There was a Teacher and a Student by Mazi Azukaoma Uche Osakwe, B.Sc (Hons.), M.Sc., MPhil, PhD Candidate On Professor Chinua Achebe Tribute and Academic Exposition, June 1 2013 At Draiocht Theatre, Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, Dublin 15 When an elephant passes, knives of myriad shapes and sizes slash away their chunks from its mammoth sides. - Professor Olu Obafemi (his description of Chinua Achebe’s title “Night of Tributes” to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart). This reference was not about Achebe’s transition to join his ancestors but rather was in recognition of his fame and status in the literary world and how the world rose in agreement to celebrate the publication of the universal literature canon and classic Things Fall Apart. This reference also became relevant to the land of our ancestors upon the death of Achebe. I will employ the magisterial tributes of Ola Rotimi: Since that fateful night of 21st of March, 2013, when the news of Chinua Achebe’s final flight from his long held nest atop the Iroko Tree hit the ears and snaked through the intricate webs of cyberspace, it has been a festival of tributes… The mighty Bull Elephant has fallen; weighty words that cut into the heart like knives must be deployed to make individual and collective meaning of the huge presence that was suddenly devoid of its mortal casing . The question we should ask ourselves is why Chinua Achebe’s death has generated so much weeping and tributes throughout the world. I believe that if I were to pose this subject to every man/woman here, there would be an array of answers. However, all of us are here today – as friends and admirers of the Great Iroko Tree, Ugo Bere N’Oji (the eagle that perched on the Iroko), Ugo Na Abo (Two Eagles in One), Agadaga Nwa (the eminent son) Professor Chinua Achebe, in testimony of our grief at his death, but also in proud reminiscence of his literary works and humanism. Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi in Anambra State, Nigeria on November 16, 1930. He attended St. Philips Central School, Akpaka Ogwe, Ogidi (then a missionary school under the structure of the Church Missionary Society, CMS, now Anglican Communion). He gained admission to both Dennis Memorial Grammar School (DMGS, Onitsha), and Government College Umuahia in 1944. He opted to attend Government College, his school of preference. This was a different choice from his siblings who had passed through DMGS. He proceeded to University College, Ibadan, Oyo State. His siblings wanted him to study Medicine at the college because it was one of the most sought-for courses in those days together with Law and Engineering. Achebe excelled at Sciences and had opted to read Medicine and was granted a Government Scholarship. However, because writing had chosen him (like Oke Agwu- benevolent spirits would choose somebody in Igbo cosmology), he had no hesitation in changing his course and took up the Academic course that his Chi (God) had called upon him to take . On graduation, he had a teaching stint and in 1961, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and rose to the position of a director of External Broadcasting. He remained in that position until 1966. That proved the turning point for him. He married Christie Chinwe Okoli in 1961 and they went on to have four children. Achebe travelled to the United States, where he gave lectures and talks in various Universities. On his return to Nigeria, Achebe was made a Research Fellow and later a Professor of English (1976-81) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. During this period, he was appointed director of two publishing companies, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. and Nwankwo-Ifejika Ltd. Prior to this, Achebe and his bosom friend Christopher Okigbo, a renowned poet, who died during war, co-founded a publishing outfit called Citadel Press . As a student, Chinua Achebe immersed himself in Western Literature. At the University College, Ibadan, where his lecturers mainly concerned Europeans, he was introduced to the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Defoe, Swift, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Tennyson. But the turning point in his education was the required reading of Mister Johnson, a 1939 novel set in Nigeria and written by an Anglo-Irishman, Joyce Cary. In this work, the protagonist is a docile Nigerian whose British master ultimately shoots and kills him. Like all reviewers in the Western press, Chinua Achebe’s white lecturers praised it as one of the best novels ever written about Africa. But Chinua Achebe disagreed. Achebe began to sense the misreading of Africa history by Western literature through distortion and falsehoods and hinging on what Chimamanda Adichie called “a single story”. Achebe said that thanks to one of his lecturers, James Welch, he understood that the colonial education provided at the University was merely only a guide and that everything on this topic could not be imparted to him. Instead, Achebe became motivated by Welch to look inward rather than outside. Achebe realized that their teaching was just a guide, and to continue to use his brains and to do whatever he wished with the colonial education being provided at the university. This helped Achebe to channel his own energy and knowledge into telling his own story, the story of Africa, my story of Nigeria, the story of myself. I learned, if I may put it simply, that my story had to come from within me. Achebe said that he was spurred to write Things Fall Apart because his tutors could not teach across cultures. Despite their intelligence, they lacked the tools to teach across cultures, from English culture to African culture. Most of the stories they relayed to us were instances of an “unbalanced story”. Permit me at this juncture to return to the theme of this lecture - The Life and Academic Achievements of Chinua Achebe, but which I have reframed as There was a Teacher and a Student. What else can one say about the Big Iroko which will not be clichéd? Achebe was universally recognised worldwide as an internationally acclaimed literary giant, a patriarch of African Literature/the father of modern African Literature, an iconic novelist, poet and story-teller who insisted that all stories must be heard and that every man/woman must be ready to tell their own as it suits him/her. He also ushered in the first generation of post-colonialism thinkers, critical scholars and pan-Africanists. Achebe enlivened the English language with native African wisdom. He was the sage with the gift for simple but profound rich words, phrases, and sentences; he led the way and lent a helping hand for others to follow. He was the role model, the man who became an “ancestor” in the full bloom of youth. He also devoted his life to fighting corruption and to the restoration of African values, pride and identity against the Eurocentric distortion of Africans as being primitive and fought all forms of stereotype against the black race. The mastery of his works was not only due to his intellectual gifts but also through his serene thoroughness and attention to detail. He wrote with panache and eloquence. He claimed the English language as if it were his own, expressing it in the way that suited him, using rich African idioms and proverbs to convey his messages. His work is rooted in a sense of pride of who he was and where he came from, he did not shy away from his culture – he loved it and was proud to say it. The most important of his works is the authenticity of his works and narratives. Some authors write constrained by what Chimamanda Adichie called “literary anxiety”, but Achebe did not. He called a spade a spade. He is an African hero and among the first generation of African postcolonial thinkers. It was a feat of character as much as one of intellect. Achebe can be likened to a dancing masquerade like the Igbo proverb that states “the world is like a masquerade dancing and to comprehend it or see it better, you do not stand in one place”. Sincerely speaking, no single mouth can tell the whole life of Ugo Bere N’oji; rather, you only take a slice from the meaty sides of the elephant . ACADEMIC WORKS I would suggest from my privileged position in Africa and Western cultures some advantages the West might derive from Africa once it rid its mind of old prejudices and began to look at Africa not through a haze of distortions and cheap mystifications but quite simply as a continent of people – not angels, but not rudimentary souls either – just people, often highly gifted people and often strikingly successful in their enterprise with life and society. But as I thought more about the stereotype image, about its grip and pervasiveness, about the willful tenacity with which the West holds it to its heart; when I thought of the West’s television and cinema and newspapers, about books read in its schools and out of school, of churches preaching to empty pews about the need to send help to the heathen in Africa, I realized that no easy optimism was possible. And there was, in any case, something totally wrong in offering bribes to the West in return for its good opinion of Africa . Achebe’s books Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, and A Man of the People brought to the attention of the world the distorted Eurocentric view that Africa was primitive, barbaric and had no identity. Through his works, Achebe lets the people of the world know that the continent is blessed with a rich culture that is unique and that the people are proud of. The colonial power, the British, constructed the notion that Nigeria was backward, ignorant, primitive and barbaric. Achebe argued the contrary and instead said that the country has a unique culture and traditions, and a cherished history, all of which we should hold our heads high for. In his canonical book Things Fall Apart (1958), Achebe points out the failure of the colonial power, the British, to understand the indigenous culture, beliefs and values as well as the indigenous settings in the religious, political, economic and social composition of the people. In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, he informs the intended audience, not only the Europeans but his own people that their “past… was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.” The story of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is centred on Igbo Society. It is also about the Igbo encounter with Europeans. It paints a picture of Igbo life before the arrival of the British. Achebe relays a message of a community with its own rules, laws and taboos which invariably would not appeal to Western standards. It also shows that before the arrival of the Europeans, Igbo society was healthy and functional. Furthermore, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart presents through the use of meta-narrative how the arrival of Europeans on African land, especially in the Igbo nation, marked the beginning of the period of decline, decay, division and hatred. The effects of the imposition of language, alien culture, religion and education upon the people were destabilising. The forceful imposition of Christianity upon the people and the usurping of their own religion were done with bad faith. The missionaries employed methods of aggressive conversion as well as enticement – they converted Okonkwo’s son Nwoye against Okonkwo’s wishes and, in doing so, they pitted the father against his son. In between change and tradition, modernism and postmodernism, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s son Nwoye welcomes what he perceives to be modern by embracing Christianity over indigenous religion. Achebe presents a dialogue between a traditional worshipper and a missionary: “‘You told us with your own mouth that there was only one god. Now you talk about his son. He must have a wife, then.’ The crowd agreed. ‘I did not say He had a wife,’ and the interpreter, somewhat lamely. ‘Your buttocks said he had a son,’ said the joker. ‘So he must have a wife and all of them must have buttocks.’ The people (i.e. natives) were unable to put up the strength themselves in order to fight the colonial rule, as some of their brothers and sisters were on the side of the British , as W.B. Yeats alluded to in his book, The Second Coming which was cited by Chinua Achebe in his canonical novel Things Fall Apart: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity” (1958: ix). Due to the division between the natives, it became very easy for the British to introduce their indirect system and divide-and-rule tactics. Chinua Achebe’s use of Umuofia as a village setting corresponds to Yeats’ memory of a precolonial, “mythological” Ireland of “heroes” and “heroines”. On a different level, the binary or hybrid identity is exactly what the postcolonial condition brings into life form (Barry 1995: 195). Achebe is critical of the disharmony that took root in the Umuofia Community because of the introduction of foreign religion, a different legal system and Western education. The imposition of all these foreign ideas was damaging for the co-existence of the people. As a result of the actions of the colonial power, the peace, bond and unity that Umuofia had once enjoyed was destroyed. The collective will of the people and their voice of participation was hammered down by the colonial power, who replaced the voice of the people with that of their own. The centre which held the people together could no longer hold and things began to fall apart. Achebe’s book Arrow of God (1964) is a story set in an Igbo community in Nigeria during a period when the colonial power, the British, ruled the whole country and the repercussions of the activities of the missionaries were being felt by the people. The story also saw two different cultures coming head-to-head with one other. It also marked a turning point in the lives of the people (Umaro) who had been at peace with one another until the advent of colonial rule and the arrival of missionaries. The book highlighted the issues of identity, religion and also the imposition of culture. It also examined how the imposition of culture had an adverse effect on the family system, the collective will of the people and their participation, and caused the erosion of the traditional respect of the social, economic and cultural institutions of the people. As the people grappled with the assimilation of foreign culture, this led to the disintegration of the people’s identity, self-confidence and values. The main character in the book is Ezeulu, the Chief priest of Ulu, the most revered god of the Umuaro community. Therefore, as holder of this title, he is highly respected and has an authority like the modern day President. He wields power and the people of the community look up to him for guidance, security and development. In Achebe’s book A Man of the People, the main characters are Odili, a school teacher, and Chief Nanga, a minister in the government. The book deals with politics and how the country has experienced cultural intensity between the indigenous culture and European values. As in his other books Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, in A Man of the People, Achebe points out how the colonial legacy had transplanted their own values and system into the country’s culture. As a result, the country was finding it difficult to move forward and to balance the old and the new. Achebe also laments the state of the nation as it has drifted into political and economic instability, poverty, corruption, as well as religious extremism, assassinations, home-grown terrorist groups (e.g. Boko Haram), unemployment and ethnic division. In A Man of the People, Achebe draws our attention to the political and economic decay the country is facing. Instead of the political class finding a home-grown solution to the political, economic and cultural difficulties in the country, the elite are caught in a loop of dancing to the Western tune regarding the direction of the country. The people have yet to find their voice and the leadership needed to move the country forward. In Achebe’s final work before his transition, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, he laments the erosion of ancient African histories and identity through the so-called discovery of Africa by the Europeans. He also highlights the political exploitation, economic backwardness, social dislocation, corruption and leadership issues. His aims of writing There Was A Country was to put African history in a good and truthful perspective and to set the record straight for the sake of the future generation, including our children and our grandchildren. He frowns upon the deplorable state of Nigeria and how a country so blessed because of ethnicity and religion cannot live in peace and develop. He says, “As a young man growing up under the influence of two contrasting religions practised by those who are close to him, was an eye-opener…my father and his uncle Udoh Osinyi-formed the dialectic that I inherited. Udoh stood fast in what he knew, but he left room for my father to seek other answers.” In another development, Achebe states that as he grew older, he harboured reservations for Christianity. “I often had periods of oscillating faith as I grew older, periods of doubt, when I quietly pondered, and deeply questioned, the absolutist teachings or interpretations of religion. I struggled with the certitude of Christianity- ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the life’ – not its accuracy, because as a writer one understands that there should be such latitude…” True to his characteristic form, he said, “If you do not like my work, write your own.” Critique In Honor Tracy’s review of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, she says: Three cheers for mere Anarchy! These bright Negro barristers… who talk so glibly about African culture, how would they like to return to wearing raffia skirts? How would novelist Achebe like to go back to the mindless times of his grandfather instead of holding the modern job he has in broadcasting in Lagos? In his reaction to Honor Tracy’s comments, Achebe said: There are three principle parts here: Africa inglorious past (raffia skirts) to which Europe brings the blessing of civilization (Achebe’s modern job in Lagos) and for which Africa returns ingratitude (sceptical novels like Things Fall Apart). He dismisses Tracy’s analogy in the vein of those colonialists who assumed “they know the natives”. Chimamanda Adichie made a case for Africa in representative precise detail which she calls The Danger of a Single Story. Here she tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice and warns that if we hear a single story about another person/country, we run the risk of a critical misunderstanding. She also tells the story of her roommate at University in USA, who has negative images of Africa. This roommate feels sorry for her even before she meets her. Her default position towards her as an African is a kind of patronising well-meaning “piety”. Her friend has a single story of Africa in mind, a single story of catastrophes, famine, diseases, and images painted by organisations like Barnardos, GOAL, OXFAM etc. For her roommate, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of connection, only piety. Adichie says that if she did not live there, she would have bought these distortions and bare images of Africans, and this illustrates the danger of a single story. Hence, a single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete, and they make a story one-sided without the whole story and all the facts. These are the principles Achebe fought for throughout his life, to emancipate Africa from the shackles of Western novels and magazines. Chimamanda Adichie argues that stories are important, stories have been used to dispossess or malign people, stories break peoples’ dignity, it can empower or humanise and it can at the same time repair, heal or bring succour to people. The West’s construction of Africa and assigning of meanings to the African people according to Western traditions and standards is wrong. Looking at Africa through the lens of a Western angle will invariably result in a misjudgement of the people. It was this stereotyping and prejudice that prompted African literature to question the manners and ways in which the Western empires depicted the African people and made it look as though Africans were what they claimed they were – uncivilised and barbaric. On the controversial issue of which works are universal, Achebe queried: “Does it ever occur to these universities to try out their game of changing names of characters and places in an American novel, say, a Philip Roth or an Updike, and slotting in African names just to see how it works? But of course it will not occur to them to doubt the universality of their own literature. It is only others who must strain to achieve it. So-and-so’s work is universal, he has truly arrived! The colonial power brought about religion as a means of civilising and teaching the so-called heathens, but they ended up destroying the religions of the native people. Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his book, A Grain of Wheat, summarises the plights of the natives at the hands of the colonial powers: “We went to their church. Mubia, in white robes, opened the Bible. He said: Let us kneel down to pray. We knelt down. Mubia said: Let us shut our eyes. We did. You know, his remained open so that he could read the word. When we opened our eyes, our land was gone and the sword of flames stood on guard. As for Mubia, he went on reading the word, beseeching us to lay our treasures in heaven where no moth would corrupt them. But he laid his on earth, our earth” (1967: 15). The Christian missionaries did not help matters as they demonised African religions and branded them as idol worshiping. But all this labelling of Africans as being barbaric and in need of civilising was part of the tactics and schemes of the colonial power to impose their will and to control the continent. However, Hegel’s misreading of Africa is the most unfortunate. Hegel postulates that: “Africa is in general a closed land, and this maintains its fundamental character… The realm of the Absolute Spirit is so impoverished among them [the Africans] and the natural Spirit so intense that any representation which they are inculcated with suffices to impel them to respect nothing, to destroy everything. Africa does not have history as such. Consequently we abandon Africa, to never mention it again. It is not part of the historical world; it does not evidence historical movement or development” (Aguilar, 2002: 4-5). The aforementioned writings suggest that African cultures, history, and episteme were primitive and not in conformity with the established universal standard. Achille Mbembe disagrees with Hegel’s assertion. Mbembe’s epic work Postcolony questions the Western assumptions of Africa as was postulated and proclaimed by Hegel and others, and brands them as being misleading and inaccurate. He remarks that “contemporary European thinkers, as with its historical antecedents in Hegel and elsewhere in modern philosophy, continue to position Africa as the repository for the bestial and the negative, via the trope of the animal”. He sees this as being absolutely ridiculous. African history is distorted and inferior, negative images of Africans are written and depicted in various Western texts which are not interesting to read, such as Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness and other Stories. Conrad does however say, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (1995: VII). In reaction to Conrad’s depictions of Africans, Achebe accused Conrad of deception and even crossing the line and called him a “thoroughgoing racist”. He questioned whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanisation, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is no, it cannot . Achebe argues that literary works must deal primarily with the problems of society… any good novel should have a message and should have a purpose. In his essay titled “The Novelist as Teacher” Achebe argues that the most important duties of a novelist is to educate the people and to teach their reader about their country. Conclusion The Nigerian experience, like other African countries, was one where human degradation, colonial suppression, sadistic conquests, and the forceful absorption of Western socio-economic and cultural prescription were witnessed. It was a pill that was too hard to swallow. Much the same point is made by Kwaku Korang in a rather representative précis that warrants quoting at length: “Africa’s experience, as far as relations with the West go, has a historical parallel... Non-Western Africa also finds itself subject to European discovery, and in post-encounter time becomes a candidate for violent conquest and colonial subordination, and also subject to Western forms of cultural and cognitive assimilation. In a sustained misreading by the West of the facts concerning it, Africa’s alterity becomes colonially available as the ultimate negation of human value by whose mediation the West accesses its own universal (or worldly) value and normativity. A lack of worldliness, a denial to Africa of the ethical dessert of full humanity, is the negative legacy bequeathed to the peoples of the continent by Western domination.” The onus is on Africa to reinvent and project itself out of the situation it finds itself in. African people have to navigate and identify the African self and knowledge which will propel Africa to greatness. They must also develop humanistic acceptable forms of values that conform to universality, without compromising what makes Africa a unique people. In summary, Achebe’s work revives African culture, pride and identity. He uses his works in order to help the people to regain their self-belief, pride and confidence to recover their lost identity after years of vilification and denigration. The big Iroko Tree has played his part well; he has treaded where angels fear to tread. Just to remind you, Things Fall Apart had been translated into 50 languages, one of the most translated African narratives. He was also described as one of the 1000 makers of the 21st Century. The South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer said Achebe’s fiction was “an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the postmodern breaking of sequence” and that Achebe was “a joy and an illumination to read”. In addition, Dr Nelson Mandela said that Achebe “brought Africa to the rest of the world” and called him “the writer in whose company the prison walls came down”. Achebe twice rejected the Nigerian government’s attempts to name him as Commander of the Federal Republic, a national honour, firstly in 2004, and secondly in 2011. He was worried, dismayed and alarmed about the events in Nigeria. So it is correct to say that Achebe bestrides generations and geographies. Every country in Africa claims him. His death marks the beginning of the end of an era. I think that Achebe deserves a posthumous Nobel Prize for literature, an honour which eluded him while he was alive. He was an accomplished literary titan and a quintessential colossus. Achebe lives on! There was a Teacher and a Student by Mazi Azukaoma Uche Osakwe, B.Sc (Hons.), M.Sc., MPhil, PhD Candidate On Professor Chinua Achebe Tribute and Academic Exposition, June 1 2013 At Draiocht Theatre, Blanchardstown Shopping Centre, Dublin 15 When an elephant passes, knives of myriad shapes and sizes slash away their chunks from its mammoth sides. - Professor Olu Obafemi (his description of Chinua Achebe’s title “Night of Tributes” to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart). This reference was not about Achebe’s transition to join his ancestors but rather was in recognition of his fame and status in the literary world and how the world rose in agreement to celebrate the publication of the universal literature canon and classic Things Fall Apart. This reference also became relevant to the land of our ancestors upon the death of Achebe. I will employ the magisterial tributes of Ola Rotimi: Since that fateful night of 21st of March, 2013, when the news of Chinua Achebe’s final flight from his long held nest atop the Iroko Tree hit the ears and snaked through the intricate webs of cyberspace, it has been a festival of tributes… The mighty Bull Elephant has fallen; weighty words that cut into the heart like knives must be deployed to make individual and collective meaning of the huge presence that was suddenly devoid of its mortal casing . The question we should ask ourselves is why Chinua Achebe’s death has generated so much weeping and tributes throughout the world. I believe that if I were to pose this subject to every man/woman here, there would be an array of answers. However, all of us are here today – as friends and admirers of the Great Iroko Tree, Ugo Bere N’Oji (the eagle that perched on the Iroko), Ugo Na Abo (Two Eagles in One), Agadaga Nwa (the eminent son) Professor Chinua Achebe, in testimony of our grief at his death, but also in proud reminiscence of his literary works and humanism. Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi in Anambra State, Nigeria on November 16, 1930. He attended St. Philips Central School, Akpaka Ogwe, Ogidi (then a missionary school under the structure of the Church Missionary Society, CMS, now Anglican Communion). He gained admission to both Dennis Memorial Grammar School (DMGS, Onitsha), and Government College Umuahia in 1944. He opted to attend Government College, his school of preference. This was a different choice from his siblings who had passed through DMGS. He proceeded to University College, Ibadan, Oyo State. His siblings wanted him to study Medicine at the college because it was one of the most sought-for courses in those days together with Law and Engineering. Achebe excelled at Sciences and had opted to read Medicine and was granted a Government Scholarship. However, because writing had chosen him (like Oke Agwu- benevolent spirits would choose somebody in Igbo cosmology), he had no hesitation in changing his course and took up the Academic course that his Chi (God) had called upon him to take . On graduation, he had a teaching stint and in 1961, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and rose to the position of a director of External Broadcasting. He remained in that position until 1966. That proved the turning point for him. He married Christie Chinwe Okoli in 1961 and they went on to have four children. Achebe travelled to the United States, where he gave lectures and talks in various Universities. On his return to Nigeria, Achebe was made a Research Fellow and later a Professor of English (1976-81) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. During this period, he was appointed director of two publishing companies, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. and Nwankwo-Ifejika Ltd. Prior to this, Achebe and his bosom friend Christopher Okigbo, a renowned poet, who died during war, co-founded a publishing outfit called Citadel Press . As a student, Chinua Achebe immersed himself in Western Literature. At the University College, Ibadan, where his lecturers mainly concerned Europeans, he was introduced to the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Defoe, Swift, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Tennyson. But the turning point in his education was the required reading of Mister Johnson, a 1939 novel set in Nigeria and written by an Anglo-Irishman, Joyce Cary. In this work, the protagonist is a docile Nigerian whose British master ultimately shoots and kills him. Like all reviewers in the Western press, Chinua Achebe’s white lecturers praised it as one of the best novels ever written about Africa. But Chinua Achebe disagreed. Achebe began to sense the misreading of Africa history by Western literature through distortion and falsehoods and hinging on what Chimamanda Adichie called “a single story”. Achebe said that thanks to one of his lecturers, James Welch, he understood that the colonial education provided at the University was merely only a guide and that everything on this topic could not be imparted to him. Instead, Achebe became motivated by Welch to look inward rather than outside. Achebe realized that their teaching was just a guide, and to continue to use his brains and to do whatever he wished with the colonial education being provided at the university. This helped Achebe to channel his own energy and knowledge into telling his own story, the story of Africa, my story of Nigeria, the story of myself. I learned, if I may put it simply, that my story had to come from within me. Achebe said that he was spurred to write Things Fall Apart because his tutors could not teach across cultures. Despite their intelligence, they lacked the tools to teach across cultures, from English culture to African culture. Most of the stories they relayed to us were instances of an “unbalanced story”. Permit me at this juncture to return to the theme of this lecture - The Life and Academic Achievements of Chinua Achebe, but which I have reframed as There was a Teacher and a Student. What else can one say about the Big Iroko which will not be clichéd? Achebe was universally recognised worldwide as an internationally acclaimed literary giant, a patriarch of African Literature/the father of modern African Literature, an iconic novelist, poet and story-teller who insisted that all stories must be heard and that every man/woman must be ready to tell their own as it suits him/her. He also ushered in the first generation of post-colonialism thinkers, critical scholars and pan-Africanists. Achebe enlivened the English language with native African wisdom. He was the sage with the gift for simple but profound rich words, phrases, and sentences; he led the way and lent a helping hand for others to follow. He was the role model, the man who became an “ancestor” in the full bloom of youth. He also devoted his life to fighting corruption and to the restoration of African values, pride and identity against the Eurocentric distortion of Africans as being primitive and fought all forms of stereotype against the black race. The mastery of his works was not only due to his intellectual gifts but also through his serene thoroughness and attention to detail. He wrote with panache and eloquence. He claimed the English language as if it were his own, expressing it in the way that suited him, using rich African idioms and proverbs to convey his messages. His work is rooted in a sense of pride of who he was and where he came from, he did not shy away from his culture – he loved it and was proud to say it. The most important of his works is the authenticity of his works and narratives. Some authors write constrained by what Chimamanda Adichie called “literary anxiety”, but Achebe did not. He called a spade a spade. He is an African hero and among the first generation of African postcolonial thinkers. It was a feat of character as much as one of intellect. Achebe can be likened to a dancing masquerade like the Igbo proverb that states “the world is like a masquerade dancing and to comprehend it or see it better, you do not stand in one place”. Sincerely speaking, no single mouth can tell the whole life of Ugo Bere N’oji; rather, you only take a slice from the meaty sides of the elephant . ACADEMIC WORKS I would suggest from my privileged position in Africa and Western cultures some advantages the West might derive from Africa once it rid its mind of old prejudices and began to look at Africa not through a haze of distortions and cheap mystifications but quite simply as a continent of people – not angels, but not rudimentary souls either – just people, often highly gifted people and often strikingly successful in their enterprise with life and society. But as I thought more about the stereotype image, about its grip and pervasiveness, about the willful tenacity with which the West holds it to its heart; when I thought of the West’s television and cinema and newspapers, about books read in its schools and out of school, of churches preaching to empty pews about the need to send help to the heathen in Africa, I realized that no easy optimism was possible. And there was, in any case, something totally wrong in offering bribes to the West in return for its good opinion of Africa . Achebe’s books Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, and A Man of the People brought to the attention of the world the distorted Eurocentric view that Africa was primitive, barbaric and had no identity. Through his works, Achebe lets the people of the world know that the continent is blessed with a rich culture that is unique and that the people are proud of. The colonial power, the British, constructed the notion that Nigeria was backward, ignorant, primitive and barbaric. Achebe argued the contrary and instead said that the country has a unique culture and traditions, and a cherished history, all of which we should hold our heads high for. In his canonical book Things Fall Apart (1958), Achebe points out the failure of the colonial power, the British, to understand the indigenous culture, beliefs and values as well as the indigenous settings in the religious, political, economic and social composition of the people. In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, he informs the intended audience, not only the Europeans but his own people that their “past… was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.” The story of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is centred on Igbo Society. It is also about the Igbo encounter with Europeans. It paints a picture of Igbo life before the arrival of the British. Achebe relays a message of a community with its own rules, laws and taboos which invariably would not appeal to Western standards. It also shows that before the arrival of the Europeans, Igbo society was healthy and functional. Furthermore, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart presents through the use of meta-narrative how the arrival of Europeans on African land, especially in the Igbo nation, marked the beginning of the period of decline, decay, division and hatred. The effects of the imposition of language, alien culture, religion and education upon the people were destabilising. The forceful imposition of Christianity upon the people and the usurping of their own religion were done with bad faith. The missionaries employed methods of aggressive conversion as well as enticement – they converted Okonkwo’s son Nwoye against Okonkwo’s wishes and, in doing so, they pitted the father against his son. In between change and tradition, modernism and postmodernism, in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s son Nwoye welcomes what he perceives to be modern by embracing Christianity over indigenous religion. Achebe presents a dialogue between a traditional worshipper and a missionary: “‘You told us with your own mouth that there was only one god. Now you talk about his son. He must have a wife, then.’ The crowd agreed. ‘I did not say He had a wife,’ and the interpreter, somewhat lamely. ‘Your buttocks said he had a son,’ said the joker. ‘So he must have a wife and all of them must have buttocks.’ The people (i.e. natives) were unable to put up the strength themselves in order to fight the colonial rule, as some of their brothers and sisters were on the side of the British , as W.B. Yeats alluded to in his book, The Second Coming which was cited by Chinua Achebe in his canonical novel Things Fall Apart: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity” (1958: ix). Due to the division between the natives, it became very easy for the British to introduce their indirect system and divide-and-rule tactics. Chinua Achebe’s use of Umuofia as a village setting corresponds to Yeats’ memory of a precolonial, “mythological” Ireland of “heroes” and “heroines”. On a different level, the binary or hybrid identity is exactly what the postcolonial condition brings into life form (Barry 1995: 195). Achebe is critical of the disharmony that took root in the Umuofia Community because of the introduction of foreign religion, a different legal system and Western education. The imposition of all these foreign ideas was damaging for the co-existence of the people. As a result of the actions of the colonial power, the peace, bond and unity that Umuofia had once enjoyed was destroyed. The collective will of the people and their voice of participation was hammered down by the colonial power, who replaced the voice of the people with that of their own. The centre which held the people together could no longer hold and things began to fall apart. Achebe’s book Arrow of God (1964) is a story set in an Igbo community in Nigeria during a period when the colonial power, the British, ruled the whole country and the repercussions of the activities of the missionaries were being felt by the people. The story also saw two different cultures coming head-to-head with one other. It also marked a turning point in the lives of the people (Umaro) who had been at peace with one another until the advent of colonial rule and the arrival of missionaries. The book highlighted the issues of identity, religion and also the imposition of culture. It also examined how the imposition of culture had an adverse effect on the family system, the collective will of the people and their participation, and caused the erosion of the traditional respect of the social, economic and cultural institutions of the people. As the people grappled with the assimilation of foreign culture, this led to the disintegration of the people’s identity, self-confidence and values. The main character in the book is Ezeulu, the Chief priest of Ulu, the most revered god of the Umuaro community. Therefore, as holder of this title, he is highly respected and has an authority like the modern day President. He wields power and the people of the community look up to him for guidance, security and development. In Achebe’s book A Man of the People, the main characters are Odili, a school teacher, and Chief Nanga, a minister in the government. The book deals with politics and how the country has experienced cultural intensity between the indigenous culture and European values. As in his other books Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, in A Man of the People, Achebe points out how the colonial legacy had transplanted their own values and system into the country’s culture. As a result, the country was finding it difficult to move forward and to balance the old and the new. Achebe also laments the state of the nation as it has drifted into political and economic instability, poverty, corruption, as well as religious extremism, assassinations, home-grown terrorist groups (e.g. Boko Haram), unemployment and ethnic division. In A Man of the People, Achebe draws our attention to the political and economic decay the country is facing. Instead of the political class finding a home-grown solution to the political, economic and cultural difficulties in the country, the elite are caught in a loop of dancing to the Western tune regarding the direction of the country. The people have yet to find their voice and the leadership needed to move the country forward. In Achebe’s final work before his transition, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, he laments the erosion of ancient African histories and identity through the so-called discovery of Africa by the Europeans. He also highlights the political exploitation, economic backwardness, social dislocation, corruption and leadership issues. His aims of writing There Was A Country was to put African history in a good and truthful perspective and to set the record straight for the sake of the future generation, including our children and our grandchildren. He frowns upon the deplorable state of Nigeria and how a country so blessed because of ethnicity and religion cannot live in peace and develop. He says, “As a young man growing up under the influence of two contrasting religions practised by those who are close to him, was an eye-opener…my father and his uncle Udoh Osinyi-formed the dialectic that I inherited. Udoh stood fast in what he knew, but he left room for my father to seek other answers.” In another development, Achebe states that as he grew older, he harboured reservations for Christianity. “I often had periods of oscillating faith as I grew older, periods of doubt, when I quietly pondered, and deeply questioned, the absolutist teachings or interpretations of religion. I struggled with the certitude of Christianity- ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the life’ – not its accuracy, because as a writer one understands that there should be such latitude…” True to his characteristic form, he said, “If you do not like my work, write your own.” Critique In Honor Tracy’s review of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, she says: Three cheers for mere Anarchy! These bright Negro barristers… who talk so glibly about African culture, how would they like to return to wearing raffia skirts? How would novelist Achebe like to go back to the mindless times of his grandfather instead of holding the modern job he has in broadcasting in Lagos? In his reaction to Honor Tracy’s comments, Achebe said: There are three principle parts here: Africa inglorious past (raffia skirts) to which Europe brings the blessing of civilization (Achebe’s modern job in Lagos) and for which Africa returns ingratitude (sceptical novels like Things Fall Apart). He dismisses Tracy’s analogy in the vein of those colonialists who assumed “they know the natives”. Chimamanda Adichie made a case for Africa in representative precise detail which she calls The Danger of a Single Story. Here she tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice and warns that if we hear a single story about another person/country, we run the risk of a critical misunderstanding. She also tells the story of her roommate at University in USA, who has negative images of Africa. This roommate feels sorry for her even before she meets her. Her default position towards her as an African is a kind of patronising well-meaning “piety”. Her friend has a single story of Africa in mind, a single story of catastrophes, famine, diseases, and images painted by organisations like Barnardos, GOAL, OXFAM etc. For her roommate, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of connection, only piety. Adichie says that if she did not live there, she would have bought these distortions and bare images of Africans, and this illustrates the danger of a single story. Hence, a single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete, and they make a story one-sided without the whole story and all the facts. These are the principles Achebe fought for throughout his life, to emancipate Africa from the shackles of Western novels and magazines. Chimamanda Adichie argues that stories are important, stories have been used to dispossess or malign people, stories break peoples’ dignity, it can empower or humanise and it can at the same time repair, heal or bring succour to people. The West’s construction of Africa and assigning of meanings to the African people according to Western traditions and standards is wrong. Looking at Africa through the lens of a Western angle will invariably result in a misjudgement of the people. It was this stereotyping and prejudice that prompted African literature to question the manners and ways in which the Western empires depicted the African people and made it look as though Africans were what they claimed they were – uncivilised and barbaric. On the controversial issue of which works are universal, Achebe queried: “Does it ever occur to these universities to try out their game of changing names of characters and places in an American novel, say, a Philip Roth or an Updike, and slotting in African names just to see how it works? But of course it will not occur to them to doubt the universality of their own literature. It is only others who must strain to achieve it. So-and-so’s work is universal, he has truly arrived! The colonial power brought about religion as a means of civilising and teaching the so-called heathens, but they ended up destroying the religions of the native people. Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his book, A Grain of Wheat, summarises the plights of the natives at the hands of the colonial powers: “We went to their church. Mubia, in white robes, opened the Bible. He said: Let us kneel down to pray. We knelt down. Mubia said: Let us shut our eyes. We did. You know, his remained open so that he could read the word. When we opened our eyes, our land was gone and the sword of flames stood on guard. As for Mubia, he went on reading the word, beseeching us to lay our treasures in heaven where no moth would corrupt them. But he laid his on earth, our earth” (1967: 15). The Christian missionaries did not help matters as they demonised African religions and branded them as idol worshiping. But all this labelling of Africans as being barbaric and in need of civilising was part of the tactics and schemes of the colonial power to impose their will and to control the continent. However, Hegel’s misreading of Africa is the most unfortunate. Hegel postulates that: “Africa is in general a closed land, and this maintains its fundamental character… The realm of the Absolute Spirit is so impoverished among them [the Africans] and the natural Spirit so intense that any representation which they are inculcated with suffices to impel them to respect nothing, to destroy everything. Africa does not have history as such. Consequently we abandon Africa, to never mention it again. It is not part of the historical world; it does not evidence historical movement or development” (Aguilar, 2002: 4-5). The aforementioned writings suggest that African cultures, history, and episteme were primitive and not in conformity with the established universal standard. Achille Mbembe disagrees with Hegel’s assertion. Mbembe’s epic work Postcolony questions the Western assumptions of Africa as was postulated and proclaimed by Hegel and others, and brands them as being misleading and inaccurate. He remarks that “contemporary European thinkers, as with its historical antecedents in Hegel and elsewhere in modern philosophy, continue to position Africa as the repository for the bestial and the negative, via the trope of the animal”. He sees this as being absolutely ridiculous. African history is distorted and inferior, negative images of Africans are written and depicted in various Western texts which are not interesting to read, such as Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness and other Stories. Conrad does however say, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (1995: VII). In reaction to Conrad’s depictions of Africans, Achebe accused Conrad of deception and even crossing the line and called him a “thoroughgoing racist”. He questioned whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanisation, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is no, it cannot . Achebe argues that literary works must deal primarily with the problems of society… any good novel should have a message and should have a purpose. In his essay titled “The Novelist as Teacher” Achebe argues that the most important duties of a novelist is to educate the people and to teach their reader about their country. Conclusion The Nigerian experience, like other African countries, was one where human degradation, colonial suppression, sadistic conquests, and the forceful absorption of Western socio-economic and cultural prescription were witnessed. It was a pill that was too hard to swallow. Much the same point is made by Kwaku Korang in a rather representative précis that warrants quoting at length: “Africa’s experience, as far as relations with the West go, has a historical parallel... Non-Western Africa also finds itself subject to European discovery, and in post-encounter time becomes a candidate for violent conquest and colonial subordination, and also subject to Western forms of cultural and cognitive assimilation. In a sustained misreading by the West of the facts concerning it, Africa’s alterity becomes colonially available as the ultimate negation of human value by whose mediation the West accesses its own universal (or worldly) value and normativity. A lack of worldliness, a denial to Africa of the ethical dessert of full humanity, is the negative legacy bequeathed to the peoples of the continent by Western domination.” The onus is on Africa to reinvent and project itself out of the situation it finds itself in. African people have to navigate and identify the African self and knowledge which will propel Africa to greatness. They must also develop humanistic acceptable forms of values that conform to universality, without compromising what makes Africa a unique people. In summary, Achebe’s work revives African culture, pride and identity. He uses his works in order to help the people to regain their self-belief, pride and confidence to recover their lost identity after years of vilification and denigration. The big Iroko Tree has played his part well; he has treaded where angels fear to tread. Just to remind you, Things Fall Apart had been translated into 50 languages, one of the most translated African narratives. He was also described as one of the 1000 makers of the 21st Century. The South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer said Achebe’s fiction was “an original synthesis of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the postmodern breaking of sequence” and that Achebe was “a joy and an illumination to read”. In addition, Dr Nelson Mandela said that Achebe “brought Africa to the rest of the world” and called him “the writer in whose company the prison walls came down”. Achebe twice rejected the Nigerian government’s attempts to name him as Commander of the Federal Republic, a national honour, firstly in 2004, and secondly in 2011. He was worried, dismayed and alarmed about the events in Nigeria. So it is correct to say that Achebe bestrides generations and geographies. Every country in Africa claims him. His death marks the beginning of the end of an era. I think that Achebe deserves a posthumous Nobel Prize for literature, an honour which eluded him while he was alive. He was an accomplished literary titan and a quintessential colossus. Achebe lives on!
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 11:54:14 +0000
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