Professor Tanimu Abubakar, teacher of Comparative Literature at the Ahmadu Bello University, tells FEMI ADI where the late Professor Chinua Achebe faltered as a writer

•Professor Tanimu Abubakar

How do you rate the late Professor Chinua Achebe as a novelist?

First, let me express my condolence to his family, his friends, close associates and all those who are interested in literature and discourse in cultural and political matters. And to Nigerians as a whole, his death is a great loss. Achebe is a particularly significant literary figure on the African continent and the world as a whole. He was part of the pioneers in the development of African literature, especially in West Africa. Writers in southern Africa, of course, started producing prose works earlier. But by the time Things Fall Apart was published, Achebe had established a very clear reputation as a good novelist. Now, the novel, in a very fundamental sense, as Joyce calls it, “is a story about man and life”. When it evolved in the 18th century along with the industrial revolution, it incorporated the key philosophy of the industrial revolution. The idea that every individual has the capacity for perception, every individual has the capacity for mobility–social, economic and political–and that every individual is a medium of understanding reality as a whole. That is why as prose, the novel is a very encompassing, very broad narrative about social life and so on. So, when Achebe produced Things Fall Apart in 1958 and when it was published, it launched that discourse on the African landscape, not merely in terms of man and life, but in terms of the African man in his own location within a new world that emerged as a result of the coming of the Europeans.

And what Achebe did in that novel was to show the significance of what is called interpolation. To take a literary form that you may call substantially European, but to put within the structure of that form an essentially African discourse, African experience, African perception and African understanding of the reality in which Africans were living and operated. So, Achebe, if you like, was one of the pioneers who domesticated the novel form in the African situation and in terms of the incorporation of the African setting. And the setting here is not a very simple matter. You may find that Oladele Taiwo has raised some of these issues in terms of our understanding of time and passage of time. If you read the novel and the subsequent novels that emerged, which were influenced partly by his works, you will find specific efforts to show an integral African setting.

As a scholar, do you think Achebe the writer was different from Achebe the individual?

It is very difficult. Maybe those who know him well could make that distinction. I knew him a bit. I met him on a number of occasions. I think there is a way in which you can draw differences between Achebe the writer and Achebe the individual. As a writer, I think there is a degree of openness  in his works. You may not find such in his discourse, for example, as a public commentator. He recently produced a controversial work about our experience. For example, Achebe’s attitude to the civil war was substantially influenced by his conviction about what that war was all about. I don’t think he ever changed his position. He didn’t think that the Igbo were fairly treated. He didn’t even think that the Igbo have a very serious stake in the Nigerian structure. But you will not find these in his stories about war. It is possible to locate his stories that deal with war in the same tradition that you locate Opeyo, Iyayi and others in understanding war literature as a whole, especially the Nigerian Civil War literature. Sometimes, his literary works are a bit more relaxed and he allows the literary forms to dictate substance. Whereas, when he deals with political matters, he’s a bit more stringent. If you look at his attitude to politics for example, if you take Anthills of  The Savannah or  No Longer at Ease, you find out that Achebe’s attitude to politics can be termed as disillusionment. Politics in Africa is counter-productive. It is characterised by greed, revolves around tribalism and so many other issues. But he wrote The Trouble With Nigeria and that is not what you find inside. It is Achebe now talking as an Igbo man–the conventional way of looking at Nigeria. You have the Hausa stereotype of who the Hausas are, who Yorubas are. And he thinks that this was partly responsible for some of the problems that we go through. He’s substantially more relaxed when dealing with feminism and gender in his creative works. But some of his discourses about women are not as relaxed as they look. Though he recognises some level of equality, yet he sometimes goes with some traditional perceptions about gender roles. From my own little knowledge of him and his works, Achebe is a much more rigid person when it comes to his convictions. But he was a much more relaxed writer creatively. He allowed issues into the literary works that take discursive debate forms, whereas in public life, he came with his own absolute conviction as a person and stated them whether you like them or not. And one thing you can say about him is that he never changed any of his convictions over time.

Achebe, the critic, twice rejected national awards. Was he right to refuse to be honoured by his country?

I said earlier on that he was very rigid in his convictions. There is a way you can differentiate between his writing and his attitude. I think the rejection is part of his attitude. It’s not a question of whether it was right or wrong. I think it was a question of conviction.

What kind of conviction would make him reject a national honour?

It is part of his doubts about the feasibility of the entire Nigerian experiment. As I said, he had lived with his conviction since the civil war. And every passing year, he became more rigid. Secondly, he was in strong opposition to the Nigerian political set-up.  I think he might have felt that receiving any award from government would be some kind of endorsement of what was going on. In that sense, what he did was in line with what I understand it to be. He was not willing to be honoured by those he didn’t think should be there in the first place .

Which of his works do you find most stimulating and why?

I think it is very difficult for those who have read Achebe to throw away Arrow of God. In my own view, Arrow of God is his most accomplished work. First, because it is a very deeply contemplative narrative that raises very deep questions about nature, the very nature of transition within the African historical experience and transition from tradition to modernity. A transition that was never clear; never complete and never straight. And what he tried to do in that narrative was to look at the nature of difficulties, the complex nature of profound historical transformations because the coming of Europeans imposed another cosmology on an existing cosmology, which already had its contradictions and it further complicated the matter. It is a very significant narrative of transition and complexity of transition. Secondly, it is a much more intense tragedy than for example, Things Fall Apart. Achebe deals substantially with Aristotelian tragedy as reflected in Okonkwo, who was the hero. Ezelu is a much more complex hero; complex because Achebe had allowed him to think and to act that way.

And I think there is this dimension, which many of his critics have not really emphasised. This character, who struggled to acquire the independence to think and act, who is compelled by the nature of that complex transition and the limitation of the boundary of his own traditional experience, not to be so autonomous in his acting and thinking and laid the foundation for his own collapse. Okonkwo is a one-dimensional thing. He avoided being weak and anything that declared him weak. But Ezelu tried to avoid mistakes. However, the more he avoids them, the more he makes them because the transition keeps on trapping him. So, you have a stronger thinking tragic hero in Arrow of God than you will find in Things Fall Apart. There is a very strong naturalistic element in Arrow of God than you will find in all his other works. The transition, as I said, comes like natural laws and laws that have been imposed as result of the coming of the white people. In terms of the narrative itself, the density is very strong in Arrow of God than you find in all his other works. Things Fall Apart, very natural flow, good blend of idioms, proverbs and smooth narrative. But Arrow of God, I think, is a much more complex narrative because it deals with all sorts of conflicting motives and all sorts of self explanations about Ezelu, the community  and the white man.

Let talk about Achebe’s last work, There Was A Country, which kicked up a giant storm and is believed to have diminished the author’s standing and portrayed him as a tribal champion. Was he misunderstood?

I don’t think he was misunderstood as such. I think Achebe simply said what he has been saying all along. I was not shocked by what he said. Because from The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe had been moving in that direction and the assumption that somehow, our historical experience or our political experience are not integral or coherent to define a nation-state. And he didn’t think that the Nigerian space can be described as a country. Of course, what he said was essentially reductionist, but I think he oversimplified matters. He underrated the nature of experience. And sometime last year, there is this Nigeria-Canadian, who produced a novel, Much of Ages, covering the same period with Achebe or a bit earlier in Igboland. He raised a narrative that Achebe kept on ignoring: The fact that some parts of this country had some political or social relationship before the colonial masters came and that many things bind us together. Secondly, I think it’s foolhardy to imagine that since independence, the Nigerian state has not gone through any level of integration. My own view is that only those who don’t know this think of its break-up. Nigeria is not a country you can break up. The historical experiences are deep, deeper beyond 1914. And the level of integration in the last fifty years is extremely huge. Now, you have urban population with a large number of products of inter-marriages. They constitute almost 35 per cent of the current population. Thirdly, people ignore the fact that the Nigerian ruling class as a whole has a very deep stake in the economy of the country. In the first place, the history of the modern nation-state is first and foremost the history of the market and people ignore this. And there a very great level of integration at that level. Nobody is going to be able to break this country. Even if people sit down to do it deliberately, they can’t.  I think Achebe underrates this. His own concern is with political marginalisation. It is very easy in Nigeria for people to talk about issues relating to marginalisation. That was part of his problem. He imagined that the Igbo have not been adequately compensated and integrated into the Nigerian system. This is false.

Are you saying it was wrong of Achebe to present the Igbo as the only major nationality that has been kept out of power since the war ended?

That is a narrow minded thinking. There are about 300 ethnic groups. Why wouldn’t others, who don’t even have ministers, also come to say we are not part of Nigeria because of that? We cannot solve this problem of political participation on the basis of tribal and ethnic representations. I think we would move forward because I think there is a new generation of Nigerians coming up. There are two areas of worry. One is politics, the question of power sharing. Power sharing cannot alone determine the coherence or incoherence of a nation. First, we have had military regimes for a very large percentage of this period. And since the Murtala/Obasajo regime, there is no one transition in which you will not find the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba in power at some level. Whether one is head of state or not is immaterial. Sometimes, it’s not the head of state that exercises power; it depends on the structure of the power arrangement. I think nobody should regard any war as a wrestling match. If you take a look at American history, up till now there are matters of that civil war that have not been sorted out. Once you have a war, you have a very serious rupture. It takes time to resolve matters. I am not saying that should be an excuse, but that is the reality of the matter. So, the Igbo were reintegrated at a slow pace. I am not also saying they have no reason to complain, but it cannot be reduced to mere power sharing. Power sharing is a much more complex game. It depends on how they position themselves within the power structure. He also might have been thinking that people hate the Igbo because whenever there is a small problem, you see people attacking Igbos here and there. That is partly true, but is also true for the other groups in the country.

Of course, it is the nature of violence in all the societies in which distortions exist. You have a ruling class that somehow is coherent. One of the problems of most opposition groups in Nigeria is that they underrate the ruling class. The ruling class is not as weak as we see it. For example, there is a big problem between cultural identity and citizenship in Nigeria. I think this is one of the biggest areas in which Achebe has lamented and many people have lamented. And it has not been solved, not just for the Igbos but for every tribe in Nigeria. If you find yourself elsewhere other than your own place, even if your grandparents were there, you are not part of it. Even if you are from the same religion and identity, you are not part of it.  It is a big problem. And naturally it will be bigger and more complex for the Igbo coming in after the civil war. This is because the civil war virtually pushed them off completely from the structures. When they left the civil service, police, army and other sectors, people entered. When they came back, most of the positions had been occupied. So, if they are ten seeking a position and there is none available, what happens? It might just be a matter of possibly creating space to accommodate two in the interest of unity and progress. Their rate of growth would be slow after the war. If the war had ended on a balance, then it would have been possible. I think Achebe kept on saying this. I have so many other Nigerians saying that the Igbo surrendered, they lost the war. The Igbo may have some openings, but it would not have been the same if the war ended by negotiation.

Achebe is essentially highly reductionist in that sense and when this last book came, I was disappointed when I read it. He allowed too much of his own passion and feeling to overtake his sense of reasoning. There are people who hold all sorts of views about our experience. But these views cannot define the experience in its totality. But if you are a scholar, you must have the openness to look at the matter beyond your personal interest. I think this is where he failed.

What do you think he should have written?

He should have recognised the Nigerian entity as a complex experience and he should have also reflected deeply on what has happened even in the last 50 years. People who were born in 1960 are 50 years above at the time of his death. Half a century is not a small period in the experience of these ones who are alive. Generally, the Igbo who were born after the civil war, have their own perception of reality which is substantially different. They may feel part of the “marginalisation”. He should really have probed into why things are not working. And he would have found out that the answer is not in these simple calculations.

The Achebe generation is a unique one. Why has it been difficult to produce the likes of Soyinka, Achebe and J.P. Clark?

First, I don’t agree that we have not been able to regenerate their type. You understand that when they came into prominence, the Nigerian literary and political spaces were substantially small, but also substantially open. Even the academic space was substantially small and open and so, it was much easier for them. They came when there was cooperation between the Nigerian and African intellectual political spaces. And the European and economic spaces were more productive. The economies were better. There were several factors that gave rise to them. Political discourses at that time were potentially more competitive. Socialism was so strong; a different brand of radicalism existed at that time. There were core values that societies worked around and there was a lot of respect for intellectual works. We lost these core values in the mid-eighties. Tertiary institutions have become service sectors and the values of society are now defined by people in the economy–the banks, the insurance companies and so on. The new value is different. It is not that there are no writers of significance. Their output may not be as high as Soyinka’s, but there are other writers after them. The generation of Osundare, Osofisan, Chimamanda, Sefi Atta and Gimba came in. Some are in exile. Some of them have been more active politically.

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Posted in Nigeria News. A DisNaija.Com network.

Source: PM News

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