Conceptual Accession Of Chinua Achebe As A Prophet, A Poet, And A Professor Using; Man Of The People, The Trouble With Nigeria, And There Was A Country.
In effect, the striking feature in the resolution of the grave crisis of this state that Achebe wrestles with in Man of the people is its degeneration into a military coup and rampaging violence (‘But the Army obliged us by staging a coup at that point and locking up every member of the Government’ – Achebe, A Man of the People, London: Heinemann, 1966: 165), an extraordinary predictive insight, if ever there was one, that confronts the reader, considering the gruesome trajectory of politics in Nigeria, in 1966, the year this same state launches the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post(European)conquest Africa, in which 3.1 million Igbo are murdered. Indeed on the receipt of an advance copy of AMP, poet, and playwright John Pepper Clarke-Bekederemo observes, ‘Chinua, I know you are a prophet. Everything in this book has happened except a military coup’. Ken Post, a British academic working in West Africa at the time, recalls: ‘Chinua Achebe proved to be a better prophet than any of the political scientists’. Once again, ‘Prophet’! So, Chinua Achebe, the Father of African Literature, is also a prophet.
Man of the people focuses on two main protagonists: Nanga, or to refer to his official designation: Chief the Honourable M. A. Nanga, MP, Minister of Culture, and Odili, the narrator. In case anyone is inclined to think that Nanga’s depiction is much of a parody, given the thrust of the novel, they need to be reassured that a Nanga actively walking the corridors of regime power in contemporary Nigeria, 50 years later, is likely to wear the following even more bombastic tag: Chief (Prof) Dr Alhaji Sir (Gen, ret.) Mallam The Honourable M. A. Ph.D. Nanga, MP, mni, Minister of Higher Priesthood & Culture – such is Achebe’s exceptional descriptive and imaginative insights so registered avidly throughout the novel. Nanga epitomises what public service entails for the typical politician in Nigeria, since 1960: a corrupt and corrupting operative who fleeces the public treasury, ‘bloated by the flatulence of ill-gotten wealth, living in the big mansion built with public money’ Odili, the school teacher, the reflective intellectual, and authorial voice, argues that the Chief (Prof) Dr Alhaji Sir (Gen, ret.) The Honourable Nangas of the times is so stubbornly confident that, ‘as long as [peoples in society"> are swayed by their hearts and stomachs and not their heads the … Nangas of this world will continue to get away with anything’ (73). The Nangas here, and in fact elsewhere, Odili continues, have ‘taken away enough for the owner to notice … It was not just a simple question of a [person’s"> cup being full. A [person’s"> cup might be full and none the wiser. But here the owner knew, and the owner … is the will of the people’ (97). Besides the billions of US dollars which Britain and its allied interests have wrenched from its Nigeria creation over the years, what empirically constitutes that which has been ‘taken away enough for the owner to notice’ by these fleecing brigands of African overseeing truckers between the 1960s and presently is US$700 billion. Just as an empirical value has been offered to underscore the urgency of Odili’s philosophical musings on the pulverizing economic legacy of the local overseer brigands of still-occupied Africa, another empirical reference is available in ‘A Man of the People’, thankfully, to address Odili’s own ‘the-owner-knew’ liberatory conclusion. This is the ‘the will of the people’ which, at last, does know what is at stake in this human-made imbroglio. It also requires a human intervention to right this wrong of history – precisely what the determined and disciplined Biafran freedom movement is implementing presently across the towns and cities and villages of Biafra. Thus, this intervention and its profound consequences which will largely define the politics of the epoch is, indeed, another predictive asset of the great prophet.
As a prophet, Chinua Achebe showed an intense concern about the nation’s corrupt and failed leadership. In his famous book entitled: “The Trouble with Nigeria,” he succinctly writes, “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” He was so concerned with the pandemic poverty, disease, corruption, violence, ethical and moral decadence in Nigeria due to the failure of leadership. In his lifetime, he saw Nigeria degenerate from a nation of hope to a nation of lawlessness and irresponsible leadership. Today, the wealth of the nation is being fleeced by a leadership cult that does not care for the common good of the country. What we have today is a lawless and disorderly nation—a country with a repugnant culture of callousness and irresponsibility. A nation of ethnic jingoism and tribal hatred, a nation where truth is portrayed as false and false as truth depending on who is saying it. Chinua Achebe, the poet, philosopher, prophet, and sage always spoke truth to power no matter whose feelings is hurt
Like prophet Isaiah, Achebe possessed prophetic consciousness and spoke against a rebellious nation, a nation of cheaters, looters, liars, hypocrites and irresponsible leaders. He cried out for the ordinary folk who are cheated and exploited by those who claim to be their leaders. He understood the hurt and pains of millions of suffering Nigerians. Like prophet Jeremiah, he wept for Nigeria and condemned social injustice and deceptive prosperity and warned her against injustice, idolatry, and immorality. However, the sage also believed in the power and greatness of Nigeria that can only come when Nigeria buries its tumultuous past; make a sincere decision to live in peace again and genuine effort to re-integrate the Igbos and minorities in the affairs of Nigeria
As a poet, he was a combination of Dante and Milton. As a philosopher, he was Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle combined. And a prophet, he was the conscience of the nation and a combination of Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. When one reads the writings of Chinua Achebe, one cannot help comparing him among the great and Greek Homeric epics, or English Shakespeare and other greats. Chinua Achebe had a heightened sense of divine agony against the culture of callousness, corruption as well as lawless and disorderly country Nigeria had become.
His recent book, “There was a country a Personal History of Biafra,” which has been described by New York Times as classic, the foremost novelist and world-renowned essayist, Professor Chinua Achebe, not only recounts his experiences of the ethnic genocide against Ndi-Igbo, but the deliberate effort to exclude his ethnic people from the affairs of running the nation—a nation in which the Igbos constitute more than one-third of the population and contribute tremendously to the federation.
Achebe as a professor, There Was A Country, however, did not win him a lot of friends, especially among the Yoruba people. In fact, many of them have been very venomous in their reaction to the passing of the literary behemoth at 82, and some have foolishly gone about it as if they would not die one day. Indeed, while the biography and chronicling of Achebe’s account of his appreciation of the events of the Nigerian civil crises and war is being applauded in some quarters, some describe it as “an anti-climax”, what with the many editorial and sometimes factual errors evident. The book bought Achebe many enemies among the Yoruba’s mainly because he made their intellectuals seem like losers in straight, merit-based competitions with their Igbo counterparts just after independence and before the crises. More pointedly, he was very denunciative of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Yoruba nation’s political champion’s handling of federal policies which helped in extending the sorrows of the Igbo people during and after the civil war, in particular, was the Awoist policy of starvation as a legitimate instrument of war.
Nice work
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