₦airaland Forum

Yes, this is what this thread says it is.

I can't deny that this thread may be construed as inherently tribalistic, but I thought to create it anyway as Igbos (I believe) have historically been subject to the worst forms of labels and stereotypes against their tribe. They have even been KILLED in scores because of the actions of a few which, for some reason, affected the image of the whole. It's only fair to add some positive "stereotypes" into mix as I present some of Igbo achievers known today.


Individual achievements may or may not put food on the table of an average Igbo man but it's nice to be inspired and to know your potential an individual despite adversities.

First Batch: Literary Achievements.

(Because you cannot talk about Nigerian Literature without talking about Igbo writers).

Hmmm

Things Fall Apart/Chinua Achebe.


One of the top 100 greatest books of all time, according to Time Magazine, The Guardian. Arguably the go to book for modern African literature. Most translated African book.

Written by the christened "father of modern African Literature" himself. May he R.I.P.

Biafra consolation

*** modified... in love with d thread has litrary ICON I cherish.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Contemporary literary writer with critical acclaims. An insufferable feminist, a great storyteller and Bestselling author. It doesn't hurt that Beyonce is a fangirl .

Awards and achievements: Orange prize winner and once part of the Man Booker dozen.

Notable books: Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah.

Picture: Caricature via the New Yorker.

koolpal:
Biafra consolation

No tribal insults please.

Cyprian Ekwensi.

Arguably Nigeria's most prolific writer. Hardly mentioned when talking about the literary greats but one cannot deny that his books have played a considerable role in shaping any part of Nigeria's literati.

Fast-paced stories that are set in diverse locales in the country irrespective of origin.

Notable books include Jagua Nana, An Africa's Night Entertainment, Burning Grass, The Passport of Mallam Illia.

Flora Nwapa, Nigeria's first female Novelist.

Nwapa, born in Oguta,[2] was the forerunner to a generation of African women writers. While never considering herself a feminist, she is best known for recreating life and traditions from a woman's viewpoint. In 1966, her book Efuru became Africa's first internationally published female novel in the English language (Heinemann Educational Books).

Buchi Emecheta

Or the Feminist writer at a time in Nigeria when "feminism" was at the backburner of any sociological discussion.

Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as "stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical."

First Novel - Second Class Citizen, Published 1974.

Elechi Amadi,
THE CONCUBINE(1966) his first novel

Olaudah Equiano.

Not necessarily a master of the literary arts, however his memoir, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano," published in 1789, is regarded by many as the "the true beginning of Modern African Literature."

koolpal:
Elechi Amadi,
THE CONCUBINE(1966) his first novel

Due to the political landscape in Eastern Nigeria (Ikwerre vs Igbo), I would have to exclude him from this list.

Great writer and novel, regardless.

Chukwuemeka Ike: THE BOTTLED LEOPARD... recalls d dibia

Nnedi Okoroafor - dedicated to writing African Fantasy/Science Fiction

It remains to be seen if she is going to be considered one of the great writers in future, but I am including her here because her genre of writing is hardly tackled by most African novelists. She is also an very notable writer for teens and young adults in this regard.

Her influences include Ben Okri and Octavia Butler.

Notable books: Lagoon, Who Fears Death, Zahra the Windseeker.

Christopher Okigbo - The Poet. The Soldier.

Christopher Okigbo, (born Aug. 16, 1932, Ojoto, Nigeria—died August 1967, Nigeria), Nigerian poet who is one of the best and most widely anthologized African poets.

Okigbo held positions as a teacher, librarian at the University of Nigeria, private secretary to Nigeria’s federal minister of research and information, and West African editor of Transition, an African literary magazine. He was awarded first prize for poetry in the 1966 Festival of the Negro Arts in Dakar but declined the prize because he felt that writing must be judged as good or bad, not as a product of a specific ethnic group or race. In 1967 Okigbo’s efforts to launch a publishing company in Enugu with the novelist Chinua Achebe came to an abrupt end after his death while fighting in the war for Biafran independence from Nigeria.

Chika Unigwe.
Chude Jideonwo
Dennis Osadebey.
Okey Ndibe - Foreign Gods
Chike Amene - Plight of Icarius.
Onyeka Nwelue - Abysinnia Boy.

Next Batch - Visual and Performance Arts.

AnambraDota:
Chika Unigwe.

Chude Jideonwo

Dennis Osadebey.

Okey Ndibe - Foreign Gods

Chike Amene - Plight of Icarius.

Onyeka Nwelue - Abysinnia Boy.

A lot more too, but I am giving samples.

I Am Richer Than Bill Gates – Pastor Adeboye

http://amazonbug.com/?id=55c8b61bedd311.18989293&t=I+Am+Richer+Than+Bill+Gates+–+Pastor+Adeboye

Notable mentions:

Onuora Nzekwu for "Eze Goes To School", (one of the most widely read early African short stories);

Pita Nwana for "Omenuko" (one of the earliest novels written in an African indigenous language);

Christopher Okigbo, one of Africa's greatest poets.

Visual and Performance Arts.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oscar and Emmy awards nominee, Bafta Awards Winner.

Notable films - 12 years a Slave, Children of Men, American Gangster. Slated to play the villain in Marvel Comics upcoming movie "Dr. Strange."

Words on Being Igbo/Biafran at heart:

Then this beautiful book (Half of a Yellow Sun) came out, so it was a perfect mixture of events. It was a deeply personal experience. Because not only are my parents Nigerian, but also Igbo [an ethnic group from southeastern Nigeria] and from the exact region then that all the events of the film take place. I feel [African], but also distinctly Igbo. The south is a very specific place in Nigeria. I love being there. So the events [civil war-related] in the film happened to my own family. This part of our history is very defining. The Biafran War was the first one covered by media, and the first images of the starving children later associated with Africa now were taken then. It was the first time people saw Africa in terms of a humanitarian crisis. This war was also the reason why my family left and went first to Paris and then to London. This is the reason why now I speak like this.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-chiwetel-ejiofor

Uzo Aduba, Emmy Award winning actress.

Nigerian American actress who shot to the limelight via her role as "Crazy Eyes" in Orange is the New Black.

On being proud of her African name:

My family is from Nigeria, and my full name is Uzoamaka, which means “The road is good.” Quick lesson: My tribe is Igbo, and you name your kid something that tells your history and hopefully predicts your future. So anyway, in grade school, because my last name started with an A, I was the first in roll call, and nobody ever knew how to pronounce it. So I went home and asked my mother if I could be called Zoe. I remember she was cooking, and in her Nigerian accent she said, “Why?” I said, “Nobody can pronounce it.” Without missing a beat, she said, “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka."

Mathematics and computing

Philip emeagwali
he is accorded the bill gate of africa for the efforts he put in programmimg the super computer,he started lecturing at an american university at the age of 19,and greatest african scientist of all time by time magazine.

Chike obi
the first sub saharan africa to obtain a doctorate degree in mathematics,best known as the first black to solve fermat theorem.

Chinedu echeruo
he developed hopstop.com,an application that guides on subway direction and map location of over 130 cities across the world.he sold the application to apple inc. at the sum of $1 billion.

Nonso Anozie - The big guy with a more impressive acting resume than you think. Nigerian-British.

Acting credits include:

Films
The Last Legion (2007), Batiatus
Atonement (2007), Frank Mace
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Ezra
Cass (2008), Cass Pennant
RocknRolla (2008), Tank
Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), Sergeant Jeffreys
Brighton Rock (2010), Dallow
I Am Slave (2010)
Conan the Barbarian (2011), Artus
The Grey (2011), Jackson Burke
Ender's Game (2013), Sergeant Dap
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014), Embee
Get Santa (2014), Knuckles
Cinderella (2015), Captain
Pan (2015), Bishop

Television
Occupation (2009), Erik Lester
Game of Thrones (2012), Xaro Xhoan Daxos
The Bible (2013), Samson
Dracula (2013–2014), R.M. Renfield
Zoo (2015), Abraham
Tut (2015), General Horemheb
Sense8 (2015)

Keep it coming bro

Ben Enwonwu- Nigeria's Pioneer Artist

Odinigwe Benedict Chukwukadibia Bonaventure Enwonwu (July 14, 1917 – February 5, 1994) was a premier African modernist and a pioneer who is better known as Ben Enwonwu. He was an Igbo Nigerian painter and sculptor. He is a pioneer whose career opened the way for the postcolonial proliferation and increased visibility of Modern African art. His work has been exhibited around the world. The Enwonwu crater on the planet Mercury is named in his honour.

During his time, Enwonwu was well regarded as an artist; his art is described as a "unique form of African modernism". Ogbechi describes his art as "[the opening up of] third space in art history whose nature and parameters are at variance with art history's exclusionary narratives of modernity and its inscription of the modern artist-subject as a white, Western European male”.[3] Recognition of his bronze sculpture of the Queen proved that he, as an African modern artist, used his practice to develop a new kind of modern art whose ideals of representation and notions of artistic identity were different from conventional art-historical narrative of European modernist practice.

Uche Okeke, founding member of The Zaria Arts Society.
.

With the aid of Chike Aniakor and others, Uche Okeke developed the art program at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from 1970--at the end of the Biafran War--until 1985. Born in 1933 of an Igbo family living in northern Nigeria, Okeke's curiosity about his own culture was whetted by Igbo tales told by his mother and sister, by his secondary school education in the Igbo region, and later by the discovery that his mother had been an uli artist.

Attending the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology (now Ahmadu Bello University) at Zaria from 1958 to 1961, Okeke and other art students rebelled against formal British artistic training and the work of earlier contemporary artists in Nigeria, arguing instead for the "natural synthesis" of indigenous elements with topical issues. He founded the Asele Institute, a cultural center now located at his residence in Nimo, which houses an art library and a collection of contemporary Nigerian art.

Okeke's early work ranged from pen and ink portraits, to wondrous figures rendered in pen and ink and based upon Igbo tales, to a series of images rendered in gouache that were published in Tales of Land of Death (1971). He has created images of Igbo spirits, mythic figures, and masqueraders in various media. A scene from Chinua Achebe's famous novel Things Fall Apart was illustrated in oil paint, as was a scene of Igbo women demonstrating during the 1929 Aba Riots in southeastern Nigeria.

Picture - Sitting, second from right.

this is why people from the waste jealous us

maestroferddi:
Notable mentions:Onuora Nzekwu for "Eze Goes To School", Pita Nwana for "Omenuko" (one of the earliest novels written in an African indigenous language

Great literary works. i still have both of them

Dr. Alban, Nigeria's hitmaker of the 1990's.

Alban Uzoma Nwapa (born 26 August 1957), known by his stage name Dr. Alban, is a Nigerian-born Swedish musician and producer with his own record label dr-records.[1] His music can best be described as a Eurodance/hip-hop reggae with a dancehall style.[1] He sold an estimated 16 million records worldwide[2][3][4] and is most famous for his worldwide 1992 hit "It's My Life".[1]

His songs have charted the billboards (the US), and hit number 1 in singles hits in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and a host of European countries.

One of Africa's biggest hits of the 1970's = A song made by a son of Ebonyi.

Nico Mbarga.

Although he only recorded one significant hit, "Sweet Mother," in 1976, which sold more than 13 million copies (and which is recognised as one of Africa's greatest songs), Mbarga played an important role in the evolution of African popular music. With his soulful vocals set to the light melodies of his acoustic guitar, Mbarga created a unique hybrid of Igbo and Congolese guitar playing and uplifting highlife rhythms. He formed his own group, Rocafil Jazz, to perform regularly at the Plaza Hotel in the eastern Nigerian city of Onitsha.

After releasing a disappointing single in 1973, Mbarga and Rocafil Jazz had their first success with their second single, I No Go Marry My Papa, which became a regional hit. The band's inability to break past their local following resulted in their recording contract being dropped by EMI, a decision that proved ill-fortuned when the band signed with Rogers All Stars, a Nigerian recording company based in Onitsha, and recorded "Sweet Mother".[1]

Sung in Pidgin English, "Sweet Mother" became one of the top sellers in the history of Nigerian music. In the six years that Mbarga and Rocafil Jazz remained with Rogers All Stars, 1975 to 1981, they recorded nine albums.

Tears.

So proud to be Igbo.