₦airaland Forum

NwaAmaikpe:




I can't keep calm because today is for the greatest ever in African Literature.

Iya Basirat said that the only reason she sells 'extra' in her bukka is to help the customer when the main plate does not do justice to the hunger in his belly.

Permit me dear Lalasti.clala to do just a small 'extra' to your biography of my all-time hero.

On the 16th of November 1930, Chinua Achebe was born into privilege because unlike parents of the day, his parents had education and that was what they had to offer to him.

At the age of 6, he had begun schooling at St. Philip’s Central School, Ogidi. He left stellar records in all schools he was enrolled into.
From Central School Nekede down to St Michael’s School Aba, the boy’s wisdom was a cause of praise and envy.

Chinua performed so well in the National Entrance Examinations that he was admitted to both Dennis Memorial Grammar School Onitsha and Government College, Umuahia; a very rare feat for anyone then in 1944.

All his brothers had attended DMGS and stemming from a lifelong quest to stand out, Achebe opted for the new elite boarding school in Umuahia called Government College. It had it’s perks. Aside just being founded in 1929, many of its teachers at the time were alumni from Cambridge. So it was almost parallel to being trained in England for anyone.

Chinua was in the Niger House dormitory and
unlike other schools, Government College Umuahia had a period between 4:00pm and 6:00pm called the “textbook act” when all textbooks were put away and only novels were read. It was here that he was further introduced to the literary works of Booker T Washington, Williams Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens.


There was nothing more frustrating for his enquiring mind than realizing that Africa really had no one who could tell her stories devoid of any taints.
And continuous reading of these authors made him long for an indigenous African literary renaissance where the African story could be told in an unbiased way.

Ironically it had the same effect on other Government College Umuahia students like Elechi Amadi, Gabriel Okpara, Christopher Okigbo, Chike Momah, Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike and Ken Saro-Wiwa all of whom will later become pioneers of modern African literature.

After the end of his stay in Government College Umuahia, Chinua Achebe sat for the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations and passed with five distinctions and one credit. Humorously, that credit was in literature.

He also came first in a nationwide entrance examination into Nigeria’s first university institution; the University College Ibadan which earned him both a scholarship to study Medicine and the privilege of being a pioneer student of the almighty University of Ibadan.

Achebe studied Medicine for one year but out of an undying love for the arts, he voluntarily switched to English, History and Theology in his second year, consequentially forgoing the bursary.

Upon graduation, he worked as an English teacher in Merchants of Light Secondary School, Oba for four months and later in 1954, he joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) in Enugu and just two years after being employed, he was nominated to train with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in England.
Shortly upon return to Nigeria, he was promoted to the controller of the Eastern Region at the NBS.

It was in the course of work in NBS that he met Christine Chinwe Okoli whom he will later get married to on the 10th of September 1961 at the University of Ibadan’s Chapel Of Resurrection.

While still at the NBS, he became the founding editor of Heinemann’s African Writers Series in 1962 and travelled to the United States, Britain and Brazil on a UNESCO fellowship in 1963.

Chinua Achebe was transferred to Lagos where he rose to the position of Director of external Broadcasting. He will work here till May 1967 when the safety of the Igbos became threatened following the riots and ensuing pogroms that had already began.
He returned to Enugu and got busy by setting up The Citadel Press; a publishing firm co-owned with Christopher Okigbo.

In 1968, he was invited by Col Odimegwu Ojukwu to serve on a political committee; the National Guidance Committee.
It is this committee that eventually drafted the Biafran “constitution” which posterity will forever remember as the Ahiara Declaration.

He will also be appointed into the BOFF (Biafran Organization of Freedom Fighters) to help the government develop an education strategy for soldiers of the Biafran Army that would improve civilian-military relations.

Chinua Achebe served as an unofficial envoy to the people of Biafra.
Under this capacity, he visited Senegal, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada, Uganda, the USA to not only solicit international support but also draw the world’s attention to the humanitarian emergency his country needed.

Despite being older to Col. Odimegwu Ojukwu and the fact that both of them were married to sisters, Chinua Achebe exuded respect, professionalism and decorum in all the assignments he was given to carry by Ojukwu.

The civil war ended in 1970 and Chinua relocated to the United States of America; he began lecturing at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut from 1972 to 1976.
Upon the assasination of his hero Gen. Murtala Muhammad in 1976, Achebe returned to Nigeria to continue teaching at the University of Nigeria Nsukka and in 1979; he was given the Nigerian National Merit Award and the Order of the Federal Republic.

Overwhelmed with the hunger for a better Nigeria with the right leader, he joined the People’s Redemption Party in 1983 and was appointed as its Deputy National President but he was disappointed and quit when he observed that asides Mallam Aminu Kano and a minute few, the vast majority of the characters he met in the political circles were in it for their own selfish advancements.

Further frustrated by President Shehu Shagari’s failure to fight corruption and the takeover of democracy by Gen Muhammadu Buhari’s military coup, he left and concentrated his attention on artistic and intellectual causes.
In 1986, he was appointed Pro Vice Chancellor of the Anambra State University, Enugu and returned to teach at the University of Massachusetts in 1987.

On the 22nd of March 1990 while on a trip to Lagos from Ogidi, Anambra State where he had just been made Chairman of the Village Council, Chinua Achebe’s car somersaulted severally when an axle in it broke off. The weight of the car landed on him severely damaging his spine.

He was swiftly attended to in a hospital and eventually flown out to England for urgent Medicare. After months of recuperation in Paddocks Hospital Buckinghamshire, England; he came out with an even stronger intellect but from his waist down had been paralyzed necessitating a lifetime use of the wheelchair.

His medical condition will make him move back to the United States mostly on a medical exile.

Chinua Achebe was born on November 16th, 1930.
That was 90 years ago. But today Chinua Achebe still commands the respect given to gods. He was a teacher, a leader, a mentor, with a lifelong uncurable allergy to sycophancy.

He repeatedly turn down national awards simply because people who pulverized his once great country into ruins were also recipients of such awards.

He did not think twice when he turned down Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s $1 Million offer for the rights to the title “Things Fall Apart” for his movie.
A spokesman for Achebe’s Foundation politely informed the movie producers that the rights to the title will not even be sold for $1 billion not only because the novel “Things Fall Apart” was first produced in 1958; some whooping 17 years before 50Cent was born, but because it was also listed as the most widely read book in modern African literature; an honor that could not possibly be exchanged for cash.

He served as a Charles P Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature in Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York from 1990 to 2008

At the time of his death on 21st of March, 2013 aged 82, Chinua was professor at the David and Marianna Fisher University and also a Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Chinua’s political ideologies metamorphosed from blaming colonial leaders for Africa’s troubles to outright criticism of African leaders for their corruption and leadership malaise. He also did not condone the docility of citizens who allowed their future and wellbeing be trampled on by bad leaders.

If he is not repulsed enough to look down on our country from above, I am sure he will be slightly impressed that at last the citizens are slowly realizing what boundless power they command with the success of their last nationwide protest against bad governance.
But I doubt he will be even distantly impressed with what NwaAmaikpe has become. Because rather than cause havoc and awake a consciousness with the pen, I am only causing havoc with the penis.

God help my poor debased soul.