Chinua Achebe: "Acting President Goodluck Jonathan is Weak"

Prof. Chinua Achebe

The most lionized African writer, Prof. Chinua Achebe, 79, has said that there seems to be no legitimate government in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and where his literary genius sprouted and blossomed until an auto-accident on 22 March 1990 left him paralyzed; and disappointment in Nigerian political leaders made him to relocate to the United States of America, where he has been teaching at the David and Marianna Fisher University and as a Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

Chinua Achebe said Acting President Goodluck Jonathan is weak in his reaction to the horrifying massacres of native Christians in Plateau state and blamed the spread of Islamic extremism for the recurrent ethno-religious crisis in Jos and other parts of the middle belt and northern Nigeria.
“He suddenly doesn’t seem to bring good luck. He is weak. A strong man in any position in Nigeria should be horrified by what happened in Jos. Shamed is what we should feel. We don’t seem to have any government. People don’t know where their president — before the present acting president — where he went or where he is,” Achebe said.

He was speaking in an interview he granted Deborah Solomon for The New York Times on his historic Things Fall Apart which has been translated into over 40 different languages worldwide and sold over 8 million copies.
"That would be possible. I’m not grumbling; I have done well. But don’t imagine I’m a millionaire," Achebe said.

Prof. Achebe also spoke on the Nigerian Al-Qaeda underwear bomber, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, saying what he attempted was insane!


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima


Read Books by Chinua Achebe:

The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays

The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God (Everyman's Library (Cloth))

No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe (the author of Things Fall Apart)