CHINUA ACHEBE HEADED TO THE ELYSIUM
In the frontispiece of my Blogg you have a picture of Prof Chinua Achebe and I in London, UK where once upon a time I was a student. He was autographing one of his books from his treasured pen, Girls at War and Other Stories by Heinemann Educational Books, England. I had read his Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God and the last I read was Anthills of the Savannah. In all these, he was a raconteur extraordinaire. I remember him for saying good things about Nigeria and Africa in general and being generally optimistic in spite of the fact that most of his Igbo tribe's men of his beloved country Nigeria had been butchered during the Nigerian civil war (1967-1972). A war I considered, was triggered by the jealousy of the Hausas of the North over the apparent successes and dynamism of the Igbos of the Eastern Nigeria. Vestiges of this still linger on in the form of Boko Haram's senseless and random killing in the North of Nigeria of predominantly Christian southern Nigerians.
Achebe's work was initially considered by Westerners as mavericks. Many in the West had the belief that good literature could only emerge from Europe and North America. Here was an African who proved that it could also come from Africa South of the Sahara. His highly acclaimed Things Fall Apart that catapulted him to fame was the first to be accepted to be used in the then racist South Africa by the Caucasians and that tells you how special he was. No other African literature was accepted in that country even though you had had earlier French African writers whose works had been translated into English from French-speaking Africa as Sedar Sengho, Sembe, Mungo Beti and Camara Laye, the writer of the famous African Child.
Things Fall Apart and most of his key works were wealth of ethnographic information presented as continuous narratives. Owing to his ground-breaking works, his class mates from Ibadan University of those days, and others from East Africa emulated him and today there are no shortages of African literature in the global stage even though still criticized for not meeting what some Western critics purport to be standards. The Greek ancient writers set Western Standards but many as Jonathan Swift, Chaucer, and others wrote as they felt. The spellings were not standardized as you will see in the works of William Shakespeare. Yet their works reached those stellar altitude and are still treasured hitherto. The question is who set standards and why should it be the prerogative of Europeans? What should be known is that the center of intellectual thinking do move. The shift of the center of knowledge should be appreciated, encouraged and not discouraged. Many turn to North America but in the past it was all and all Europe. There is nothing one can do about it whence the center cannot hold. Was Greece at one time not the center of thoughts in the Western World? And did the Greek scholars not admit that they were influenced by Africans? That is a different story.
Within Nigeria, what one saw prior to Achebe's publications was gutter literature that was popularly known as Onitsha Market literature often rendered in broken English with little or no editorials. However, when Achebe showed the English-African world that they could write stories too, a new chapter was opened for literary African students. We had springing up giants like Wole Nsoyinka, our modern poet laureate, Ngogi Wa Thiongo, Cypian Ekwensi, Flora Mbapo, Kenjo wan Jumbam and so on. Today there are other followers that have even outdistanced indigenous English writers as Ben Okri whose book the Famished Road is highly acclaimed and has won several literary awards. We all thank the initiative of Prof. Chinua Achebe. We shall miss him but one thing we will never miss is his wealth of literature that has immortalized his achievements.
Viban Viban Ngo, PhD.
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