WHO WAS CHINUA ACHEBE OF NIGERIA? Professor Chinua Achebe stood out clearly amongst his contemporaries or equals in Nigeria in particular and in the entire continent of Africa as well as all over the literary world in general. This erudite emeritus professor of the African literature, an internationally acclaimed author and essayist, a controversial political- historian and a great writer of human and African events was one of the few highly placed Nigerians that I personally held in the highest esteem in his eventful, controversial and colorful life. Chinua Achebe refused to sell his precious birthright like the way the biblical Esau did to his brother Jacob forever in order to satisfy his hunger with only one single meal of bread and lentil stew.
Chinua Achebe refused in his lifetime as a Nigerian to compromise his personal principles and his strong commitment to the truth about Nigerian nation that is in a deep national crisis today for those enticing and the highly juicy political appointments, inflated government contracts and patronage, the Ghana-must-go bags or the so called Nigeria's national honors that are normally given to Nigerian traitors instead of the true Nigerian patriots and nationalists on two different occasions and under the two different administrations as an academician, a researcher and a political commentator.
Chinua Achebe's place in the Nigeria's annals of history is now fully determined, known, secured, settled and written in pure gold forever and for the present generations of all Nigerians that are living today and for the future generations of Nigerians that are yet unborn to tap into for the much needed and for the missing inspirations that are not seen in the current leadership in Nigeria in 2013, but can be found in the life, legacies and the times of this great mind of African literature that is not gone and had now closed an historical era.
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