*He's a patriot — Gani
IN protest against President Olusegun Obasanjo’s handling of the nation’s affairs, literary icon, Professor Chinualumogu Achebe, has rejected the national honour awarded him by the Federal Government.
“Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is ... too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 Honours List”, Achebe said in an open letter to Obasanjo dated October 15, 2004. The action instantly drew applause from Lagos lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who said it added a new impetus to the crusade against misgovernance and anti-people programmes in Nigeria.
Said Fawehinmi: “I love that man. I doff my hat for him. I adore him. He has confirmed that he is a true nationalist, a patriot, an outstanding Nigerian, a humanist, a kind man, a masses-oriented intellectual and, above all, a man of God, truth and equity, honour and integrity”. The literary icon had last Thursday been named a recipient of the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR) alongside 190 other eminent Nigerians who bagged various national honours awards.
The awards, according to the Minister of Inter-governmental Affairs, Youths Development and Special Duties, Mr. Frank Nweke (Jnr.), who unveiled the Honours List in Abuja, would be conferred on the recipients on Thursday December 16.
Achebe wrote from his Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, United States base to inform the President of his rejection of the award.
His rejection of the award is coming on the heels of the four-day nationwide strike called by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Civil Society allies to protest the full effect of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry which led to sharp increase in the prices of fuel.
“The letter read: “I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency.
“Forty three years ago, at the first anniversary of Nigeria’s independence I was given the first Nigerian National Trophy for Literature. In 1979, I received two further honors – the Nigerian National Order of Merit and the Order of the Federal Republic – and in 1999 the first National Creativity Award.
“I accepted all these honors fully aware that Nigeria was not perfect; but I had a strong belief that we would outgrow our shortcomings under leaders committed to uniting our diverse peoples. “Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 Honors List”.
Achebe, poet and novelist, is one of the most important living African writers. He is also considered one of the most original literary artists currently writing in English.
Achebe was raised by Christian evangelical parents in the large village of Ogidi, in Igboland, Eastern Nigeria.
He received early education in English, but grew up surrounded by the complex fusion of Igbo traditions and the colonial legacy. He studied literature and medicine at the University of Ibadan; after graduating, he went to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos. Things Fall Apart (1958) was his first novel. It has been translated into at least forty-five languages, and has sold eight million copies worldwide.
Starting in the 1950s, Achebe was central to a new Nigerian literary movement that drew on the oral traditions of Nigeria’s indigenous tribes. Although Achebe writes in English, he attempts to incorporate Igbo vocabulary and narratives. Other novels include: No Longer At Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), and A Man of the People (1966).
Achebe left his career in radio in 1966, during the national unrest and violence that led to the Biafran War. He narrowly escaped harm at the hands of soldiers who believed that his novel, A Man of the People, implicated him in the country’s first military coup. He began an academic career the next year, taking a position as Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria. That same year, he co-founded a publishing company with Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo. In 1971, he became an editor for Okike, a prestigious Nigerian literary magazine.
He founded Iwa ndi Igbo in 1984; this bilingual publication was dedicated to Igbo cultural life. He was made Emeritus Professor at the University of Nigeria in 1985.
He has taught at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut, and he has received over twenty honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He received Nigeria’s highest honour for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award, in 1987. His novel Anthills of the Savannah was shortlisted for the Booker McConnell Prize that same year.
Achebe has been active in Nigerian politics since the 1960s. Many of his novels deal with the social and political problems facing his country, including the difficulty of the post-colonial legacy. Concerned about the nation’s political problems, he, in 1983, wrote the book, The Trouble with Nigeria.
He is married and has four children. He currently lives in the United States, where he holds a teaching position at Bard College.
