Learning Life And Stories From Chinua Achebe, A Master, By Okey Ndibe
The literary world lost one of its truly illustrious stars when Chinua Achebe passed on March 21, 2013. Yet Mr. Achebe, whose works included the inimitable Things Fall Apart and the even grander Arrow of God, was one of the most approachable men I ever met.
I had the rare honor and luck of being close to the revered Achebe for some thirty years. In that time, he was an inspiration, model, beacon of moral clarity and intellectual integrity as well as my teacher in the best, broadest sense of that word.
My first meeting with Achebe was fortuitous in a way a master storyteller like him might have imagined. It was in 1983, and the now defunct African Concord magazine had just offered me my first job as a professional journalist. My first major assignment was to interview Achebe at his office then at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The encounter taught me something about the man’s genial and generous nature—and the depth of his humanity. I will get to that first encounter later, but must recall a more recent memory.
Seven years ago, I drove from my home in central Connecticut to the quiescent country precincts of Annandale-on-Hudson to visit Chinua Achebe, who then held a prestigious endowed professorial chair at Bard College and whose novel Things Fall Apart was enjoying a cheery 50th anniversary.
Achebe’s self-effacing, soft-spoken personality was always in ironic contrast with the exuberant celebration that had erupted around his first – and most widely read and translated – novel. I was in his home to coax him to look back on 50 years of his book’s extraordinary journey. Achebe disclosed that I was one of perhaps more than a hundred interviewers he’d hosted that year. Even so, I dared convince myself that there was something special about my interview with him.
I had interviewed Achebe several times in the past – first in 1983, when I was a rookie correspondent for the now defunct African Concord, the last time in 1987, shortly after the publication of his latest novel, Anthills of the Savannah. That first interview set a mood for my relationship with the author. Quite simply, he saved my career.
I met Achebe by sheer serendipity. It was 1983 and I had just graduated from college. Visiting Ogidi, his hometown, to see my girlfriend at the time, I raved and raved about Achebe and Things Fall Apart. The young woman listened for a while, a bemused smile creasing her cheeks. Then she said: “Achebe is my uncle. His house is a short walk away. And he happens to be home this weekend. Do you want to visit him?”
The Achebe I met in his country home personified grace. I still remember that he served us biscuits and chilled Coca Cola. He regarded me with penetrating eyes as I gushed about his novels, his short stories, his essays, even reciting favorite lines I had memorized from years of devoted reading. I told him I had just got a job with the Concord and would be honored to interview him. He gave me his telephone number at Nsukka, the university town where he lived and ran the Institute of African Studies. A week later I flew to Lagos, reported for work, and told the weekly magazine’s editor that I had Achebe’s telephone number – and a standing commitment that he would give me an interview. The elated editor dispatched me to do that interview, my first major assignment at the publication.
Achebe and I retreated to his book-lined office at the institute. The air in the office seemed flavored with the scent of books stretching and heaving. Five minutes into the interview I paused and rewound the tape. The recording sounded fine and our interview continued for another two hours. Afterwards Achebe told me it was one of the most exhaustive interviews he’d ever done. I took leave of him and, heady with excitement, took a cab to the local bus stop where I paid the fare for a bus headed for Enugu – the state capital where I had booked a hotel.
That evening several of my friends gathered in my hotel room. They asked questions about Achebe, and then said they wanted to hear his voice. Happy to oblige them, I fetched the tape recorder and pressed its play button. We waited – not a word! I put in two other tapes, the same futile result. How was I going to explain this mishap to my editor who had scheduled the interview as a forthcoming cover?
I phoned Achebe’s home in panic. In a desperate tone I begged that he let me return the next day for a short retake. “Thirty minutes – even twenty – would do,” I pleaded. I half-expected him to scold me for lack of professional fastidiousness and hang up, leaving me to stew in my distress. Instead he calmly explained that he had commitments for the next day. If I could return the day after, he’d be delighted to grant me another interview. And he gave me permission to make the next session as elaborate as the first.
Two days later we were back in his office for my second chance. This time I paused every few minutes to check on the equipment. I stretched the interview to an hour-and-a-half before guilt – mixed with gratitude – compelled me to stop. It was not as exhaustive as the first outing, nor did it have the spontaneity of our first interview, but it gave me – and the readers of the magazine – a prized harvest. My friends got a chance to savor Achebe’s voice, with its mix of faint lisps and accentuated locutions.
That interview happened thirty years ago. It had been followed by several other encounters with Achebe, but it still stands out in my mind. I had admired the man from a distance, in awe of his extraordinary powers as a writer. After he saved my career, I was inspired by his uncommon generosity.
I was so impressed by Achebe’s example that I became something of a lifelong student of his work, my PhD dissertation focusing partly on his deployment of history and memory in his writing.
In 2009, Brown University lured Achebe away from Bard College, scoring a major transfer of intellectual assets. At the Ivy League Brown, Achebe assumed the chair of the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of Africana Studies and Literary Arts. With his blessing, Brown University also invited me to take up a visiting appointment.
Achebe was a widely honored and highly decorated writer, winning some of the most prestigious literary prizes, including the Man Booker for the sustained excellence of his oeuvre. In 2010, he was awarded the Gish Prize, established in 1994 as a bequest of two sisters, Dorothy and Lillian. The $300,000 prize is bestowed each year on “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
The sentiment behind that prize sums up, for me, the essence of Achebe the man, writer and citizen. He strove in his own quiet, stubborn way to make the world more beautiful. I was blessed to have known him at close quarters, ennobled by his extraordinary example as a writer and human, and ever indebted for the opportunity to learn at his feet. [myad]
The Smell Of Trivia, By Garba Shehu
The girls in Gwoza who were raped by militants do not care where the help comes from as far as they will eventually be able to move about freely without fear of being kidnapped and used as sex slaves. The mothers in Bama whose sons were slaughtered before their eyes do not worry whether Boko Haram is defeated by a Christian or Muslim coalition. The hundreds of thousands in IDP camps are concerned simply about when they can safely return to their homes and resume their normal lives. For these ones most hard hit by the Boko Haram terrorists, whether the help they so desperately need comes from the United States of America or from Saudi Arabia does not matter.
One of the main thrusts of President Buhari’s campaign was the war on terror. He promised that his administration would bring an end to Boko Haram, and set about doing just that as soon as he was elected, travelling to different countries and meeting with various heads of state to discuss the way forward on the issue. At the time, no Nigerian worried that President Buhari was seeking help from the West. No one worried about the ideology of those willing and able to help our country to defeat terror. Nigerians were simply united with their President in a determination to bring Boko Haram to an end so that our brothers and sisters in the northeast can resume their normal lives.
It is on account of these people and their desperate situation, and on the basis of national interest only, that President Buhari accepted the offer, with both hands, of assistance from G7 countries at the commencement of his administration. Religion was not a consideration then. It is also not a consideration now that he has made the decision to embrace help in fighting terror from the Middle-East. The safety of Nigerians and the total annihilation of Boko Haram is of more importance than the unfounded worries of Nigeria’s so-called Islamisation.
Those efforts by President Buhari led to several gains, including the technical defeat of Boko Haram by the end of 2015 as he had promised during the election campaigns. Once again, our Commander-in-Chief has sought help where he believes our country will benefit and the religious affiliation or ideology of our benefactors should not be the paramount consideration. It is simply one of those cases where the enemies of our enemy has become our enemy. The enemy of terrorists all around the globe is our friend.
The fears that our country’s membership in this coalition will draw Islamic State, ISIS’s attention to Nigeria are too late. As the President has repeatedly maintained, it is Boko Haram that proclaimed allegiance to ISIS, thereby dragging us into the global terrorism network. By pledging allegiance to ISIS, the terrorists already drew the international terror group’s attention to this part of the world. ISIS proudly and openly accepted this proclamation of allegiance. They have their sights set on us already.
Terrorism is heathen and knows no religion. It can only be defeated by the unity of entire humanity. Criticism of the membership of this alliance only shows our disarray and a lack of unity against terror and will only make the terrorists happy. The fears of so-called Islamisation are strange and unfounded, and meant only to feed the fear and suspicions existing among Nigerians.
With a precedent as shown above, it will be unkind and uncharitable of anyone to accuse President Buhari of executing deception. In an unusually harsh commentary, this country’s most respected newspaper The Punch on Sunday succeeded in exactly doing this. Read this:
“The presidency’s doublespeak on Nigeria’s membership of the Saudi Arabia-led anti-terror Islamic coalition is unfortunate in the extreme. In the beginning, an aide to the president on media and publicity issued a statement to the effect that the president had declined Nigeria’s membership of the coalition and therefore did not attend its meeting while on a diplomatic visit to Saudi Arabia.
But barely two weeks after, President Muhammadu Buhari himself confirmed Nigeria’s membership of the coalition in an interview with a foreign television station, Al- Jazeera. Buhari, who never tabled such a sensitive matter before the National Assembly, said there are terrorists in Nigeria who have claimed to be Muslims. So, according to the him, “We are part of it because we have got terrorists in Nigeria who claim that they are Islamic. So, if there is an Islamic coalition to fight terrorism, Nigeria will be part of it because we are casualties of Islamic terrorism.
“This explanation is simplistic, to say the least and does not do any good to expected political astuteness of President Buhari. In the main, membership of any such coalition is unacceptable for it offends the sensibilities of Nigerians in their diverse inclinations and should be reversed.”
Sensibilities offended? Can anyone face the more than two million unhoused, mostly Muslim refugees displaced by terror now being fed, almost exclusively by Christian charities that it is offensive them, or that it matters to them who, between Christians and Muslims is supplying the next meal? The one who raised a tent over their heads?
Let me say that the presidential aide in question is no other than myself. Although I write statements emanating from the Presidency, I don’t choose what headline writers will use to caption those stories.
To that extent, it is untrue of anyone to say the President had ab initio rejected a membership of the coalition against terror.
What the President said, to paraphrase him, was that “we may not be with you, but we will support you in every possible way we can.” This does not presuppose rejection. Even if it was one, nothing says that a government cannot move or adjust its position based on new, superior facts as we individuals do in our daily lives.
That some of the criticism against the President is coming from opposition Senators is even more absurd, showing a lack of judgement and discrimination- or even worse.
It holds up a mirror to the PDP’s cluelessness and total absence of strategy to defeat Boko Haram terrorism. The party’s projection of itself as better than the APC in this regard is hobbled by their own record of indecision and serial abdication on Chibok girls as disclosed by Ambassador Packock and greed, corruption and a general incapacity to drive the anti terror war.
A set of politicians who failed to confront or attack terrorism while in power have no right to challenge President Buhari’s hounding of them. To global acclaim. Trivia smells. There is a need for a new fragrance in the air.
Garba Shehu is Senior Special Assitant to the President onMedia and Publicity. [myad]