Reactions have continued to trail the death of Africa’s literary icon, Chinua Achebe , who died in an undisclosed hospital in Boston , United States of America yesterday. Among those , who have sent in their tributes are Achebe’s friends and former school mates both at Government College , Umuahia and the University College , Ibadan.
In their tribute, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate , Wole Soyinka and Africa’s first professor of English language J.P.Clark described Achebe’s death as personal loss to them.
According to them : “ the loss of Chinua Achebe is, above all else, intensely personal. We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter. Of the “pioneer quartet” of contemporary Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced – one, of the poet Christopher Okigbo, and now, the novelist
Chinua Achebe. It is perhaps difficult for outsiders of that intimate circle to appreciate this sense of depletion, but we take consolation in the young generation of writers to whom the baton has been passed, those who have already creatively ensured that there is no break in the continuum of the literary vocation.
We need to stress this at a critical time of Nigerian history, where the forces of darkness appear to overshadow the illumination of existence that literature represents. These are forces that arrogantly pride themselves implacable and brutal enemies of what Chinua and his pen represented, not merely for the African continent, but for humanity. Indeed, we cannot help wondering if the recent insensate massacre of Chinua’s people in Kano, only a few days ago, hastened the fatal undermining of that resilient will that had sustained him so many years after his crippling accident.
No matter the reality, after the initial shock, and a sense of abandonment, we confidently assert that Chinua lives. His works provide their enduring testimony to the domination of the human spirit over the forces of repression, bigotry, and retrogression.”
It should be realized that the trium of Achebe, Soyinka and Clark played significant role during their students days at the university of Ibadan. Their literary activities, especially through school magazines like the University Herald and the Horn, which was edited by Clark helped to map the emergence of the first generation of Nigerian writers.
In his own tribute, another significant writer, His Majesty, Prof. Chukwuemeka Ike, the Igwe of Ndikelionwu, a former school mate of Achebe at Umuahia said : “ Chinua’ Achebe was phenomenal. We met at Government College Umuahia. Although , he and Chike Momag were one year ahead of me. We struck up a friendship that was a lasting life time brotherhood there after.
Chinua inspired my desire to write and write well. He was always honest and his integrity was reflected in all he did. Chinua is truly a brilliant, international role model and icon. He was a lovely person, a caring friend and mentor to many.
To his family, he was the ideal husband, father and grand father as well as the good uncle, brother and son. We shall all miss this great citizen of the worfld whom we are proud to have shared the same nationality with. We will always celebrate Achebe the icon as his inimitable works continue to enrich our world for centuries to come.”
Also from the United States of America, Nigerian writer and Achebe scholar, Dr Maik Nwosu, Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Denver in a short tribute titled : Chinua Achebe, 1930-2013 writes :
“I never met Professor Chinua Achebe as a person. When I arrived at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka as a freshman in the Department of English, Achebe had just left. But I met him in the spirit – and profoundly so. Between the wrestling match that ushers us into the world of Things Fall Apart (1958) and the naming ceremony that more or less projectively concludes Anthills of the Savannah (1987), both structurally significant choices, Achebe interrogates the movement of African history with an uncluttered sophistication and a cultural sensibility that shaped modern African literature.
Sometimes contrastively compared to Joseph Conrad, whose image of Africa Achebe notably criticized, the river from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the earth in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart signposts two modernisms (or European modernism and its African counter-discourse). This trajectory reflects the evolving ways of representing the changing fabric of time and space, transformed along one axis by colonial powers’ bid for global dominance and along another axis by the resurgence of cultural narratives among the colonized. Conrad’s river, with its mist, signifies both the circularity of the narrative and the route of global expansion.
Achebe’s earth, with its folk wisdom, signifies cumulative chronology as well as the primacy of community. Besides being an important novelist, Achebe was also an insightful literary and social critic who examined such issues as the essence of the African writer, the nature of colonialism, narrative subtexts, literature and identity, and the problem with Nigeria. His last published work was a personal history of Biafra, There Was a Country (2012). In his writings, Achebe’s vision as an artist who clearly understood that art is or can be consequential and his moral courage as an advocate of justice and progress are usually evident. As one of the signal icons of the twentieth century, Achebe will be remembered as a homing incarnation of the possibilities of the human spirit.”
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