Inspired By The Life Of Albert Chinualumogu Achebe

               Late Albert Chinualumogu Achebe

Had Albert Chinualumogu Achebe listened to friend and family members, he would have ended up as a medical doctor.

Indeed the young Achebe was admitted on scholarship to study medicine at university collage, now university of Ibadan.

That was 1948. A year or so into the program , the young man felt career in medicine held tittle or no respect for him.

So he ditched medicine and kissed his scholarship goodbye and promptly enrolled for a degree in English which required him to study history and theology. 

Today,Chinualumogu Achebe is more than literally giant; he is African’s gift to the word, probably has taken more awards than any black writer and his first book ‘’Things Fall Apart’’is listed as one of the top 100 classic of all times.

At 80, Achebe was probably not expecting a noble prize which his compatriot Wole Soyinka first picked for the continent in 1986.

But he should fell fulfilled that he has done more to African culture than any other African in the field.
After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service, NBS, and soon moved to Lagos.

He gained world attention for Things Fall Apart in the late 1950s; his later novel include No longer at East (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966) and after a hiatus of twenty one years, he came out with Anthill of Savannah.

Achebe writes his novels in English, a language of colonizers, in African literature.

In the year Things Fall Apart was published, Achebe was promoted at the NBS to be in charge of networks in the eastern region.

He moved to Enugu and began to work on his administrative duties.

There he met a woman named Christie Okoli, who had grown up in the area and joined the NBS staff when he arrived.

Achebe and Okoli grew closer in the following years and in September 1961 they got married.  

In his speech titled "An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad" which he presented at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA in February, 1975.

He described Joseph Conrad as ‘’a bloody, thoroughbred racist’’ and asserted that Conrad’s famous novel dehumanized Africans and rendered Africans as ‘’a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wondering European entered at his peril.’’

Achebe also took serious exception to a quote by Albert Schweitzer, a 1952 Noble Peace Prize laureate.

"The African is indeed my brother, but my junior brother," Schweitzer was reported to have said.

To Achebe, such outbursts coming from a man honored in the West for his so called reverence for life and recognized as a paragon of Western liberalism, were racially induced.

The February 1975 speech unexpected caused a storm of controversy, right from reception immediately following the talk.

Many English professors in attendance were upset by his remarks, one elderly professor reportedly approached him saying;

I now realised that I never really read Heart of Darkness although I have thought it for years.

Although the speech enraged many of his colleagues, but he was nevertheless presented later in1975 with an honorary doctorate from the university of Stirling and the Lotus prize for Afro-Asian writers.

In 1983, Achebe retied from the University of Nigeria, he devoted more time to writing and became active with the left-learning People’s Redemption Party (PRP).

In 1983, he became the party’s Vice-national President, after which he published a book titled ‘’The Trouble With Nigeria to Coincide with the Upcoming 1983 Elections,’’ where on the first page he said;

The Nigerian problem is the willingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibilities and to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.’’

The elections that followed were married by violence and charges of fraud.

After the elections, he engaged in a hated argument with Sabon Bakin Zuwo, then governor-elect of Kano state, after which he left the PRP and waved goodbye to politics.

On 22 March, 1990. Achebe was riding in a car to Lagos when an axle collapsed and the car flipped.

His son, Ikechukwu and the car driver suffered minor injuries, but the weight of the car fell on Achebe and his spine was severely damaged.

He was flown to the Paddocks Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England and treated for his injuries.

In July, his doctors announced that although he was recuperating well, he was paralysed from the waist down and would require the use of a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Achebe was called ‘’father of modern African writing,’’ and many books and essays have been writing about his work over the past fifty years.

In 1992, he became the first living author to be represented in the Everyman’s library Collection published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Achebe, the day he celebrated his 80th birthday, controversy raged over whether Chinua Achebe’s place as a writer is above or below the position of Wole Soyinka.

         From the left;  Late Albert Chinualumogu Achebe and Wole Soyinka.


A literary critic who identify himself as Orinkinla is convinced that Achebe cannot stand on the same pedestal with Soyinka.

According to Orinkila, if one have read 80 percent of both writers, one should know that Wole Soyinka left Chinua Achebe behind since 1986.

Others see the issue from different perspective, there are those who argue that any rating of the writers should not be based on ethic sentiments.

One of them, a U.K based Nigerian from south west says though he is Yoruba but richly enjoys Achebe more than he dose Soyinka. 

The argument here is simple, easy to decipher, he said.

What I personally discovered is that both authors are professors in the field of literature.

Soyinka’s books are great but he is too verbose and employs complex verbiage in trying to express his views.

Meanwhile, Achebe caries the reader along and he is quiet moderate in his use of words.

He writes more constructively for the masses and employs simple analogies that explains his message.

Though there has not been any formal rivalry between the two, but there has been laughter-inducing moments when Achebe and his literary soul brother, Soyinka publish something.