Chinua Achebe Rejects Nigerian Honour

Nigeria: Achebe - When Icons Reject 'Tainted' Honour

  

Nigeria renowned novelist, Prof Chinua Achebe, 

In the penumbra of an eventful, compelling life, literary icon Professor Chinua Achebe, for the second time in seven years spurns a national honour, CFR, that was to have been conferred on him yesterday, this time around, by the President Goodluck Jonathan government. LOUIS ACHI attempts a deconstruction of the message therein, the messenger and the political milieu

Betraying his trademark scholarship and insight, late Dr. Pius Okigbo, renowned economist once lamented of the Nigerian polity: "What is unfolding in Nigeria is comparable to an Athenian tragedy but lacking the majesty of a Greek drama." By a strange coincidence, literary icon Professor Chinua Achebe, incidentally from the same Anambra State as Okigbo fundamentally echoed the late sage's position by rejecting an offer of a National Honor - CFR - by the Nigerian government led by President Goodluck Jonathan.

As the 364 awardees file out today, one will be absent - by choice - Achebe. This rejection is the second in seven years of spurning such offer from his home country's government. Achebe, globally recognized as one of the world's most outstanding novelists and intellectuals, in a terse statement expressed his position. "The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must therefore regretfully decline the offer again."

It will be recalled that in 2004, in his rejection letter of the same honor he sent to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Achebe wrote: "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 - thQe 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 honor awarded me in the 2004 Honors List".

As Jonathan, perhaps, struggles to decode the import of this high profile slap on the wrist from Nigeria's foremost literary icon and international cultural ambassador, it will be germane to attempt a deconstruction of the substance of the pained signal from a personality not given to frivolities.

The Message:

The sage chose his words carefully and with telling brevity: "The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must therefore regretfully decline the offer again." Cut to the bone, Achebe's is simply communicating that the lot of Nigeria and Nigerians have not shown any positive changes, measured by the most fundamental global parameters. All economic, security, political and social indices of human development sharply come up of the minimum requirements to merit the classification of progress.

Jonathan was quick in attempting to controvert Achebe's position, perhaps understandably. In a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, Jonathan said he was shocked by Achebe's claim that the issues which caused him to reject the same award seven years ago still remained unresolved. "Coming as it does, against the background of the widely acclaimed electoral reforms undertaken by the Jonathan Administration, the claim by Prof. Achebe clearly flies in the face of the reality of Nigeria's current political situation.

"As reflected in the immense improvements recorded in the conduct of the last general elections which were applauded within and outside the country as the most credible elections in Nigeria in recent years, the Jonathan Administration has made tremendous efforts to positively change the political architecture complained about by Prof. Achebe and other Nigerians."

For good measure Abati noted that, "Politically, Nigeria cannot be said to be where it was in 2004 as the Jonathan Administration has embarked on extensive electoral reforms to institute a regime of electoral integrity that all Nigerians can be proud of, believing that governance will be greatly enhanced in the country if the will of the people prevails at elections."

But the frivolity of Abati's good intentions and, as it was, a flight of fancy are given short shrift against the background of the events of today - both on the international and local turfs. Today, as the peculiar ritual of conferring the awardees with their different categories of national honours is carried out, the orbiting Chinese unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou-8 will carry out a scheduled second docking with another Chinese spacelabTiangong-1 some four hundred kilometres above earth. In Syria, the four-day waiting period handed down to Damascus by the Arab League is ticking.

Twenty-four hours earlier in Honolulu, Hawai, leaders of nine Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC, nations had concluded their negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership, a multilateral free trade agreement. In Madugiri, Borno State, the bloodletting by the Boko Haram sect continues. In Bayelsa State, the president's home turf, Governor Timipre Sylva has just failed in his cut-throat face-off with a hostile ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, attempting to secure the party's unwilling nod to run for second term.

Over the ceremony hangs a heavy atmosphere generated by the absence of Achebe and the questionable moral parameters of choosing the prancing awardees. This is notwithstanding the presence of some 13,000 officers and men of the FCT Police Command, personnel of the State Security Services (SSS), Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), amongst other specialised and under-cover operatives deployed to the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja.

It will be recalled that Femi Fani-Kayode, one-time Special Adviser to ex President Obasanjo, in an anti-intellectual proclamation told the BBC that Achebe had the right to reject the award, claiming that the author had lost touch with some of the events in Nigeria. This time around, Achebe had told the media that he hoped that rejecting the Commander of the Federal Republic would serve as a "wake-up call".

The Messenger:

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, novelist, poet, professor, and critic, born on 16 November 1930, hardly needs introduction, at least, on Planet Earth. He is best known for his first novel and most important work, Things Fall Apart which he wrote in 1958 and which is the most widely read book in modern African literature.

He has been called "the father of modern African writing", and many books and essays have been written about his work over the past fifty years. In 1992 he became the first living author to be represented in the Everyman's Library collection published by Alfred A. Knopf. His 60th birthday was celebrated at the University of Nigeria by "an international Who's Who in African Literature". One observer noted: "Nothing like it had ever happened before in African literature anywhere on the continent."

Many writers of succeeding generations view his work as having paved the way for their efforts. In 1982 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Kent. At the ceremony, professor Robert Gibson said that the Nigerian author "is now revered as Master by the younger generation of African writers and it is to him they regularly turn for counsel and inspiration." Even outside of Africa, his impact resonates strongly in literary circles. Novelist Margaret Atwood called him "a magical writer - one of the greatest of the twentieth century". Poet Maya Angelou lauded Things Fall Apart as a book wherein "all readers meet their brothers, sisters, parents and friends and themselves along Nigerian roads". Nelson Mandela, recalling his time as a political prisoner, once referred to Achebe as a writer "in whose company the prison walls fell down."

Achebe is the recipient of over 30 honorary degrees from universities in England, Scotland, Canada, South Africa, Nigeria and the United States, including Dartmouth College, Harvard, and Brown University. He has been awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, an Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1982), a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002), the Nigerian National Order of Merit (Nigeria's highest honour for academic work), the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The Man Booker International Prize 2007 and The 2010 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize are two of the more recent accolades Achebe has received

The Milieu:

Jonathan has promised a transformational leadership, but Nigerians, with good reason, are impatient for tangible change. Successive indices show that progress is extremely slow or non-existent. At press time, economic, security and political challenges prostrate the country. With a fractured, scheming political elite morphing into shadowy crises entrepreneurs, the Jonathan presidency appears on the precipice.

When South African writer Dennis Brutus counseled his literary constituency that writers must not live a lie, he was spot on. Writers remain the conscience of society who point out where things are going wrong. For much of his life, Achebe has unrelentingly continued to play that role. This is at the heart of the powerful statement he made in rejecting the national honour previously and currently: "The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must therefore regretfully decline the offer again." This cannot be safely faulted.