Showing posts with label Chinua Achebe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinua Achebe. Show all posts

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Are African Writers And Readers Ready For The eBook Revolution?

Are African Writers And Readers Ready For The eBook Revolution?

March, 2013.

This week, the "father of African literature' Chinua Achebe died, leaving behind a legacy for Nigerian authors. Today I welcome another Nigerian author Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima to discuss the …

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F.Penn. She’s an award-winning podcaster and creative entrepreneur.

Read the important interview on

https://www.thecreativepenn.com/tag/africa/

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

The Drama of the #EndSARS Protests

The Drama of the #EndSARS Protests

The enactments of the melodramatic scenarios of the #ENDSARS protests from Lagos to Abuja and ending up in Delta State are going to be featured in a live performance on stage with the action choreography by one of the best action choreographers in the Nigerian film industry.

My "Sleepless Night" of 2002 dramatised the June 12 protests of 1993 featuring the outstanding actor, Funso Alabi of blessed memory and dramatic choreography by Segun Adefila and the Crown Troupe of Africa.

It was cosponsored by the French Cultural Centre in Lagos, Otunba Dele Momodu and my United Artists For Human Development (UAHD).

This new stage drama will be full of histrionics.

I am the writer, producer and director. And I have completed casting for the historic roles of heroic protesters, Aisha Yesufu and DJ Switch. 

The following is an excerpt from the drama written in verse.

We are marching with our bare feet.

As we stomp on the street.

The echoes of our screams rent the skies 

In A Decade of Tongues.


Bekederemo! 

What are you going to tell Achebe and Okara?

What are you going to tell Saro-Wiwa?

Tell them the truth, the bitter truth

We have eaten the sour grapes of wrath.

Sour grapes of the wrath the earth.

We have bitten our tongues as we gnash our teeth.

 Even The Masquerade of Ngbilebiri has stopped dancing. 

As our mothers' singing has turned to mourning.

Who can dance to the Song of a Goat? 

In the hysteria of Nigeria.


Bekederemo!

Bekederemo!!

Bekederemo!!!


- By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,

https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima


©All rights reserved. No copying, duplicating, lifting, paraphrasing and quoting of any part of the text without the authorisation and permission of the author.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Chinua Achebe Celebrates 80th Birthday

Chinua Achebe


The most celebrated Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe marked his 80th birthday on November 16.

The literary achievements of Achebe have made him one of the most outstanding humans on earth and his historical novel Things Fall Apart rated as one of the best novels of all time.

He has won more laurels than any African writer and he is the only Nigerian writer with over 30 honorary doctorate degrees. The only significant laurel he is yet to win is the highly coveted Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nigerians Report wishes Pa Chinua Achebe Happy 80th Birthday and many more happy returns of the day.



THE LISTED WORKS OF CHINUA ACHEBE:


Novels
Things Fall Apart (1958)
No Longer at Ease (1960)
Arrow of God (1964)
A Man of the People (1966)
Anthills of the Savannah (1987)


Short Stories
"Marriage Is A Private Affair" (1952)
"Dead Men's Path" (1953)
The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories (1953)
"Civil Peace" (1971)
Girls at War and Other Stories (1973)
African Short Stories (editor, with C.L. Innes) (1985)
Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories (editor, with C.L. Innes) (1992)
The Voter


Poetry
Beware, Soul-Brother, and Other Poems (1971) (published in the US as Christmas at Biafra, and Other Poems, 1973)
Don't let him die: An anthology of memorial poems for Christopher Okigbo (editor, with Dubem Okafor) (1978)
Another Africa (1998)
Collected Poems Carcanet Press (2005)
Refugee Mother And Child
Vultures


Essays, Criticism and Political Commentary
The Novelist as Teacher (1965)
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (1975)
Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975)
The Trouble With Nigeria (1984)
Hopes and Impediments (1988)
Home and Exile (2000)
Education of a British protected Child (October 6, 2009)
“The Igbo and their Perception of God, Human Beings and Creation,” (2010) (forthcoming)

Children's Books
Chike and the River (1966)
How the Leopard Got His Claws (with John Iroaganachi) (1972)
The Flute (1975)
The Drum (1978)

You can buy any one the books by Chinua Achebe from AMAZON.



Saturday, February 21, 2009

Dear Vint Cerf, We Are Re-Branding Nigeria

There is a subtext to “Don’t be evil” and that is “Don’t be illegal”
~ Vint Cerf



Dear Vint Cerf,

You may be the Chief Internet evangelist at Google, but I bet you that you will not get a standing ovation if you come to Nigeria, because Nigerians do not love anyone who is too much of an evangelist in being legit and most of the evangelists in the most populous country in Africa do not practice what they preach and their millions of followers have also followed in their fast footsteps of sharp practices of get-rich-quick schemes and scams, from the street to the corridors of power.. Nigerians do not think being illegal is evil; otherwise they will not be giving national honors and awards to Nigerian politicians and entrepreneurs whose main source of income is by bribery and corruption. The so called Nigerian public office holders are political contractors who rigged their way into office by hook or crook and to them; honesty is not the best policy in Nigeria.

Do not be disappointed that you will not get a red carpet reception if you come to Nigeria to insist on your gospel of honesty and transparency. You will find some hope in the beacon of the Nigerian intelligentsia of and other upright Nigerians who share your gospel of truth and can rub shoulders with you.

The news of Nigerians being the happiest people in the world is as bogus as their political hocus pocus, because these so called happiest people on earth are the same millions you will see smiling at you and still lying through their teeth as they grin pretending to be happy to see you. But before you can say VGC, they would have conned you online or offline. So, until further notice, beware of them.

As at present, we are set to re-brand Nigeria after we found out that many other African countries also claimed to be the heart of Africa, we have decided to go higher in the leadership of Africa in the world. So, Vint, you will be happy to see Prof. Dora Akunyili flying the Nigerian Flag in the flying colours of New Nigeria that is the Nigerian Dream of every true Nigerian in Nigeria and the Diaspora.


Thursday, February 19, 2009

Is Nigeria A ‘Wayward Child’, Her Father Long Ignored?

Is Nigeria a ‘wayward child’, her father long ignored?

~ADeleke Adeyemi

Not long ago1 noted Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe posed the all-important question: “What is Nigeria?”


Chinua Achebe


Not surprisingly, he then whipped up an answer to it, one brimming with great insight:
“Our 1960 national anthem, given to us as a parting gift by a British housewife in England, called Nigeria 'our sovereign motherland' --the Mother image. The current anthem, which [replaced] that first one, was put together by a committee of Nigerian intellectuals, and in my view is actually worse than the first anthem. This second one invoked the Father image. So Mother image in the first one, Father image in the second one. But it has occurred to me that Nigeria is neither my mother nor my father. Nigeria is a child; gifted, enormously talented, prodigiously endowed and incredibly wayward.

“Being a Nigerian is abysmally frustrating and unbelievably exciting. I have said somewhere that…I want to come back as a Nigerian again. But I have also in a rather testy mood in a book called 'The Trouble with Nigeria' dismissed Nigerian travel advertisements with the suggestion that only tourists with an addiction to self-flagellation pick Nigeria for a holiday. And I mean both. Nigeria needs help; Nigerians have their work cut out for them, to coax this unruly child along the path of useful creative development…”

But the line must be drawn somewhere along the trajectory of Achebe’s extrapolation, where it goes awry and out of kilter. It’s quite simply illogical of him to assert that “We are the parents of Nigeria, not vice versa.” The two Anthems, respectively, assert not ‘Pater’ but ‘Patria’ (Latin patrialis “pertaining to your country”), ‘Matria’ not Mater’, quite opposed to Achebe’s reading of the lyrics. The Latin word ‘mater’ is the source of the following English words: madrigal (a song with parts for several usually unaccompanied voices popular in England in the 16th and 17th centuries), material, maternal, matriculate, matrimony, matrix, matron, and matter. Its Indo-European ancestor in turn gave rise to the English words mammal, metropolis, and, most tellingly, mother. The Latin alma mater (employed with fond affection to refer to a place of learning we’ve passed out from) means “bounteous mother”. Isn't 'a school a book in which is written the future of a nation'?

However, his summing-up of Nigeria as “a wayward child” is quite simply spot-on. Nigeria has a Father; only he has been long ignored, treated as non-existent by a turncoat omo on’ile ol’ona t’o d’agbero; omo wo’le iya bus’ekun (‘a pedigreed son-turned-rascal, now a spring of sorrow’). It is indeed true: “A foolish son is a heartache to his father and bitter grief to his mother.”2

Despite his faulty reading of the words of Anthems at points, Achebe’s conclusion remains apt: “Nigeria is a country where nobody can wake up in the morning and ask 'what can I do now?' Nigeria has work for everybody.”
And this must start with the following prescription: “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask your father, and he will show thee; your elders, and they will tell you: God Most High gave land to every nation. He assigned a guardian angel to each of them.”3

Can it be that Nigeria does indeed have a father, one whose memoirs we’re meant to consult, to “ask” of him a thing or two? It has to be the most intolerable thing for a father to be ignored and neglected; what else does honour, or the lack of it, consist in? This ignorance and neglect of patrimony always works to the developmental detriment of successive generations: “Honour your father and mother that everything may go well for you, and you may have a long life on earth.” This is an important commandment with a promise.” 4

Our Mother as Nigerians is the Niger Area, as proto-Nigeria: the matrix (womb) or crucible from which a nation, properly speaking, is waiting to be forged and birthed. A readily available well-documented example that should be amenable to adapt is the United States of America: a nation forged out of the crucible of territories settled by the Plymouth Pilgrims (a group of Separatists who broke away from the Church of England). They voted to travel to America from the Netherlands in 1620. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth, near present-day Provincetown, Massachusetts, among others. The land had been uncovered by Italian-born Spanish navigator Christopher Columbus in 1492.


Bishop Ajayi Crowther

Samuel Ajayi Crowther (c.1809 – 1891), Bishop (from Latin episcopus, ‘overseer’, from Greek episkopos, ‘watcher’) of the Niger, awarded a doctorate by Oxford in 1864 for his groundbreaking extensive linguistic work, was a pioneer member and leader of several Expeditions up and down the Niger and the Benue, Nigeria’s twin watermark feature (the pun is intended). But Ajayi Crowther was more than a surveyor; he was a shepherd who went on to codify and delineate various ‘land gauges’ or languages: Yoruba, Ibo, Nupe, Kakanda – entities on both sides of the Niger and Benue Rivers. He was spent working for the best interests of all to be entrenched, regardless of creed or ethnic derivation. In truth and in deed, he’s Nigeria’s long disdained “guardian angel.”
“Ajayi Crowther’s work, like his name, remains an imperishable monument of all his faith and labour. Whatever achievement … lies on the Niger, it will never be forgotten that he broke the hard and fallow ground. It was his brave heart and strong hand that cut the first path through the dense undergrowth of superstition; it was he, as a wise master builder, who laid the foundations of the work…that was to be. Like [first US President George] Washington, he was the father of his country; but he did more, for he proved in his own person the capacity of the African to serve his own people.... His life has silenced many who made us to differ, and in the advancement and development of the native, not only in spiritual but in civil responsibilities, he will be remembered as the forerunner of a potential race to be.”5

It cannot be gainsaid the truth of the saying, “writing maketh an exact man”, 6 like the eyewitness report, above, by the British Jesse Page. Further, since “in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established” 7 we’ll call on another ‘accessory after the fact’, so to speak, to make our case unassailable or watertight: first without, next within. Below is the full text of a letter of monumental historical import for the Nigerian nation. Dating back to 1881, it was written originally in Hausa – for the attention of none other than the Shepherd of the Niger:
“Salute Crowther, the great Christian minister. After salutation, please tell him he is a father to us in this land; anything he sees will injure us in all this land, he would not like it. This we know perfectly well.

“The matter about which I am speaking with my mouth, write it; it is as if it is done by my hand, it is not a long matter; it is about barasa (or gin). Barasa, barasa, barasa! My God, it has ruined our country; it has ruined our people very much; it has made our people become mad. I have given a law that no one dares buy or sell it; and any one who is found selling it, his house is to be eaten up (plundered); any one found drunk will be killed. I have told all the Christian traders that I agree to anything for trade except barasa. I have told Mr. McIntosh’s people to-day, the barasa remaining with them must be returned down the river. Tell Crowther, the great Christian minister, that he is our father. I beg you, Malam Kipo (Rev. C. Paul, native missionary) don’t forget this writing, because we all beg that he (Bishop Crowther) should beg the great priests (Committee of C.M.S.) that they should beg the English Queen to prevent bringing barasa into this land.

“For God and the prophet’s sake, and the prophet His messenger’s sake, he (Crowther) must help us in this matter, that of barasa. We all have confidence in him; he must not leave our country to become spoiled by barasa. Tell him may God bless him in his work. This is the mouth-word from Maliki, Emir of Nupé.”8

Our present generation of Niger Area dwellers can yet get things right–-by getting the essence of what the Shepherd of the Niger, Ajayi Crowther, stood for and went down fighting into the national consciousness: to vivify and recalibrate our long-moribund value system. The greatest help to destiny is direction and the fuel of destiny is vision. For some reason, this realization came as a thought couched in my language of second course– Yoruba. It rose up suddenly to confront me headlong with the force of its import: Iya l'oun to'mo; Baba l'oun t'omo s'ona. Meaning: It behooves Mother her child to nourish; but it is Father's direction that sets it up to flourish.

We have the memory of Ajayi Crowther to mine for the meaning of our shared destiny, what will power us past the bounds of the present love-hate togetherness of the Niger Area polity. Then and only then will we blossom into the reality of true nationhood.
AD 2010, a marginal year to the Ajayi Crowther Bicentennial in commemoration throughout this year, will be Nigeria's golden jubilee. Let us jubilate at this timely rediscovery of the impeccable heritage of service of distinction left us by a long forgotten father, one who taught his wards, composed of kin of every creed and ethnic derivation: “Only the best is good enough for us.”



References:
1. The Guardian Newspapers Silver Jubilee Lecture, October 9, 2008: Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos; delivered from US base via projector

2. Proverbs 17:25

3. Deuteronomy 32:7-8 (King James and Contemporary English Versions)

4. Ephesians 6:2-3. Even the honour once accorded Ajayi Crowther’s grandson, Herbert Macaulay as the father of Nigerian nationalism seems to have been withdrawn by the authorities since. His portrait that adorned the erstwhile one-naira note is now numismatic nonsense on a coin without credit as currency. Like you, I am yet to handle one since its issuance; least of all move about with it as legal tender– unless you are engaged in coin collecting as a hobby, or amass it and others for other purposes - like smelting!

5. Ajayi Crowther’s biographer, Jesse Page: The Black Bishop, 1916: London

6. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher and statesman. “One of the pioneers of modern scientific thought” (Encarta Encyclopedia).

7. Matthew 18:16
8Quoted in Jesse Page, The Slave Boy Who Became Bishop, 1892: London. The original letter along with tomes of other Crowtherma is archived in The Crowther Centre, Oxford, England. Ajayi Crowther spoke the emir’s language, Nupé, fluently – as he did Ijaw, Hausa as well as Igbo; he published the first book ever written in it. His son, Dandeson (‘child of liberty’), who worked in the Niger Delta, spoke a number of stock dialects there.