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Chinua Achebe’s social allegory of Nigeria and his unappreciated genius

tribute by Ik Ngene “While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.” – Chinua Achebe ‘Anthills of The Savannah’

 

 

Fireballs and thunder did not augment the wailing wind when he died.

 

 

This month eight years ago, Achebe crossed the abyss between the lands to make a new beginning with his ancestors. Achebe died as he had lived: with quiet dignity.

 

Achebe was a man of exceptional achievement and his appreciation can only increase with time.

 

Review with me a couple of events which provide the context within which I make such an assertion. Recently in the country that Achebe left behind there were the usual offerings of horrific news paid for in the currency acceptable to the Nigerian government – human misery. First, was the abduction of 30 students of the Federal College of Forestry and Mechanization, Kaduna.

 

The terrorists rode into the school premises, on bikes and trucks, rounded up as many students as they could carry, and rode off with them into the forest.

 

A spokesman for the Kaduna State government told CNN that soldiers rescued about 180 students and staff. But that egregious lie was immediately shot down by one of the students, who escaped abduction, who  confirmed to reporters that the abductors had already left with their hostages before the military came on to the crime scene.

 

The spokesman was interested not in the mobilization to get back the abducted young men and women, who in their states of undress were even more vulnerable to sexual abuse, but in spin: to burnish the image of the state government and to modulate reality.

 

Second, was the return of the so-called Ibori loot to Nigeria. Chief James Ibori, former governor of Delta State, had been arrested, tried, and convicted in a Crown Court in London, in 2012; for money laundering.

 

His bank accounts were frozen, and his properties were confiscated. $5.84 million of that loot had finally made its way back home by way of a Memorandum of Understanding agreement between Britain and Nigeria.

 

After the fact of the return of that loot Nigerians weighed in on what should be done with it. Delta State lawmakers and representatives in Abuja – who apparently came to the party late – and opinion leaders’ elsewhere, all spoke up. Pa Edwin Clark and Chief Femi Falana (SAN) both thought, for instance, that the money should be returned to Delta State.

 

However, Mar. Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, who co-signed the agreement, announced that since the funds were secured by the diligent efforts of the staff of the ministries of justice and finance, they therefore rightly belonged to the Federal  Government.

 

Then he threw in a sweetener when he thought out loud that the Ibori loot should probably go to the construction of the Second Niger Bridge.

 

However, I was committed to articulating my own opinion, for its own sake, when a friend advised me: “You know I am a Deltan. Ibori remains invincible over there. If those funds ever got to Asaba, don’t be surprised if they are remitted to Ibori with apologies and thanks.”

 

Well, who knew that ‘re-looting’ was a thing. Perhaps the British government might as well hang on to that money.

 

The preceding was just a snapshot of a week in the life of Nigeria where some of us need gallows humour to process these dystopian events. But the truth is that all these had nothing to do with Achebe.

 

On second thoughts, however, I reject that easy conclusion and admit that Achebe had everything to do with Nigeria as is. We are at this place because we rejected his counsel when he tried to warn us. He spoke with proverbs, he spoke with simplicity, and he shunned the use of histrionics to make his point.

 

Anyway, we always thought that Achebe was speaking to Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, and others who expressed, in fancy prose and poetry, unwholesome thoughts about the Black race.

 

When Kipling, the English journalist and short story writer, wrote his poem ‘White Man’s Burden’, he actually directed it to Americans who had defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898.

 

He urged the victorious Americans to embark on empirebuilding and colonize the Philippines among other places. But the message in the Black Man’s Burden soon became a clarion call on the superior race – White men – to take on the moral, fateful task of bringing all men – Black, Brown, and Yellow – to civilization.

 

Also in the ‘White Man’s Burden’, Kipling described the African as ‘half devil, half child’ even though he lacked any intimate intercourse with Africans other than a short vacation in South Africa.

 

So in his eye, an African was capable of horrific things, and at the same time being easily deceived. Joseph Conrad, the Polish-born British adventurer and writer, titled his novella, ‘Heart of Darkness’.

 

He also had only a passing intercourse with Africans. He had travelled once up the Congo River Basin.

 

The Congo runs for 2,500 miles to circumscribe what became later the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its basin was a rain swept, sun-splashed, verdant prime estate rich in agricultural and cash crop produce, in diamonds and gold; and rare-earth elements and critical minerals.

 

To flag off the beginning of the post-slavery exploitation of Africa was King Leopold 11 of Belgium who claimed the so-called Congo Free State for himself. He then used native labour and the horrific tactics of his Force Public to harvest rubber for the bicycle tire industry in Europe.

 

•Ik Ngene writes from Atlanta, US

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