Achebe buried like a hero

The much that has been said before and since Achebe’s passage confirms his ranking, despite the needless controversy generated by his last literary work, as a tree that made a forest; indeed, one man who gave the black race its much-needed voice aside placing his fatherland on the world stage. In a society where the living reserve their best adjectives for the dead, Achebe did not have to wait for death to accord him some posthumous honour; right from the dawn of his life, Achebe lived his own saying that a child who knew how to wash his hands would dine with elders. Achebe knew how to wash his hands and did dine with elders!

The young Chinua lived another of his popular sayings; aside not having a benevolent god to crack his nuts for him, he must have surprised a patronising colonial administration when he literally spewed a rare morsel placed in his mouth by the gods! Way back in the 1950’s, the young Achebe spurned a scholarship to go to medical school, an unusual decision in those days when medicine was considered the king of courses in preference for the arts. That decision, very must have surprised many in his native Ogidi in today’s Anambra state and beyond and probably cast the young Chinua as another starry-eyed, hot-headed non-conformist, the same way the late Ikemba Nnewi, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was regarded when he showed up at a military base to enlist as a private in the army, with a university degree in tow, at a time the military was viewed, rightly or wrongly, as the best option left for low-performing schoolboys. And Achebe was a rebel of sort; for most part of his active life, Achebe employed his pen to expose and oppose impunities that bad governments are reputed for!

Not unlike Okonkwo, his own creation, Chinua Albert Achebe, writer, essayist, broadcaster, humanist and master storyteller knew what he wanted early in life. He neither had nor relied on a benevolent god to crack his nuts for him. But when he started out, the least the budding writer expected was an allegation of plagiarism over, Things Fall Apart, the first of a trilogy that launched him, indeed a book that became Achebe’s middle name for the rest of his life. He survived the storm and proceeded to publish other great works that cast doubt on the plagiarism charge initially hanged on his neck. Yes, he did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature, a loss which some critics, rightly or wrongly, attribute to the controversy over Things Fall Apart and which others claimed, again rightly or wrongly, informed the seeming sense of frustration that characterized There Was a Country. No matter! But the loss of the Nobel Prize pales into significance against the backdrop of equally prestigious prizes and awards that came his way. In fact, Achebe’s loss has led some critics to question the rationale behind the Nobel Prize and, beyond the glamour, what it sets out to achieve. It has also taken Achebe’s loss to show that, when content and purpose become the main considerations, not a few people in and out of the literary world would today vote other awards and prizes ahead of and, above the Nobel Prize for Literature. And this is no mean tribute to Achebe!

As with many great writers, Achebe , aside living and believing in the mightiness of the pen, ventured into politics. Between June, 1967 and January, 1970, Achebe traversed the world, flaunting his rising profile on the global stage, to campaign unflaggingly for the realization of the Biafra project! And during Nigeria’s second Republic, he assumed a more integrationist and a more national outlook by striving with like-minded humanists in the radical PRP or Peoples’ Redemption Party, to salvage Nigeria. The choice of the PRP was not unusual because, till date, the party remains Nigeria’s only surviving political party that does not veil its humanist credentials and which still hinges the country’s hope for genuine and positive transformation on a little shift to the left. Sadly, Achebe passed on without realizing any of these other dreams, so dear to his heart, outside his main calling. And if some of Achebe’s decisions early in life are ascribable to indulgence of youth, he was to cause greater stir, not once but twice, much later in life.

Long used to the trenches in the vibrant campaign to end military rule, many had expected Achebe to jump at any award conferred by a democratic institution he laboured with others to instal. But those who expected Achebe to take the next flight to Abuja were sorely mistaken; twice in one decade, he was awarded one of the highest national honours in the land and, citing valid reasons, he demurred on both occasions! His reasons notwithstanding, what stood him out and for which compatriots widely hailed him was refusing to lend credibility to an increasingly bastardized roll-call which queuing up with some undeserving individuals would have amounted to. But this was not Achebe’s advertised reasons for rejecting the national honours. On the first occasion, he cited the rule of the jungle that prevailed in his home state of Anambra when its sitting governor was abducted and when a local chairman of the Nigeria Bar Association was murdered in mysterious circumstances. On the second occasion, Achebe said he could not see himself mounting the podium to be decorated when majority of his Nigerians are groaning under a rudderless leadership.

Achebe loomed large in life and looms even larger in death. He was a citizen of the world who, through his pen, gave voice and hope to humanity. He lived long enough to witness Nigeria’s embracement of stone-age democracy, a welcome arrangement though still a far-cry from his idea of an all-embracing, participatory democracy. Sadly, he got restrained by failing health, exacerbated by an accident-related near-paralysis, a condition that abbreviated his forceful clamour for an ideal participatory democracy. But even from the fringes, Achebe was never frustrated even when his big but muffled voice being ignored; he continued to canvass for the emergence of an imaginative leadership, the absence of which ran through The Problem with Nigeria, and a major theme that runs through but was painfully eclipsed in the ballyhoo that still surrounds There Was a Country. Achebe, the master storyteller, is gone, but is survived by the skilful way he lived and told the story of humanity.

* Abdulrazaq Magaji lives in Abuja, Nigeria