Adichie, Anambra, and the Core of Igbo Society

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - I am from Abba, in Njikoka LGA. My mother is from Umunnachi in Dunukofia LGA. I grew up in Nsukka, in Enugu State, a town that remains deeply important to me, but Abba and Umunnachi were equally important to me. My childhood was filled with visits. To see my grandmother, to spend Christmas and Easter, to visit relatives. I know the stories of my great grandfather and of his father, I know where my great grandmother’s house was built, I know where our ancestral lands are.
          Abum nwa afo Umunnachi, nwa afo Abba, nwa afo Anambra.

          I am proud of Anambra State. And if our sisters and brothers who are not from Anambra will excuse my unreasonable chauvinism, I have always found Igbo as spoken by ndi Anambra to be the most elegant form of Igbo.
          Anambra State has much to be proud of. This is a state that produced that political and cultural colossus Nnamdi Azikiwe. This is a state that produced the mathematics genius Professor James Ezeilo. This is a state that produced Dora Nkem Akunyili, a woman who saved the lives of so many Nigerians by demonstrating dedicated leadership as the Director General of NAFDAC. (May her soul continue to rest in peace)

          This is a state that produced Nigeria’s first professor of Statistics, Professor James Adichie, a man I also happen to call Daddy. This is a state that produced the first woman to be registrar of Nigeria’s premiere university, UNN, Mrs Grace Adichie, a woman I also happen to call Mummy.
          This is a state that has produced great writers. If Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa and Chukwuemeka Ike had not written the books they did, when they did, and how they did, I would perhaps not have had the emotional courage to write my own books. Today I honour them and all the other writers who came before me. I stand respectfully in their shadow. I also stand with great pride in the shadow of so many other daughters and sons of Anambra State.

When Nollywood Tells Our Story

Each time the swashbuckling Minister of Communications and Information (read Re-branding), Mrs Dora Akunyili shares a podium with Nollywood practitioners or adventurers, she takes her time to give Nollywood a good dressing down. She cuts the picture of a stringent headmistress cautioning errant school children.

Daily Triumph Newspaper of November 2009 carried just an ounce of Minister Akunyili’s peppered vitriol against the forces aligned against her mission to rescue Nigeria’s image. She blamed Nollywood for Nigeria’s poor image and charged her to tell our own stories. She said the same thing few weeks into her appointment as Minister at an interactive workshop with Nollywood practitioners in Lagos. And I suspect, she says it everyday. She’s after all a Minister; all they do is say things.

Had Dora Akunyili not being a Minister, she might have understood the inanity of her assertion but as I fear the cordial distance Nigerian public officials maintain with reality has a way of deodorising the embarrassing stench of empty reason. But that is hardly surprising as it emanates from a Ministry where trite ideas are routinely granted a new lease and executed with zeal that borders on mania. 

Dora Akunyili: Sacrifice for Love of Nation

When pictures of gaunt-looking Nigeria’s former Minister of Communication and Director-General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Dora Akunyili surfaced on the web months ago while she was attending the ongoing National Conference in Abuja, I was concerned that she needed to have taken enough timeout from the public glare to fully recover from whatever ailment it was that had so visibly ravished her frame.

A recently published Yes International interview (excerpts follow below), has, however, helped me understand why the dogged professor might not have contemplated such an option: her unflinching love for Nigeria and a willingness to lay down her life in the service of her beloved country. In a tribute informed by a personal encounter of the Amazon, former Presidential Liaison Officer to the Senate, Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, alludes to this love when he writes that Akunyili “defiantly, patriotically [took] up a national assignment, disregarding the odds, the hazards and even the encumbrance of a debilitating ailment.” Her body might have been ravaged by cancer, but not her spirit. And so, like the great lioness (alumna of the University of Nigeria Nsukka) that she was, she resolutely determined to fight on. Till the end.

We will remember and celebrate her for her positive impacts in our lives, fighting to rid Nigeria and, to some extent, the world of fake drugs (when one takes into consideration the awareness campaign she waged on the export countries of such counterfeited drugs, getting the authorities concerned from such countries to realize the horrendous effects on human life the unconscionable businesses originating from their countries wreck on Nigeria). This is hoping that her labors (labors of our heroes past) would not have been in vain. Rest in eternal peace, worthy lioness. Africa mourns you.

What’s the greatest sacrifice you’ve made as the boss of NAFDAC?

I think I sacrificed everything. When you ask me of sacrifice, it is difficult for me to give you a straight answer. From the first day, I knew that this is a job that can take my life – but that is if God allows. So, I can now call it the sacrifice of my life.