected same in 2011 by President Goodluck Jonathan pointing out that “Nigeria’s condition” was too “dangerous for silence”. All official glorifications of Achebe remain hypocritical unless we change Nigeria’s narrative from that of a potentially failed state to that of an actually successful country in the world.
May his soul rest in peace.
Issa Aremu mni
GENERAL SECRETARY, NUTGTWN
VICE PRESIDENT, NIGERIA LABOUR CONGRESS
