(By OkeyNdibe)--Two Saturdays ago, I had the privilege of giving a
keynote at an international conference organized at the Senate House of the
University of London to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Chinua Achebe’s Arrow
of God.
Okey Ndibe The two-day celebration was an impressive
gathering of scholars who have devoted time to the study and explication of
Achebe’s work as a novelist, cultural activist and intellectual. Among the
luminaries who offered stimulating papers were John Gikandi of Princeton University,
Harry Garuba (who traveled from his South African location), and T. Vijay
Kumar. The first day of the conference, Femi Osofisan, a polyglot who is at
once an incisive scholar, extraordinary dramatist, and novelist directed a
dramatization of Arrow that brought home in a powerful way the millenarian
tension in Achebe’s most important—even if not most well known—fictive work.
Akachi Ezeigbo, a novelist and professor at the University of Lagos, capped off
the second and final day of the event by performing an Igbo dirge for Achebe.
The two-day conference was altogether moving. The
brilliance of many of the presentations was matched by the conference’s festive
air. It all showed the potential power of rich, deep cultural production. In
their wide-ranging, multidisciplinary engagement with Achebe’s grandest novel,
several presenters sought to underscore how literary creativity can illuminate
a people’s social experience and embody a broad range of their dreams.
To pay attention to the presentations was to come away
with a deep conviction that the best artists and writers possess the power to
offer timeless insights, contained in works that are of their time without
being contained by it.
Numerous speakers, including Garuba and the passionate
Obi Nwakanma, illustrated the ways in which Achebe’s third novel, though set in
a past in which the outlines and effects of colonial subjugation were
undeniable, nevertheless anticipates Africa’s contemporary predicament. Ezeulu,
the protagonist in Arrow of God, in his fascination with the exercise of power
and his refusal to “eat death” that his people may be spared from collective
demise, buttresses the behavior of many African “leaders.” These leaders, a
bunch Fanon would categorize as contemptible, are often unwilling to rein in
their appetite for self-aggrandizement in order to serve more humanistic or
visionary goals.
Years ago, a Nigerian publisher friend of mine was fond
of describing culture as an index of power. At the time, I did not fully grasp
the power of his assertion. Its full implications began to dawn on me only
after I moved to the United States. I came to a growing awareness that—Nigeria’s
oil wealth notwithstanding—the country’s true and abiding assets (her image,
identity and cultural currency) depended on the enterprise of her most gifted
artists.
Wherever one goes in the world, one is apt to encounter
a somewhat understandable but reductive image of Nigeria. That image is of a
land teeming with 419 scam entrepreneurs. But a narrative of the extraordinary
creativity of her writers, musicians, fine artists, and moviemakers serves to
counter the unflattering face of Nigeria.
Let me cite an example or two. Some years ago, I was
speaking with Claire Gaudiani, who was then the president of Connecticut
College in New London, when she asked about my country of origin. When I
answered, she exulted, “Oh, I just met and heard a fascinating Nigerian writer
in London, Wole Soyinka.” Our conversation took an enthusiastic turn. When a
writer-in-residence at her college took a sabbatical, Ms. Gaudiani persuaded
the English Department to invite me as a stand-in teacher.
I can’t count the number of times I have met people in
the US who—on learning I’m from Nigeria—would affectionately say they had read
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. On finding out that I knew Achebe personally, they
would be transfixed with awe.
Despite its enduring technical challenges, Nollywood—Nigeria’s
effervescent answer to Bollywood—has captured the curiosity of people around
the world. Four years ago, I made my first visit to Kenya. Many Kenyans, from
cab drivers to academics, talked excitedly about a weeklong visit to Nairobi of
a Nollywood actress. Incidentally, I had never heard about the woman! But that
gap in my knowledge merely demonstrated an important fact of cultural
production. Whether I knew her or not, that actress embodied and represented me
as far as the Kenyans were concerned. If she acted disagreeably in Kenya, she
risked tainting all Nigerians with the broad brush of her character. In the
same way, her positive carriage rubbed off on all Nigerians, even on those of
us who didn’t know who she was.
A year ago, I was in Austin, Texas to attend a book
festival. One night, I was walking the streets of the city with a few of my US
publisher’s staff, looking for a joint that offered beer and books. As we
turned a corner I heard Fela’s music blaring from a backyard. A few people
stood around, swaying. I immediately went in, introduced myself, and told them
I was not only a Nigerian I also knew Fela. They gave me a gushing welcome,
apologized that their party was winding down, but invited me to show up the
next night at a club they said played marvelous African music.
When my turn came to speak at the Achebe conference in
London, I knew what I didn’t want to do. I wasn’t going to read a conventional
scholarly paper that teased out some arcane aspect of the text. Numerous other
speakers had done a terrific job in that respect. I chose, instead, to tell
stories of the ways in which Achebe’s work had enchanted me from the first
moment I had read it.
In my secondary school days, I told the audience, many
of my schoolmates took to reading books by James Hadley Chase and Barbara
Cartland. Chase’s books, I recall, carried such titillating titles as Do Me A
Favor: Drop Dead and The Way The Cookie Crumbles. I remember a particular
classmate, a fanatical aficionado, who had “consumed” more than 50 titles by
Chase. One day, he asked me why I was content to read “bush” novels, a
reference to the fact that some of the fiction I relished reading were set, in
part at least, in Africa’s pre-colonial rural communities. He fancied himself a
scion of Enlightenment, engaged not with machetes but guns, not with elders
with their proverb-rich speech but with jacket wearing, gun-wielding mobsters
dripping with “gonna” and “wanna”.
I never read even a single book by Chase. The reason: I
was fortunate to read Achebe’s Things Fall Apart quite early. The book left me
entranced, seduced me, filled me with an insatiable appetite for other writers
who articulated the African experience. Once Achebe had set the hunger, I went
searching for other African writers.
What a treasure I found. For, while many other students
fattened themselves on Chase’s pabulum, I was discovering Ngugi, Beti, Soyinka,
Awoonor, Nwapa, Armah, Nagenda, Ousmane, Ouologuem, Emecheta.
I credit Achebe with saving me from Chase. And I believe
that he and our other great writers can help save Nigeria if only we would
pause in our frenetic hankering after material ephemera—to read and ponder
their words. Let’s find the time to reflect deeply on the import of Achebe’s
imperishable art and that of his fellow laborers in the vineyard of African
letters.
(okeyndibe@gmail.com)
Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe
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