Chinua Achebe (1930–2013)

Chinua Achebe’s place as one of Africa’s greatest writers is not contestable. He bestrode the African literature world like a colossus and he would be remembered not only by us but by generations to come in Africa and elsewhere. In his work he restored pride to the African whose postcolonial condition had tried to rob him of human dignity because of Western colonial policies denigrating African culture. In fact, one of his most impressionable convictions was that “African peoples did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; […] their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty […] they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity.” He thus inscribed African culture boldly on the world literary stage. And he spent his writing career exhorting his African society to regain “belief in itself ” since colonialism attempted to strip its self-confidence away. At the same time, he castigated his Nigerian society for its obsessive corruption and ineptitude that made a nation so abundantly endowed to be still wallowing in poverty. To him, the major problem with Nigeria was that of lack of good political leadership. He inspired African writers to write not art for art’s sake or pure art as done by Western writers but “applied art” to make them “teachers” working towards changing their societies for the better. He thus espoused a transformative ideology of art. He was our champion wrestler in the global literary stage and the Eagle on the Iroko made us very proud.