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Achebe on Nigeria and Anambra
AMBROSE EMECHETA
THE nation
has been agog over the well-publicised letter by one of the world’s greatest
writers and imaginative thinkers, Prof. Chinua Achebe, rejecting the Commander
of the Federal Republic award by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Apart from a
coterie of people in State House in Abuja, all Nigerians are very excited over
the rejection. There has perhaps not been in years a public criticism of this
regime whose impact is as devastating as Prof. Achebe’s.
Achebe does not speak often on public
issues, especially since March 1990 when he suffered a severe car injury which
forced him to relocate to New York. But any time he comments on a social issue,
his voice carries an unparalleled weight because it is always full of wisdom,
honesty and foresightedness. So, when he rejected the high national honour,
saying it is dangerous to keep silent when the nation is adrift under Obasanjo’s
rulership, it is clear that things have gone terribly bad. A prophet or seer in
the strictest definition of this word, any time Prof Achebe intervenes
dramatically in the public space, a chain of events of colossal consequence
always follows. Let us examine just a handful.
In January 1966, Achebe published A Man
of the People, a novel on political corruption in Nigeria. The novel ends
with the prediction of a military coup and a counter coup. Two weeks later,
Nigeria’s first military coup d’etat occurred. Some people then wondered if
Achebe was privy to the coup. In an interview by John Agetua, a literary
journalist and critic, Achebe wondered in 1976 that if he was privy to the
January 1966 coup plots, as some people widely imagined, was he also privy to
the counter coup which is foretold in the novel. Didn’t a counter coup take
place on July 29, 1966? In his characteristic modesty, the distinguished writer
dismissed his foretelling of Nigeria’s first coup and counter coup as no big
deal. He compared it to a situation where someone would see a drunken motorist
driving recklessly and predicting that the driver would have an accident, only
for the accident to occur soon after.
As early as 1981, Achebe had foreseen how
religious and political fanaticism was going to define Nigeria’s firmament. He
therefore called a meeting of Nigerian writers and warned against this social
trend in a speech with the memorable theme of "the rough beast of fanaticism". A
lot of people, including intellectuals, thought he was raising a false alarm.
But what are we seeing today? Political and religious intolerance, extremisms
and fanaticism. Religious crisis in different Nigerian towns and cities.
Political intolerance as the legislature which should check executive excesses
has lost its soul at the local, state and federal levels. Opposition parties are
being muzzled out of existence. The federation of labour unions, the only
bulwark against government excesses, is already on the way to legal extinction.
Chinue Achebe had by early 1983 foreseen
the mess which the country will become as a result of our politicians’
recklessness. He thus published The Trouble with Nigeria. This small book
was intended to serve as a national clarion call. But the politicians refused to
take heed of this warning from the soul of a deeply agitated national icon, with
some political actors accusing him of being too much of an idealist. The
consequence was a military coup of December 31, 1983, which ended the farce
called democratic governance.
In an interview in early 1984, Achebe
complained bitterly about the declining standards of education in Nigeria.
Unlike the usual practice of accusing pupils and students of suffering from
"intellectual kwashiorkor", as Prof. Michael Echerue called it in the 1980s when
he was the Vice Chancellor of the Imo State University, Achebe observed that a
growing body of university professors was displaying embarrassing ignorance on
elementary matters. Some anonymous University of Lagos professors criticised
Achebe for this comment. But today we know who was right and who was wrong. The
quality of education in Nigeria is very bad, and worse, it is still declining
further. Does anyone still doubt that Prof. Achebe is a well gifted seer?
When in the mid 1980s General Ibrahim
Babangida charmed Nigerians with his populist measures on coming to power via a
military coup, intellectuals and the press were falling over themselves in their
adulation of the man who would later be regarded as the evil genius,
Achebe’s was about the only voice of caution. "We haven’t seen General
Babangida’s hand yet", he pointed out in a major interview with The African
Guardian, which is now a defunct weekly magazine. Didn’t history prove
Achebe right? In the wake of the inexplicable annulment of the historic June 12,
1993 Presidential election which Chief M.K.O Abiola won overwhelmingly, Prof.
Achebe said his greatest worry about the future of Nigeria was the debasing role
which the country’s intellectuals had assigned to themselves; after all, IBB
would not have wrapped Nigeria around "his little finger" without the support of
intellectuals. If we take into consideration the inelegant role of people like
Prof. Omo Omoruyi in the ongoing tragic comedy to bring IBB back to office, we
can’t but agree that Achebe is a great seer, in the tradition of Old Testament
prophets who proclaimed the truth, no matter whose ox was gored.
Now Achebe has once again intervened
boldly in the Nigerian public space. Will an event of historic proportions
occur, as has been the case? No one can answer this question satisfactorily. But
what is certain is that Nigeria has for a year been headed for an implosion. The
only thing which can stop this movement towards a cataclysm is Obasanjo deciding
to turn a new life and become reborn genuinely. He must accept in word, thought
and deed that iniquity is not part of either politics or leadership.
For example, in the South-east, especially
Anambra State, what Obasanjo has been doing is sheer iniquity. "I have watched
particularly the chaos in my home state of Anambra where a small clique of
renegades, openly boasting of its connections in high places, seems determined
to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom", bemoans Achebe in the
historic letter rejecting the so-called CFR award from Obasanjo. "I am appalled
by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance of the
presidency". Pointed and strong as the Achebe language is, it is still an
understatement.
Obasanjo has a lot of explanations to make
on why he decided to identify with forces that are opposed to peace and
democratic ideals in Anambra State. Achebe has reasons to feel offended by
Obasanjo’s hands on Anambra affairs.
Only Obasanjo knows why he has gone about
recruiting the most unlettered and controversial of beings from Anambra State
and empowering them in all manner of ways to unleash political terror on the
state. These are characters no decent person would ordinarily welcome into his
household. They are today throwing their little weight all over Anambra State,
claiming to be our leaders. Who made them our rulers?
The only explanation one can give for
President Obasanjo’s uncritical and blind support for these unsavory elements is
that Obasanjo is still fighting the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970 when he
found himself thrown into national prominence by taking over from Brig. Gen.
Benjamin Adekunle the leadership of the Third Marine Command towards the tail
end of the war.
All of us from Anambra State are very
proud of our great son, Prof. Chinua Achebe. He is the conscience of the nation.
For speaking truth to power once more, all Nigerians will continue to hold him
in the highest esteem.
•Emecheta, a legal practitioner lives in Onitsha, Anambra
State.
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