Irony of Achebe’s christian burial:-

Professor Chinua Achebe lived between November 16, 1930, to March 21, 2013. He was quoted as saying when he was alive that one of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

Dejectedly and regretfully, his family compromised what the African cultures and traditions crusader believed in during his life time; the family allowed the European cultures and traditions Achebe was cheerless about their denigration of his forefathers beliefs to reclaim him in death.

His family compromised his belief in death by committing his remains to the soil in the Eurocentric cultures and traditions with regards to his corpse taken to church. They did not give a hoot to the fact that, in his lifetime, Achebe was so much concerned about recapturing African cultures and traditions from the grip of Europe; the later was writing about Africa to soothe her perception, as against the true story of Africa.

“In his writing and teaching, Mr. Achebe sought to reclaim the continent from Western literature, which he felt had reduced it to an alien, barbaric and frightening land devoid of its own art and culture. He took particular exception to “Heart of Darkness”, the novel by Joseph Courad, whom he thought “a throughgoing racist” (Daily Sun, Nigeria, May 23, 2013, pg 34).

No doubt, Achebe was a man from an active-church or Christian background, but he had a different knowledge of the world and all that was imposed on the African continent as a result of colonialism, when he became an ardent reader of different literature from around the world and he found out that his Christian background was not better than the background of his forefathers, who believed in the Igbo cultures and traditions; hence, he tilted-back to the beliefs of his forefathers.


It could be said that it was in error that the Achebe family said that the issue of when and how he was going be buried was not a subject of disagreement. The head of the Umu Ada Achebe (the female members of the family), and niece of the late Achebe, Ngozi Ezedum, to have said that the story that her uncle would be buried at night, according to the traditional rites, was an unfounded speculation, because he came from a Christian family. That statement was mischievous and a pointer that she did not understand Achebe very well and she was working on emotions against reality. For her to have also said that the Ozo title that Achebe held did not in any way compromise Christianity, can be regarded as the voice of the brainwashed African that Achebe fought all his life to reclaim from the capture of the plague called Christianity.

How does Achebe coming from a Christian family make him a Christian? This belief was a product of colonialism, and when Achebe grew-up, like many African children whose parents converted to Christianity and were blatantly made Christians, deep inside his mind and heart, he knew that he did not belong to the Christian faith.

Professor Achebe knew where he belonged no matter the ‘Christian’ people like Ngozi Ezedum wanted the world to believe that Achebe was. It is very wrong and sad that the Church has taken itself as a government that must abolish a people’s cultures and traditions without dialoguing with the people first. That majority of the people from a particular village attend a particular church, does not imply that their voices are the voice of the entire community in which the church was instituted.

The church likes causing intrigues among a people. If Achebe was a Church-person, controversy would not have surrounded the type of burial that was supposed to befit him.

“The first controversy that came out was when the renowned author was announced dead last March. Argument began to rage in several cultural, literary and political circles on the kind of burial Achebe would have. While some said it would be traditional burial, another group said it would be Christian while another said Achebe was an atheist. All had their reasons. Achebe in his novels, especially those set in pre-colonial and colonial Nigeria accused both Christianity and colonialism as being responsible for Africa’s woes. But then Achebe had neither been seen in a church… This made some others say he was an atheist. [Vanguad: May 26, 2013 · In Achebe: Exit of a literary giant].

Achebe never made his Christianity public but his traditional belief, no matter what people like Bishop Ikechi Nwosu of Aba Diocese, who gave the funeral sermon in Ogidi, pointed out that he had a strong Christian background.

In a letter said was signed by the duo of Ike and Chidi (Achebe’s sons) to the media; for the men to have said that Achebe would be buried as a Christian by the Anglican Church, could be because of the presence of Archbishop Desmond Tutu that was in the planning of his burial. Tutu led the international committee for the burial. And bringing Tutu into the burial committee was political, to diminish what Achebe himself believed in, therefore the family questioned the meaning of burying Achebe traditionally because Tutu was involved.

Tutu himself never disparages other people’s culture and traditions. Read [Desmond Tutu: God is not a Christian].

“Even the duo [Ike and Chidi] could not quell the controversy as they failed to say whether it was Achebe’s wish to be buried as a Christian…” [Vanguard: May 26, 2013 · In Achebe: Exit of a literary giant]. This is what happens when a man or woman compromised; and Achebe was strongly against it.

In an interview that Chinua Achebe granted Bradford Morrow, CONJUNCTIONS:17 Fall 1991, which later became “Best of the Web Bradford Morrow’s Achebe interview and was named a

No one should say that the Things Fall Apart that Achebe wrote is mere fiction that Achebe perhaps never believed in the human conscience that he was bent on conscientizing because Bradford Morrow on Achebe says that in his essay – The Truth of Fiction – Achebe defines a difference between fiction and what he terms beneficent fiction. The interviewer asks Achebe if he equates fiction with superstition and reserves for literary fiction the term beneficent. Inter alia, Achebe responds:

The Igbo was/is well organized before colonialism of which in defining ‘politics’, Achebe tells Brandford Morrow when he was asked to define politics:

“Anything to do with the organization of people in society. That is the definition. Whenever you have a handful of people trying to live harmoniously, you need some organization, some political arrangement that tells you what you can do and shouldn’t do, tells you what enhances harmony and what brings about disruption.”


The Achebe family should not think that its politics that was juxtaposed with the church’s, on the burial of Achebe, have changed what people believed that Chinua Achebe was. The coming of the church did not change him to become better person; Achebe had been a better person through the dictates of generational cultures and traditions of his people that were not transient. Ndigbo were evolving in their politics before church came and begin to massage the egos of individuals, as against the atmosphere of the general belief of the people, hence the communal belief of the people was marginalized and capitalism was instituted.

The world will never accept that Achebe was a better church-Christian than he was known as a veritable strong voice on African cultures and traditions, because he was buried as a Christian. Like Ndigbo would say, which Achebe once used: “If somebody climbs a mountain, they conquer it”, but the family and the church have not conquered the resonating voice of Achebe that Africans should re-claim their cultures and traditions from the hands of Europe. He warns against this hindsight of one acting the script of others to favour himself or herself, using Nigeria and Biafra war as example. Who would say that the Igbo and the Hausa are one people because they are in one country called Nigeria? They are not one people, but from one country.

There is no religions that should see itself as being superior to the other, just as Achebe induces. Achebe did not believe in this, but that independent cultures and traditions and a people should not be infiltrated. He did not believe in the supreme knowledge that any countries enjoys total freedom. But, however, he believed that some enjoy freedom to a large extent than others.

“Some do better than others. Let me give one more dimension of what we were hoping to do in Biafra, and what this freedom and independence was supposed to be like. We were told, for instance, that technologically we would have to rely for a long, long time on the British and the West for everything. European oil companies insisted that oil technology was so complex that we would never ever in the next five hundred years be able to figure it out. Now, we thought that wasn’t true. In fact, we learned to refine our own oil during the two and a half years of the struggle because we were blockaded. We were able to show that it was possible for African people entirely on their own to refine oil. We were able to show that Africans could pilot their planes. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that a Biafran plane landed in another African country, and the pilot and all the crew came out, and there was not white man among them. This other country –which is a stooge of France — couldn’t comprehend a plane landing without any white people. They said, “Where is the pilot? Where are the white people?” arrested the crew, presuming a rebellion in the air. There was enough talent, enough education in Nigeria for us to be able to arrange our affairs more independently than we were doing. Your question as to whether any nation is truly independent: the answer is no. You can manage certain things, but you do rely on others and it’s a good thing the whole world should be linked in interdependence. As human beings you can be independent but as members of society you are related to your fellows. In the same way, nations can manage certain affairs on their own, and yet be linked with others.” [Bradford Morrow, CONJUNCTIONS:17 Fall 1991].

Achebe died and the church infiltrated his Igbo beliefs, just as he was born at a predominantly period, when the Igbo cultures and traditions of his forefathers were being penetrated by European-aliens and their cultures. The Europeans imposed the English Language as a consolidating language. The family treated Achebe in death, like a European, against his belief of Africa. The family has made Africa to continue to look like a continent without any forms of aboriginal cultures and traditions, or that such cultures are iniquitous.

Achebe participated in his uncle’s “heathen” festival meals, which the dogmatic church propagandaically regards as “old religion which was idolatrous, pantheistic and anything evil”. But, this is not true of this Igbo belief-system. The church railed Ndigbo into spiritual torture, with the introduction of Christianity. Upon that there were two religions officially regarded by the Nigerian Constitution, the [Igbo belief-system is not a religion], but a way of life of the people, which was/is found in their diction and characters, in their Chiism and cosmology. This belief-system guided Achebe as a boy, and he grew up believing in this belief of his forefathers, than that of his parents, who were colonized into becoming Christians.

By Odimegwu Onwumere
[http://sunnewsonline.com/new/specials/literary-review/irony-of-achebes-christian-burial/]