By CHUKA NWOSU

I wish to lend my voice to the raging discourse whether late Prof. Chinua Achebe is a greater writer and “Father of African Literature” than his friend and perhaps competing contemporary, Prof. Wole Soyinka.

First, Prof. Chimalum Nwankwo, deserves kudos (Saturday Sun, June for giving vent to Prof Soyinka’s gaffe, in his frantic and desperate effort to challenge the generally held view, among world and African literary circles, on the appellation on Prof. Chinua Achebe, (o.b.m) as “Father of African Literature”.

Methinks that the respected Prof Soyinka was looking for an outlet to let off angst, and avoid being drowned or submerged permanently by the deluge of world encomiums on Prof. Achebe after his death.  But he failed to find space, or audience, with reputable world media like Time or Newsweek magazines, or even with our popular Nigerian media.  Rather, he found outlet in the insidious online media, Sahara Reporters, which, few years ago, acquired some notoriety and infamy by publishing an unauthorized interview in which Mr Gbenga Obasanjo, accused his father, then President Olusegun Obasanjo, of committing adultery by allegedly seducing and sleeping with his (Gbenga’s) wife.  The divorce case later went to court before being settled.

I believe that Prof. Chimalum Nwankwo’s interview with Andrew soberly used panache, elegant prose and trite logic to deal justice to Prof. Soyinka’s jugular, thereby laying the ghost of the haunting Achebe/Soyinka supremacy debate to its final rest.  Soyinka’s interview and utterances of some of his acolytes, like Odia Ofeimun, were rather senseless and insensitive to the death of a professional colleague, and utterly exposed Soyinka to a situation whereby the discerning public might cast a back glance at his mindset in his quest to be controversial always.

Besides, in hindsight, perusing Achebe’s last book, There Was a Country, one starts to draw inferences and speculations on the mindset of Prof. Soyinka when he stormed WNBC Radio House in Ibadan with a gun (toy?), at the beginning of the Nigerian political crisis in 1965.  One can also doubt his good motives and intentions when he visited Gen. Ojukwu in Enugu to discuss peace, and possible secession of Yoruba as Oduduwa Republic, if Igbos were allowed to go as Biafrans. One may also suspect Soyinka’s imprimatur in Brigadier Banjo’s infamous broadcast to Midwest, as Commander of Biafran Invasion of Midwest, (see page 259 of Achebe’s book).  This is because the language, ambiance and twists in Banjo’s broadcast were obviously above the thinking and intellect of a beer-quaffing army officer, who was a disoriented Yorubaman in a state of war on the side of Biafra.  Somebody, or people, might have given him an idea, or script, to declare and annex Midwest as part of Yoruba empire (which it might have eventually become today).  And they got the poor Banjo killed.  These things are now possible realities, and many people would not feel happy that Prof. Achebe, apart from saying that Chief Awolowo helped to starve millions of Igbos to death, had brought these sensitive truths and issues to limelight, as a parting gift to Nigeria, to enable her work at achieving a real united one Nigeria, or a confederation of States, or better Nations.

However, if any other literary intellectual of Nigerian, Yoruba or African stock, feels strongly any longer, that Prof Soyinka is a “greater writer” than Prof. Achebe, let him or her produce empirical evidence, other than the fact that the “gaggle of Swedes” did give Soyinka the Nobel Prize in Literature, and failed to give same to Prof. Achebe.  Thanks to Prof Sellwell who rightly said that the Nobel Prize needed Prof Achebe for its global image, than Achebe needed it as “Ezeafojulu” –the contented king of African Literature. But respected poet, Elechi Amadi’s position seemed to have laid this argument to rest, when he rightly articulated that, nevertheless, the Biafran war created a 29 year lull in the creative psyche and energies of Prof. Achebe, who wrote his epic, Things Fall Apart, in l958, only to follow up 29 years later in l987, with another great work, Anthills of the Savannah.

Prof. Achebe, in his usual candour and humility, had always never wanted to broach the issue, believing as he did, that the “hood does not make the monk”.  And we all know that the Swedish Nobel Prize Committee, though standing on its own high moral grounds in their selection criteria, had obviously not set any decipherable standards in literature, science, or morality, with regards to making peace or eradicating war globally, or medical research breakthroughs, to enable one earn its prizes.

With regards to the supremacy debate, which Achebe never really cared a hoot about, I had believed that the issue had been well settled and concluded in a well researched book, with empirical evidences from world literary circles.  The book is entitled Nigeria … A Future in Ruins, written by an Imo State born University don and classicist, Dr. Jimanze Ego Alowes, and published in 2011.  The book contains, among several other chapters with acerbic and controversial pugilism, one chapter yet to be challenged, titled…”And Nigeria’s Greatest Writer Is…”

Dr. Alowes had evidence to prove that without the Nobel Prize, Prof. Achebe’s image as a Greater Writer than Prof. Soyinka, was not doubtful, diminished, or controverted because “Lorca (Spain), Cavafy (Greek), Musil ( Austrian); Rilke (German); Marai (Hungarian); Blok (Russian); Mandelstan (Russian), Tolstoy (Russian), Chekov (Russian), Joyce (Irish), etc., all never got Nobel Prizes in Literature.  Yet, if literature has gods, these are the gods.  So, if these deities are on the outside, then who is in?

Prof. Biodun Jeiyefo, a Soyinka acolyte, has been quoted as saying Achebe’s TFA is “… one of the extraordinary artistic and intellectual achievements, that, unlike say the writings of Soyinka and Okigbo from same period, TFA does not read like a work that grows out of and is addressed to a tiny literary and cultural elite.  It mostly reads like a work written for the averagely literate man or woman.  But then why has the novel attracted so much intellectual attention, a lot of it of the highest scholarly quality.  Like some of the classics of world literature, it, Things Fall Apart is accessible to the most humble of readers, yet it is dearly beloved by very erudite scholars…”

Finally, it is unfortunate that the much respected Nobel Laureate Prof. Soyinka, seemed to have flouted the basic Latin injunction that we say nothing but good of the dead:  “De mortuis nil nisi bonum”.  And this explains why I audaciously suggest that he retracts and apologises for his description of people as “suffering from literary ignorance”, just because they rightly classified Prof. Achebe as “Father of African Literature”.





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before his death , they had a bout on this issue, soyinka said if you are the father of african literature, then i am the ogbuefi of literature. (even the king respects his father.)