Professor Chinua Achebe – A Personal Tribute
By Col Abubakar Dangiwa Umar
A Mighty Tree Has Fallen – and, as to be expected, all those taking cover under it’s massive shelter are in mourning. In many ways, Professor Chinua Albert Achebe was not just a tree, he was a forest; a forest inhabited by that dwindling tribe of Nigerians that refuses to accept that nothing could be done to halt their country’s tragic drift to anarchy and chaos.
For me personally, there are additional grounds for paying a special tribute to Professor Achebe. I feel previleged to be able to pay this tribute to the Prof for his many gestures of care and encouragement towards me. Our most recent contacts dates back to 2006 when the NGO, MOVEMENT FOR UNITY & PROGRESS, which I chair, invited him to participate in the national rally in Abuja to stop that reckless attempt by the then President Obasanjo to remain in office for a third and perhaps endless terms in office.Thereafter, we had remained increasingly engaged in discussions about what could be done about the many ‘Troubles with Nigeria’. Twice he had invited me to the annual Achebe Colloquium on Africa which he hosted at Brown University, USA, where he taught.
Professor Achebe was an honest and courageous man who was not afraid to express his views on national issues. However controversial those views might appear to some people, there is no doubt that he expressed them out of intense patriotism so that Nigeria might emerge from her present challenges a better nation; a country from which his spirit shall be pleased to accept post humously the national honor which he had turned down in his life time. In frustration, Prof Achebe had on more than one occasion, turned down offers to have national honors bestowed on him because we betrayed the ideals which his generation grew up with, a betrayal that prompted his equally illustrious compatriot, the Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, to call us the wasted generation.
As he takes his final bow, it must be his most ardent wish that fellow Nigerians shall bear in mind what Nigeria is and what should be done to save her. Indeed we must keep repeating until we memorize what is clearly his last wish and testament contained in that inimitable tract which he titled: ‘WHAT NIGERIA MEANS TO ME’:
Nigeria is a child. Gifted, enormously talented,
prodigiously endowed and incredibly wayward. .
Nigeria needs help. Nigerians have their work cut
out for them – to coax this unruly child along the
path of useful creative development. . . . . . .
We are parents of Nigeria, not vice versa . . .
A generation will come, if we do our work patiently
and well – and given luck – a generation that will call
Nigeria father or mother.
But not yet.
May his soul find favor with God, amen.
