Achebe: A Personal Testimony By C. Don Adinuba

Up to the moment he breathed his last on Thursday, March 21, 2013, Chinua Achebe, Africa’s most quoted raconteur, novelist , essayist and social critic, did not know he was the person who ignited my interest in the business of public affairs and communication consulting. When Okike, the African journal of new writing which he founded in 1971 at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was getting ready to mark its 20th anniversary, the magazine was financially challenged. A fund raiser was needed. Achebe, a thorough person, had by 1989 begun in earnest to prepare for the anniversary. He spoke to me in his characteristically solemn voice, “C. Don, you know a lot of successful and prominent people and they respect you because you have talent and enthusiasm. I would like you to launch a revenue drive for Okike and get a commission on it”. A request from Achebe was, of course, like a command to most people who knew him on account of the man’s incomparable quick mind, intimidating personae and great virtues.

But this request was somewhat difficult to process. I probably had some contacts in high places, but I had never regarded myself as someone with business acumen or even organizational abilities. In fact, Molara Ogundipe, the ebullient feminist and literary scholar, once famously described me as “too artistic” when I opposed her suggestion on how to run the affairs of a fledging circle of writers and critics she was leading at The Guardian.  “I am allergic to rules!”, I thundered at the meeting, leading everyone to a paroxysm of Homeric laughter.

We must give it to Achebe: he was clairvoyant, he possessed this stunning natural gift that seemed to border on divination. At the inauguration of the Association of Nigerian  Authors (ANA) at the University  of Nigeria in 1982, for instance, he told the audience that the greatest challenge facing the nation was “the rough beast of fanaticism”. This beast, he explained, was making both Nigerian religious adherents and members of the political class look like “dangerous lunatics”. He ruefully spoke of how some mullahs in Iran were passing fatwa on local poets for protesting against some excesses of the Islamic government in Teheran and a columnist with The New Nigerian newspaper in Kaduna was hailing the death sentences in the name of Islamic solidarity. Achebe also bemoaned the growing tendency of some Nigerian state governors acting like imperial lords, conquerors of their own people, rather than their servants. The import of Achebe’s speech appeared lost on even fellow writers and scholars. Only Stanley Macebuh, writing in The Sunday Punch, was to call national attention to the extremely dangerous phenomenon of extremism which was then developing, describing Achebe as an original thinker and far-sighted analyst. It is a mark of the writer’s prescience that the  greatest threat to Nigeria’s survival today, 21 years after the Achebe soul-stirring speech, is fanaticism. Extremsim accounts for thousands of violent deaths in the last couple of years and the ruination of socioeconomic activity of a certain part of our nation.

Back to my personal relationship with Achebe. When I saw how Macebuh, an exceedingly brilliant and urbane writer was getting along in life after he resigned from The Guardian as the founding managing director and after seeing George Okoro, another gifted top journalist, go by a decrepit commercial bus in Lagos, I knew my days in active journalism were numbered. Sunday Punch founding editor Dayo Wright used to tell us in Enugu in the early 1980s when I was a rookie journalist but given the high responsibility of the chief editorial writer of the Satellite newspaper, “it is either you use journalism or journalism will use you”. Given the flattering comment I received from Achebe about my talent, enthusiasm, network and goodwill, I reached a conclusion about what to do with journalism, and so quickly moved into the related field of communication and public affairs consulting.

Despite the difference of about three decades in age between Achebe and myself, we did get on very well. Achebe had no airs, no hang-ups . There was a night Okey Ndibe and I walked across Rangers Avenue from Hotel Presidential in Enugu where we were lodging to see Achebe who was then chairman of the governing council of the Anambra State University of Science and Technology and a personal guest of the vice chancellor, Chiweyite Ejike. Achebe was eating boiled maize and roasted local pear with Ejike and his wife. Before we could be invited, Okey and I descended on the traditional snacks with viciousness. We ordered  Mrs Ekije, a flabbergasted, bemused  but cultured lady who hardly knew us, to the kitchen and prepare more maize and pears! Okey then turned to Achebe: “Prof, it is better to meet you here in Enugu than in Nsukka where you would not invite us to the table because you would wait for every family member to be around before anyone can eat.  You know C. Don and I are bohemians who have no time for protocol and niceties”. The entire living room was engulfed by laughter.

I took over: “Two weeks ago we went to see prof without notice, without even calling him on the phone”. Okey cut in: “C. Don has over two hundred local and foreign telephone numbers in his head. He has the memory of an elephant”. “Rather than call 042-770513 which is prof’s number”, I resumed the story, satisfied to see the pleasant surprise on everybody’s face that I effortlessly mentioned Achebe’s residential telephone number, “we bumped into his home. Prof was in poor health in his bedroom , attended to by a doctor. But when he was told we were around, he quickly got up and joined us in the living room; for the next two hours we were discussing all kinds of issues under the sun—and even above the sun! All of a sudden, his wife appeared from the lecture room and was surprised to see the husband discussing heartily with us. She screamed: ‘Chinua, what are you doing outside the bedroom? The doctor ordered you to have complete bed rest, not even to take calls. I am not happy at all!’ Prof responded: “ I came less than two minutes ago to dismiss my friends who came all the way from Lagos and Enugu’”.  It was laughter galore.

I continued, this time with mischievous comments. “The world has, indeed, come to an end. Things have fallen apart. How can a woman be calling her husband by the first name, especially in public? How can a woman order her husband back into the bedroom in broad daylight? Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart must be turning in his grave. Who knows whether highly educated women are not on top of their husbands when they want to produce babies?”

The  commotion of laughter in this huge living room was still on when Okey rhetorically asked: “C. Don, are you sure you are not already engaged in this sacrilegious practice, even though you are not yet married, let alone to a very educated woman?” I remarked to the audience about Okey who was, as usual, in jeans: “Don’t mind him. Okey is the boy in jeans; the boy wiser than his father”. Ejike, a professor of fisheries, was visibly confused. Okey spoke to him and his wife in particular, “The Boy in Jeans—Or The Boy Wiser Than His Father  is the title of one of Achebe’s poems in the poetry collection Beware, Soul Brother. You know C. Don is a Nigerian journalist, so he doesn’t give credit to authors!” The dominant issue in the Nigerian print media then was the charge of plagiarism against a foremost journalist and columnist, accused by Kunle Ajibade and Dele Momodu, then two graduate students of literature at the University of Ife, of lifting without acknowledgement whole passages from Thomas Paine’s  classic, The Rights of Man. I responded to Okey: “You are a Nigerian journalist, so can you cast the first stone?”

As Achebe and Ejike were seeing us off, the latter said: “You guys have succeeded in making my place so warm this evening. I have never seen prof so relaxed, so comfortable with people. You are exceptional. By the way, I have noticed your high intelligence, eloquence and confidence. Feel free to come to my house anytime of the day.” Immediately we got to a poorly lit spot on the way back to the hotel, Okey and I began to hum, sing and dance: “This vice chancellor who has at least two beautiful, tall, fair skinned and elegant daughters has given us a rain cheque. Providence has buttered our bread!” A fierce argument soon erupted between Okey and myself over who would first approach which girl; we had just caught a glimpse of these girls for the first time and didn’t know anything about the damsels except that they should be the daughters of our host!

Achebe saw beyond our exuberance which he said reminded him of the rambunctious Christopher Okigbo whom Michael J.C. Echeruo described in the forward to Pol Ndu’s Songs of A Seer as “the most verbally exciting African poet writing in English”. Through the Achebe instrumentality, I was offered editorial committee membership of Okike.  And when Achebe  decided to retire from the journal, he sought my opinion on the choice of the editor. I wasted no time in suggesting Emmanuel Obiechina, the biggest name in the English Department at the UNN, but he explained that he wanted “a creative mind, a writer, and not necessarily a scholar”. He went on: “I have Chinweizu in mind, but he loves peripatetic activity; he is itinerant. Okike will remain within the Institute of African Studies at the UNN. I am also considering Ossie Enekwe , head of the Drama Department who is a very good poet, novelist and scholar. But Ossie doesn’t seem to have much confidence in his tremendous abilities”.  Ossie, a good and quite friend of mine who obtained three graduate degrees from Columbia University in New York, did suffer diffidence, a result of his combat experience in Biafra which changed him completely. When I sent him a questionnaire on his writing and on Okike which he answered satisfactorily, he still submitted the answers to Achebe for vetting before sending the material to me for publication.

I will ever relish the courtesies Achebe extended to me. At the celebration of his 60th birthday at the UNN in March, 1990, he was walking down the hall to perform a certain ceremony when he saw me with Andy Ezeani of Champion Newspapers  in an obscure corner and immediately came straight to me, together with his charming wife, and thanked me generously for finding the time to honour him! With the paparazzi swooping on us, he invited Nureeden Farah, Chinweizu and Ngugu Wa Thiong’o to join in the photos we were taking. Sensing I was close to the great writer, Weekend Concord deputy editor Dimgba Igwe, a fantastic professional, sought my assistance for a major interview with the Achebes.

No one could come into contact with Chinua Achebe without fond memories and without learning a few lessons. He was exceedingly infectious in innumerable ways. Among other things, he taught me humility and the need to be embedded in one’s community. He was a global citizen who was treated like a head of state in some African countries he visited, yet he accepted to be the president of the Ogidi Town Union where he was handling such local issues as the location of a primary health centre, renovation of a dilapidated primary school, modernizing of village open markets, settlement of disputes between kindred groups and sometimes between peasant farmers and their wives and children! Achebe was a great man, indeed. Part of his greatness derived from the simplicity of his life.  He was preeminent on the global scene, yet he had his feet planted in the cultural soil of his environment.  In the language of Jamaican scholar Michael Thelwell, the universality of Achebe’s oeuvre rested on the integrity and particularity of his sense  of community, of his roots, his origins, his identity and his culture.

Achebe may have changed his earthly body on Thursday, March 21, and lowered into the grave on Thursday, May 23, 2013, but he is not really dead. He is immortal. He will continue to guide and speak to generations of humanity from above. Achebe is Africa’s gift to the world. I am honoured to call him a friend, a mentor and an inspiration. Achebe, while on earth, was the conscience of our society, nay, humanity. I say to him: requiescat in pacem.

culled from saharareporters