Birthday: Chinua Achebe Turns 90 Today

Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.

Raised by his parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship to study medicine, but changed his studies to English literature at University College (now the University of Ibadan). He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures, and began writing stories as a university student. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) and soon moved to the metropolis of Lagos. He gained worldwide attention for his novel Things Fall Apart in the late 1950s; his later novels include No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Achebe wrote his novels in English and defended the use of English, a "language of colonisers", in African literature. In 1975, his lecture "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" featured a criticism of Joseph Conrad as "a thoroughgoing racist"; it was later published in The Massachusetts Review amid some controversy.

When the region of Biafra broke away from Nigeria in 1967, Achebe became a supporter of Biafran independence and acted as ambassador for the people of the new nation. The civil war that took place over the territory, commonly known as the Nigerian Civil War, ravaged the populace, and as starvation and violence took its toll, he appealed to the people of Europe and the Americas for aid. When the Nigerian government retook the region in 1970, he involved himself in political parties but soon resigned due to frustration over the corruption and elitism he witnessed. He lived in the United States for several years in the 1970s, and returned to the U.S. in 1990, after a car crash left him partially disabled.

A titled Igbo chief himself, Achebe focuses his novels on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of Western and traditional African values during and after the colonial era. His style relies heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines straightforward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory. He also published a large number of short stories, children's books, and essay collections.

Upon Achebe's return to the United States in 1990, he began an eighteen-year tenure at Bard College as the Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature. From 2009 until his death, he served as David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinua_Achebe

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.

Chinua Achebe and Nnamdi Azikiwe

President Goodluck Jonathan


Scorpio season

Season of legends

Hmm.


Even the dead are birthlebrated.


I rest my case.

Shey na happy birthday I go talk abi how dem dey wish dead people. Ok happy posthumous birthday ...
Long life and prosperity.. hip! Hip!! Hip!!!
Like for achebe share for soyinka

THINGS FALL APART


INFACT , THINGS HAVE OVER FALLEN APART IN THIS COUNTRY


CHINUA ACHEBE said


WHERE ARE THE YOUNG SUCKERS , WHEN THE OLD ONES ARE NO MORE .

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 Lalasticlala 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 becaus.

chai! e don come o, odogwu is back !! ,
nwaamaikpe , angel of ugly truth

Is it really right to say 'happy' birthday to a dead person? Anyways, good to commemorate Africa's most prolific writer.

techmo:
Chinua Achebe and Nnamdi Azikiwe


Scorpio season

Season of legends

sweetheart good morning

i want to have sexual intercorse with you

Happy birthday my hero.

MsAllison:
sweetheart good morning

i want to have sexual intercorse with you

NagadaAwo. Am not Gay... I only have sex with Vagina people

techmo:



NagadaAwo. Am not Gay... I only have sex with Vagina people

respect a lady

adadike:
Happy birthday my hero.

MsAllison:
respect a lady

Look guy... Resume your cancellation duty ASAP, this is what I employed you for and not making perverted advances

Don't let me send you back to Anambra

Let it not be from me you heard, NwaAmaikpe was there the day Chinua Achebe arrived the earth.

Happy posthumous birthday to one of Nigerian's greatest, finest writer, poet and a man with oratory prowess.

Nwamaikpe, how do you want us to handle your erring penis.

Welcome back, the intelligent, sarcastic clown, that surprisingly has a knowledge about almost everything. I swear down, I did miss you.

I don't know the reason why Nwamaikpe was banned, please mods that guy is intelligent, sarcastic and can be annoying when he refuses to be empathetic and sympathetic to some issues but he sure knows more and people like him shouldn't be handed long bans.

I thought I was the only one that missed his nonsense, until I opened the thread on where igp said many policemen are trying to resign, read the first comment and boom , saw the pattern and knew it was him. Tried to welcome him and found out that many Nairalanders are already doing that increasing the pages of that thread.

Mods, if una wan ban someone, ban with the fear of God abeg.

Great writer!, rest on Sir

Happy birthday legend.

Ok

Imagine waking up one day....

You open nairaland homepage to read headlines and you see.....

"Today is (your name and surname ) posthumous birthday".

You laughed cos it's a funny yet scary coincidence.

You read your books all night cos you still want to hit 'first class' whenever ASUU strike finally ends.

This morning, you spent some hours on 'pornhub and xvideos' in order to ease the stress you accumulated last night while reading.

You further went to your dad's room to steal some condoms needed to kill someone's daughter today (as usual).

...and an extra cash from his wallet (for postinor2) cos the girl na mumu Wey no sabI check ovulation date.

All these useless street girls.

Well....

When you reached your dad's table, you saw a burial program book with your pic on it.

According to the book, you died 2 years ago in a motor accident and was buried on December same year.

That was when you realised that you've spent up to a year roaming about on nairaland as a SPIRIT instead of the coded, alpha male, no bullshit, damn nigaaaaaar that smokes twice on a Monday and eats triple veejay (feminine pleasure hole) at same time.


Lol....

This life no balance.




P.S

in reality this is what happened (some years ago)....

A Dead customer visited our neighbours hair salon to retouch her hair.

She died the previous day in an accident and was already deposited in the mortuary.

My neighbour wasn't aware of her death.

She went ahead to fix her hair as required.
They gisted as usual.

She paid after the retouch and left.

Minutes later, someone walked in to ask her...

"Have u heard"?

Madam ... (the one that retouched her hair) is DEAD...!!!

She laughed and replied... "that woman is alive and retouched her hair minutes ago".

Together, they went to that lady's house and saw people in tears, mourning.

Truly , SHE WAS DEAD...!!!

her corpse was already in the mortuary.

But how come she came physically to her shop and had her hair retouched?

Well..... I don't have answers

The salon woman collapsed and became sick for months.

Her salon business closed up.

But she survived.

Later on , she sold off most of her salon stuffs like chairs , hair drier, etc.

My mum bought a salon showcase from her for her chemist shop.


This is a true event and not a STORY.


Repent while you can or still have time.

I'm not claiming to be a saint.




Anyway, here's my advice for all Nairalanders....


Go to your dads room and check if you'd see your burial program book there.

You really need to be sure whether you are still alive or dead.

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 Lalasticlala 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.

The Truth is back, Well-cum!

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 Lalasticlala 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.

nwamaikpe is back

A Nigerian gem, sad he can't write for us again but at least he's resting now.

Lalasticlala don change o

The man who saw tomorrow

There seems to be something special about November 16th. Zik's 116th posthumous birthday is today, and Chinua turns 90 posthumously too today.

Congratulations are in order for the literary heavyweight that wasn't afraid of speaking the truth even in the face of tyranny. Your sacrifices for a functional and an egalitarian society in your fatherland, a cause you believed in and worked towards for the most part of your life will hopefully bear fruit someday.