Ola Johnson:
If WS speaks without "truly communicating", how come you say there is an outburst in in this essay? Be logical.

abu12: @ One_Naira, that is your own assumption since most of the accusation you stated can not be verify. you should be the one to read between the lines

Crayola1:

Oh my God shut up, you sniveling bastard. You have nothing in your own life to be proud of so you ape others accomplishments. If Soyinka named a new book Untitled your stup1d behind would think its unique too.

PointB:

Matters arising from the article?

1. Who were WS referring to? Who are the self-righteous clerics, who so provoked WS?
2. In which way, or word was he provoked, necessitating this outburst?
3. What is the big deal if he was asked why he did not attend his friend funeral? Is he too big, or too intelligent to attend or be queried?
4. What reasons did he give, other than saying it's his business whether he attends or not?
5. He said he doesn't 'pander to the expectations of the sanctimonious', couldn't he have made his point without being sanctimonious himself?
6. What was the central message of WS 1,563 words that could not be said in fewer less calmer tone befitting of his status?

PointB:

Going to pay last respect to his friend, despite what people might say would have definitely been much better than the long essay written to defend the reason he didn't go. Reasons, which of course he failed to state.

I personally don't see the need for this epistle. He didn't go to pay final respect to a friend, and critics latched on it, wouldn't it have been more dignifying for the erudite professor to maintain a golden silence? What purpose does this angry rant serve? To fuel further bad blood?

Malawian:
soyinka is such a smaaaaaall maaan. and this guy is meant to be standing over 6 fts.

Jenams: ''AS A TEACHER'', I lament YOUR
failure to use the opportunity of the
passing of a revered writer to turn YOUR
younger generation in enlightened
directions. YOU have chosen instead to
coarsen their sensibilities and breed in
their minds misunderstanding, suspicion
and above all – hate!
YOU will have understood by now how I
have come to view YOU as no different
from the homicidal clerics who arm
youths with kerosene and match, cudgel
and knife, a few Naira in their beggars’
bowls, and dispatch them to set fire to
structures of comradely cohabitation, of
reflection, of mind enlargement, and
destroy communities of learning.

One Naira: wow. it's official WS is just like his people. A tribal, hate filled mongrel. Chinua Achebe dies, unable to.defend himself, and Wole Soyinka took the opportunity to make wild accusation about the man. Pretended to be his friend all this years. He waited till the man dies, and then unleashed his bigotry hatefilled mind. I'm trying to phatom why the heck will you smile, called a man your bestfriend, my brother, etc when the man is still alive and then do a complete 360 when he dies. in my opinion that's the major definition of cowardly. here i thought WS was different from the rest of his people. At least now, we know. dem all the same. Instead of him wasting his time yarning rubbish everywhere, maybe he should focus on his barely selling books. spare us jor with the tales that CA jealoused your award. a tae that we can't find anything else to verify it to another take that CA saw him as an enemy. another tale that nothing ,other than WS saying it, verfies. one more thing i forgot to add, a man that is secure with himself and truly believe insult giving to him are not accurate representation of himself does not waste his time writing long but boring articles to defend himself against those he believe are not in his level. Take a close look at CA reaction with your people barade of insult from his last book and learn from it.

kinda glad i didn't finish reading this. the little i read was a waste. WS thank you for continuing showing your true colors. At least we know who you ae now. I'm glad you let the facade fall.

Malawian: soyinka is such a smaaaaaall maaan. and this guy is meant to be standing over 6 fts.

PhysicsQED: One Naira, you might really be much lazier than I thought you were. The solution here is not to start Google searching like a madman and taking random screenshots, but to go and actually pick up the book that I cited from a library. Then you would see the source of the quote and you would realize that while the quote itself is definitely in the book, the quote does not even originate from that book but from an interview that Achebe did indeed give in 1988.

The quote is from a magazine called Quality and the name of Achebe's interviewer was Onuora Udenwa. The quote is from 1988 and yes it exists because he made the statement. The problem is that you're so lazy and ill-informed that you think that every publication ever made has been digitized and put on the internet so you think you can find everything by searching on sites like Google or wikipedia.

I've quoted statements from old publications which one absolutely cannot find the quotes from through Google books or jstor or other online sources many times - that doesn't mean that the quotes don't exist! It means the person I'm discussing something with has to go to and actually check the source if he (for some reason or another) doesn't believe me. Not every academic journal article is online and not every quote from a book can be found on Google books! Similarly not every article from every single journal, book, or magazine published in west Africa or elsewhere has been digitized and made easily available for your convenience. This concept is so elementary that I shouldn't even have to explain it and it's a bit annoying that I even had to do so.

Now to rehash what I stated above, Ezenwa Ohaeto was a former student of Achebe's, a literature professor, and a great admirer of Achebe's and he sought authorization from Achebe to even produce that biography, so it would make no sense to think that he cooked up the quote. But more relevantly, he was also a proper academic, and when writing a detailed biography, he cited sources for his quotes just as any proper academic would. This is the source for the quote, as given by Ohaeto:

Onuora Udenwa, 'The Nobel is not an African Prize - Chinua Achebe', Quality, 3 November 1988

So there you have the name of the interviewer (Udenwa), the title of the interview as given in the magazine, the name of the magazine (Quality), and the exact date (November 3, 1988) of the publication. You can find this source given on p. 302 of Ohaeto's book. Now since I think that professor Ohaeto was able to provide the quote as it was stated in the interview, I'm fine with quoting from that biography, and I don't intend to track down that issue of that old magazine, scan the pages, and upload them to the internet just for this worthless argument with you. However, if you still have issues (because you couldn't easily find the quote after multiple Google searches) what you need to do is get off the internet immediately (instead of thinking that engaging in more and more "Googling" will get you the answer) and actually start trying to track down that issue of the magazine (in either a university archive or library, if it is kept there, or directly from the owners of that former magazine, if they have it in their archives).

And if the authors of Achebe's wikipedia article who relied heavily on Ohaeto's book for much of their other information didn't care to provide the entire Ashiwaju quote from p. 264 of Ohaeto's book, then that's not my problem because I'm not the one dumb enough to think that every single bit of information in books that are cited in wikipedia articles is actually reproduced in and always quoted in full in those same articles. Ohaeto's book is 300+ pages. Should or could the wikipediaists who put together Achebe's wikipedia article even have included every single detail mentioned in Ohaeto's biography when putting together a general encyclopedia style article? No. I don't even know why you would doubt the existence of the quote. It's not even anything outlandish or very controversial - it's just an opinion, plainly and honestly stated - that winning the Nobel doesn't automatically make one the leader of African or Nigerian literature, and I doubt that the basic idea of the quote is anything that other people haven't expressed before, anyway.

eGuerrilla: @PhysicsQED,

Your contribution, which highlights the attitude of CA and WS towards the use of certain descriptors, is both balanced and fair, in my opinion.

Ezenwa-Ohaeto. (1997). Chinua Achebe: A Biography. James Currey Publishers.

[size=15pt]Like emotional parasites, YOU feed off others, but YOU have never learnt to value what others give, or be thereby nourished. I recognize YOU, atavistic minds. Don't inseminate hate against those whom YOUR pedestrian vision cannot see.[/size]

One_Naira:

Dude spare with all that. I watched carefully your interaction with ACM10. Just because I didn't join the argument does not mean I didn't bother to read what was going on. In your range of insults, I watched you make a statement and applied to a specific book by a specific author. ACM10 ironically had the exact book and asked you to tell him where it is you got that statement from. He quoted a statement on the said book that in fact contradicts what it is you said so first you insulted him, but when he continued asking and was very persistent, other's joined and ridiculed you. Unable to defend yourself nor provide the information the man asked for, that's when you provided a totally different book (in which he has no access to), different author, a page and then another statement. Which brought ACM10 to say something along the line of if he bought the other book, your comment probably isn't on it. So dude spare me. One thing I am good at is remembering things I read, I am not good with names but I am good with people's comments/opinions.

One_Naira:

Dude spare with all that. I watched carefully your interaction with ACM10. Just because I didn't join the argument does not mean I didn't bother to read what was going on. In your range of insults, I watched you make a statement and applied to a specific book by a specific author. ACM10 ironically had the exact book and asked you to tell him where it is you got that statement from. He quoted a statement on the said book that in fact contradicts what it is you said so first you insulted him, but when he continued asking and was very persistent, other's joined and ridiculed you. Unable to defend yourself nor provide the information the man asked for, that's when you provided a totally different book (in which he has no access to), different author, a page and then another statement. Which brought ACM10 to say something along the line of if he bought the other book, your comment probably isn't on it. So dude spare me. One thing I am good at is remembering things I read, I am not good with names but I am good with people's comments/opinions.

One Naira: interesting enough I googled this exact word and excluding you and others that claimed CA said such on NL. one commentor mentioned it on saharareport, nowhere else seem to have such word. therefore, any link to support your accusation against CA

One Naira: WS said it and we have nothing else to verify CA actually said it. again such a shame WS is descending so low. not only is he jealous of his colleague, he is also accusing his colleague wrongfully. smh. so disappointed today.

if you have link that verify CA said then we'll accept it. thus far, google can't find any

One Naira: Anyway, back to what I was saying, second accusing CA of a comment against WS that cannot be verified and it's not found anywhere else except on WS comment

As for the wikipedia post, the website listed every opinion about noble prize CA had as well as his rejoice for WS when he won the said award. I find it ironic the said website which is a clear attack on WS award is disregarded

By the way, most controversial interview as well as a statement made by someone as popular as CA usually are digital.

I doubt the existence of the exact quote because that said quote is an insult to another man's achievement and I doubt CA would result to that mere attack.

Why you felt the need to inform me that books are not usually digital

I find it Ironic that of all this years, of all the comparison between CA and WS all this years, all the interview between the two in all this years, none ever mentioned the said quote until recently in this year.

A supposed controversial insult hidden for so many years until he, WS, mentioned it.

I doubt the existence of the exact quote because that said quote is an insult to another man's achievement and I doubt CA would result to that mere attack. If you have different opinion about what the statement implies, then that's on you. I don't have to have the exact same opinion as you.

Ola Johnson:
Have you found out from ACM10 if he has gotten the quote and even the book I referred him to?
I'm not here to enter any argument with you because you already have a made-up mind.

ACM10:


Dude, you've started again. I dey watch you in 3D. I still have the book with me o. So, don't play smart.

PhysicsQED:

This will be the second time now that you are claiming that the quote from Achebe (the "Asiwaju" statement) that Soyinka mentioned in that interview from a few weeks ago is a false or made up statement that no one can verify. So I might as well set the record straight:

"The interviewer insisted on obtaining Achebe's view concerning remarks in several Lagos-Ibadan newspapers that he was neither a relevant nor an effective writer since he was not awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986. Achebe had to contextualize the issue in a way that would educate and inform.

My position is that the Nobel Prize is important. But it is a European prize. It's not an African prize. It's not a Nigerian prize. Those who give it, Europeans who give it are not responsible to us. You can't go and ask them, "why are you not giving it to so, so and so?" It is not your prize. They have reasons for setting it up. They have their rules for determining who should get it. And so what we should be saying is: 'Okay we are happy they have given one of us their prize'. But to go from there to say, 'Ah now this is the Ashiwaju of African literature', is so absurd. Now, that is something I would like to take on sometime and explain, that a European prize does not make anybody the Ashiwaju of Nigerian literature."

You can find what I quoted immediately above on pp. 263-264 of the book Chinua Achebe: A Biography (1997) by Ezenwa Ohaeto. That quote above from Achebe is originally from an interview that Chinua Achebe gave two years after Soyinka won the Nobel prize and the author of that biography, Ezenwa Ohaeto, a former student of Achebe's, was a poet and a professor of literature who wrote one of the first biographies of Achebe.

I'm not sure why you are denying that that quote from Achebe really existed. From some of your past posts, it's clear that you're competent at searching for quotes online, so it's surprising that you didn't already come across it in other sources if you actually made even a halfhearted effort to look for it. Even if one couldn't find the full quote in an official source (an authorized biography), as I did, there are still multiple publications from the 80s and the 90s which one can easily find which reference this quote by Achebe.

When he originally caught wind of the statement, Soyinka commented on the statement in a lighthearted manner, saying that he was not interested in being the "Asiwaju" of Nigerian literature, but that he was trying to be the "Ogbuefi" of Nigerian literature. Regardless of how one wants to interpret Achebe's "Ashiwaju" statement, he did indeed make the statement. However, they clearly seemed to be on friendly terms (I don't claim, like some people, to know much of anything about the specifics of their relationship, but that's just what I can tell from my observations from a distance) and they showed up together at multiple events after this "Ashiwaju" vs "Ogbuefi" back and forth. In fact at one event, Soyinka presented an award to Achebe that a certain organization (the African Overseas Union) had given Achebe in honor of his work.

Now regarding the quote itself: In the process of defending himself from undeserved attacks on his achievements as a writer, Achebe made a comment about whether the Nobel prize really made a person the "Ashiwaju" (leader) of Nigerian literature. From what I've read, this "Ashiwaju" comment was seen by some people back then as unfortunate and something that could be interpreted as negative toward Soyinka, but in the context that it was made, it seems much more likely to me that it was meant mostly as a criticism of the idea that a prize determined by and awarded by European writers could make a person the real "leader" of African literature, and not meant as a real insult to Soyinka (who Achebe had congratulated two years earlier when he won the prize). One can see that Achebe's quote is much more about there being a need not to assess African writers merely by the tastes and opinions of European critics and judges, rather than anything else. Similarly, Soyinka's statement from a few weeks ago (when the interviewer pressed him about the issue) about Achebe not being the "father" of modern African literature and there being no one father of modern African literature is not out of resentment of Achebe, but just how he sees things from his perspective as a prominent writer in his own right from the same generation.

Achebe felt that having a prize conferred on a Nigerian writer (Soyinka) by a European academy - even if it was an important prize, as he acknowledged - did not automatically make that person the leader (Ashiwaju) of Nigerian or African literature. Soyinka felt that having the title of "father of modern African literature" bestowed upon a writer (Achebe) by another prominent writer (Gordimer) did not make that claim automatically true and he felt that there was no one "father" of modern African literature. Yet writers in newspapers back then went on to speculate that Achebe's 1988 comment was born out of jealousy, bias or spite, rather than it simply meaning what it said and now people on the internet are trying to make Soyinka's comment from a few weeks ago into something rooted in jealousy, bias or spite, when it's clear that in both cases they really meant what they said and that these statements were not intended as attacks on the worth or achievements of the other writer. Achebe didn't see Soyinka as the leader of Nigerian literature just because he won the Nobel prize, and Soyinka didn't see Achebe as the "father of modern African literature" - which he clearly thinks has no one father - just because Gordimer said that it was so. This doesn't mean that either one of them was "jealous" or out to attack or denigrate the other - it's just how they saw things from their perspective. Take off the ethnic jingoist glasses, approach what these writers said with some degree of maturity, objectivity and some attempt at understanding nuances and maybe you'll better understand what both of these writers (Soyinka and Achebe) were saying. The real world is not NL, and not every interaction between people from another ethnic group and a person from your ethnic group is a chance to prove your valor as an ethnic defender or ethnic chauvinist. Sometimes, it is an opportunity for you to actually think. There might be important non-ethnic issues that these thinkers may have strong opinions about - such as whether Africans should think that a writer was the leader of African literature because he won a prize conferred by a European academy, or whether it actually made sense to consider a writer the "father" of a subject that may have had no one real parent.

Now I don't particularly care much about the Soyinka vs. Achebe stuff that's been going on on this forum for a few weeks now, but I decided to post that quote (which isn't even that hard to find) because you have made it a point to repeatedly attempt to impugn Soyinka's integrity on that Nobel prize/Ashiwaju quote of Achebe's because of your own laziness. It's far too easy to look for proof that a quote actually exists before rushing to accuse someone (Soyinka) of being a liar, yet you refused to expend even the slightest effort to do this. If you just don't like Soyinka because you're from an apparent "rival" ethnic group to his own, then I wouldn't even care, since that's just how you choose to see things, but stop trying to promote this idea of yours that Soyinka told or repeated a lie against Achebe after Achebe passed away by mentioning the Asiwaju quote as it it were unverified or false when the Ashiwaju quote is completely authentic. Just stop being lazy and make use of your brain.

AbdH:
He is a small man but well known around the world but you are the big man who is sadly obscure to all.
It is really sad that people can reduce themselves to insulting men who have elevated this nation in their various fields.

who have elevated this nation

Eko Ile:


Unfortunately for you and CA, CA obviously did not use his influence to unite or enlighten any young generation, infact he did the opposite with his hate and bigotry filed book, he reopened old wounds and trashed all our gains since the civil war.

This is not ancient history, it happened just a few months ago...CA was very distinctive till his last breath.

InvertedHammer: /


Out of jealousy, he used jazz/otumokpo to set road accident for Chinua.

Usually one is not expected to see the corpse of someone he/she intended to or may have killed.

So Wole Soyinka did not attend so that he would not see Chinua's corpse.
//

Malawian:

who be this Ozuo?



yeah !!! Naija is such a banana republic, it takes cultists and atheists to elevate it. ode.