The subject of discourse is how Achebe brought the world closer, when in fact bathe world is more divided than ever.

Is Obama talking about the recolonisation of Africa? Or the obvious division Achebe left in Nigeria with his tribalistic view?

Texas.Cowgirl:
The subject of discourse is how Achebe brought the world closer, when in fact bathe world is more divided than ever.

Is Obama talking about the recolonisation of Africa? Or the obvious division Achebe left in Nigeria with his tribalistic view?

The million dollars question.

Texas.Cowgirl:


My dear, are you from Ekiti?

Still no one can explain how Achebe drew the world closer, especially when he couldn't draw his own country together.
Political niceness and the need to say sth that would appease the African community led Obama to this speech. He is an orator, by the way

There is nothing unique about Achebe's style. If you know, I plead, mention. This is unlike Ayi Kwei Armah whom I respect so much for his descriptive skills.

Texas.Cowgirl:
The subject of discourse is how Achebe brought the world closer, when in fact bathe world is more divided than ever.

Is Obama talking about the recolonisation of Africa? Or the obvious division Achebe left in Nigeria with his tribalistic view?

Achebe was a tribalist. How did he affect Africa? He never wrote anything about any African society except about the Igbo. His voice was only heard when the Igbo were involved.

Ola Johnson:
There is nothing unique about Achebe's style. If you know, I plead, mention. This is unlike Ayi Kwei Armah whom I respect so much for his descriptive skills.

The only thing unique about Achebe is that he inspired the president of the world to develop confidence in himself. Ayi could not do that. But I am not surprised, your hate for the Igbo has made me made some cool cash off some yoruba man today, keep inspiring me bruva!

Ola Johnson:
Achebe was a tribalist. How did he affect Africa? He never wrote anything about any African society except about the Igbo. His voice was only heard when the Igbo were involved.

He was. The fact that NL tribalistic supported his tribalistic view says a lot.

Ola Johnson:
Achebe was a tribalist. How did he affect Africa? He never wrote anything about any African society except about the Igbo. His voice was only heard when the Igbo were involved.

You are again displaying your ignorance on the Internet and parroting repeats
I warned you read about someone before you criticize
Go and read Chinua's works and stop disgracing yourself
Start with his response to Joseph Conrad
Secondly Igbo is in Africa so writing about Igbo is writing about Africa
Simple isn't it

Father of African literature remember?

Would you have liked Things fall apart to be set in Ekiti or Ogbomosho ?
No can do

Texas.Cowgirl:
The subject of discourse is how Achebe brought the world closer, when in fact bathe world is more divided than ever.

Is Obama talking about the recolonisation of Africa? Or the obvious division Achebe left in Nigeria with his tribalistic view?

Million dollars question.
This back and forth is really boring.
Answer my questions or keep quiet

Crayola1:

I don't want anything from you ;

Good to know. Now find a seat

Texas.Cowgirl:


Good to know. Now find a seat

After you take several dear.

babyosisi: Biko any one wey get more Chinua news abeg post am quick quick
The effect on the scar faced is beauriful


Who knows how many copies of his memoirs sold?

The book is selling more than pure water on a hot tropically sunny day. Even barrow pusers are buying one copy for themselves and another copy for their unborn children.

2 pages of a 6 page spread


http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/05/elegy-for-a-nation/4/



A tribute to the late Prof. Chinua Achebe

Elegy of a nation

By WOLE SOYINKA
AH, Chinua, are you grapevine wired?
It sings: our nation is not dead, not clinically
Yet. Now this may come as a surprise to you,
It was to me. I thought the form I spied
Beneath the frosted glass of a fifty-carat catafalque
Was the face of our own dear land – ‘own’, ‘dear’,
Voluntary patriotese, you’ll note – we try to please.
An anthem’s sentiment upholds the myth.


Late Prof Chinua Achebe
Doctors IMF, World Bank and UNO refuse, it seems,
To issue a certificate of death – if debtors die
May creditors collect? We shall turn Parsees yet,
Lay this hulk in state upon the Tower of Silence,
Let vultures prove what we have seen, but fear to say -
For if Leviathan is dead, we are the maggots
Probing still her monstrous womb – one certainty
That mimics life after death. Is the world fooled?
Is this the price of hubris – to have dared
Sound Renaissance bugles for a continent?

Time was, our gazes roamed the land, godlike,
Pronounced it good, from Lagos to Lake Chad.
The hosts of interlopers would be exorcised,
Not throwing the baby out with the bathwater,
Enthroning ours as ours, bearing names
Lodged in marrow of the dead, attesting lineage.
Consecrated brooms would sweep our earth
Clean of usurpers’ footprints. We marched
To drums of ancient skins, homoeopathic
Beat against the boom of pale-knuckled guns.
We vied with the regal rectitude of Overamwen -
No stranger breath – he swore – shall desecrate
This hour of communion with our gods! We
Died with the women of Aba, they who held
A bridgehead against white levy, armed with pestle,
Sash and spindle, and a potent nudity – eloquent
Abomination in the timeless rites of wrongs.


Grim cycle of embattled years. Again we died
With miners of Iva valley who undermined
More than mere seams of anthracite. All too soon,
Ma, we would augment, in mimic claims,
In our own right, the register of martyrs. Oh,
How we’ve exercised the right of righteous folly
In defence of alien rhetoric . . . what God has joined,
etcetera.
For God, read white, read slaver surrogates.
We scaled the ranges of Obudu, prospected
Jos Plateau, pilgrims on rock-hills of Idanre.
Floated on pontoons from Bussa to silt beds
Of eternal Niger, reclaimed the mangrove swamps,
Startling mudskipper, manatee, and mermaids.
Did others claim the mantle of discoverers?
Let them lay patents on ancestral lands, lay claim
To paternity of night and day – ours
Were hands that always were, hands that pleat
The warp of sunbeam and the weft of dew,
Ours to create the seamless out of paradox.

In the mind’s compost, meagre scrub yielded
Silos of grain. Walled cities to the north were
Sheaths of gold turbans, tuneflul as minarets.
The dust of Durbars, pyrotechnic horsemen
And sparkling lances, all one with the ring of anvils
From Ogun’s land to Ikenga’s Rainbow beads, jigida
From Bida’s furnaces vied across the sky with
Iyun glow and Ife bronzes, luscent on ivory arches
Of Benin. Legend lured Queen Amina to Moremi,
Old scars of strife redeemed in tapestries
Of myth, recreating birthpang, and rebirth. And, yes -

We would steal secrets from the gods. Let Sango’s axe
Spark thunderstones on rooftops, we would swing
In hawser hammocks on electric pylons, pulse through
cities
In radiant energies, surge from battery racks to bathe
Town and hamlet in alchemical light. Orisa-oko
Would heal with herbs and scalpel. Ogun’s drill
Was poised to plumb the earth anew, spraying aloft
Reams of rare alloys. Futurists, were we not
Annunciators of the Millennium long before its advent?
In our now autumn days, behold our leaden feet
Fast welded to the starting block.


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Granted I am no genius of poetry but anybody that makes WS write poetry to fill up Vanguard must certainly be worth much