Paying For Achebe’s Snub

By Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo

Like everyone else, I am saddened by the death of Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s greatest minds. His books have enriched our lives and nourished our minds. He was known and respected for his wisdom and the courage to speak his mind at any time no matter–permit the cliché–whose ox is gored.

I was privileged to have met Achebe in person during his lifetime. As a rookie reporter for The Guardian in the early 1980s, I ran into Achebe at the Lagos Airport and decided to interview him. He was in a hurry to catch a flight to Enugu, but I managed to raise a few questions about his involvement in politics as he walked through the departure lounge towards the tarmac. I had no tape recorder and I couldn’t retrieve my notebook from my bag. The renowned writer had assumed that I was just chatting with him. After his departure, I sat back and recollected the essence of our conversation.

Achebe was surprised to see the interview in The Guardian the following day. Never one to let matters like that go unchallenged, Achebe wrote a letter to the editor wondering how I could have quoted him in the interview without recording his voice or taking notes. But he agreed that the published account had generally captured the substance of our conversation. The letter was published in my paper and I was cautioned by my editors on the sacredness of quotes in journalism.

Years later, when I went with my friends and fellow journalists, Sonala Olumhense, Tunji Lardner and Yinka Adeyemi, to spend a day with him at his Bard College home in New York, USA, I was surprised that he had not forgotten me. “I know you,” he said with a smile when I tried to introduce myself to him. We went on to have a good lunch and a great conversation about Nigeria, living the United States, and writing. He said he was grateful that God spared his life to witness the canonisation of Things Fall Apart and his other works. He spoke proudly about the listing of Things Fall Apart among the 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century. He listed several literary laurels that had come his way since his near-death experience in a 1990 car crash in Nigeria.

That was our last meeting. I admired him greatly as a writer, thinker and political activist. This was why my friend and fellow presidential aide, Tunde Olusunle, and I had recommended him to President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004 for a higher national honour. This essay provides a context to Achebe’s nomination for a higher national award; revisits the political crisis that Achebe’s rejection of the award had sparked off; and it reveals for the first time the consequences of Achebe’s snub on my relationship with President Obasanjo.

As presidential aides in the Obasanjo administration from 1999 to 2007, Tunde Olusunle and I were often disappointed by the calibre of people selected for National Honours Award every year. First, we were worried about the unwieldy number of awardees – more than 200 winners every year. We thought the awardees should not be more than 25 every year if the National Honours were to have some prestige or lustre. We felt the real heroes of Nigeria were not being recognised. We also had problems with the overall objective of the awards.

Tafa Balogun, the former Inspector-General of Police, was arrested for stealing N17 billion less than a year after he was decorated with one of the nation’s highest honours.

We argued that people ought to earn these honours and they should never be given in anticipation of achievements.

On 16 July 2004, Olusunle and I decided to send our own nominees for national honours to Obasanjo. I was the spokesman to the Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar. Olusunle worked directly with Obasanjo as his Special Assistant on Special Duties. Our list had more than 50 names of people, who had made real contributions to the development of the country in the fields of arts and literature. Chinua Achebe was one of them.

We included in the list a few foreigners, who had supported the country in so many ways and those who campaigned tirelessly for democracy and freedom when the President was a political prisoner. We included two remarkable widows, Ajoke Muhammed and Sheila Solarin. When he received the memo, the President picked out only four names from the list (Chinua Achebe, Alade Odunewu, Segun Olusola and Mabel Segun) and specified what honours should be given to them. Special Duties Minister, Frank Nweke, to whom it was minuted later confided in me that he was a little disappointed that the President had picked out only four. He said everybody on our list deserved the award. He felt sad that he could not go outside the approval of the President to include some of the names his boss had rejected.  The matter ended there. So we thought.

Days later, Olusunle and I decided to go and break fast with the President during the Ramadan. Though a Baptist Christian, Obasanjo had made it a habit to fast in solidarity with Muslims every Ramadan period. As we entered the compound, it dawned on us that we ought to have done a mood check before coming.

Nevertheless, we went into the house to find the President alone in the dining room. The kitchen was busy. The table had been laid out. It was a long table with 20 chairs. The President seemed to be making sure that breakfast preparations were going right. We greeted him, but he barely answered. It was followed by a long, awkward silence. I was looking for something to say to break the silence.

“You see what you have done?” The President spoke first. His question was not directed at any of us in particular.

“What is it, Sir?” I wanted to know.

“You see how you both embarrassed me?”

“What is it, Sir? Olusunle asked.

Is it about Kogi State?” I asked.

Neither Olusunle nor I had any clue at all what the President was talking about. We thought perhaps something embarrassing had happened in our badly governed state that we were not aware of.

“Which Kogi? I am talking about Achebe. You see how you people embarrassed me before the whole world? I will never take any memo from you two again.”

Achebe was indeed on our list of over 50 nominees for national honours. He had been awarded the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR) in 1979, but Olusunle and I thought he deserved something better. Hailed worldwide as the father of African literature, Achebe, more than any one else, has been a worthy ambassador for the country. His landmark novel, Things Fall Apart, has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and it has been translated into over 50 languages. We recommended that Achebe’s OFR be upgraded to Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR). The President agreed.

Achebe was awarded the CFR, the third highest honour in the country. His contemporary, the 1986 Nobel Prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka, had won a CFR in 1986. It was only fair that the nation’s two literary stars be at par. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats compiling the list never bothered to actually sound out Achebe before publicly announcing his award.

From his Bard College home at Annandale-on-Hudson in New York, USA, Achebe sent Obasanjo a scathing five-paragraph letter, openly rejecting the award.

The Obasanjo administration reacted to his criticism with shock and disbelief. Achebe’s letter was widely publicised in the local and international media, prompting an avalanche of editorial comments and analysis. Obasanjo was not happy.

The government initially denied ever receiving Achebe’s letter. Later, presidential spokesman Femi Fani-Kayode released a statement, accusing Achebe of being out of touch with current developments at home. He described the crisis in Anambra State as a “local affair” and denied allegations that the federal government had been promoting violence in the state. Fani-Kayode later released a second statement in which he called Achebe undeserving of his Nigerian citizenship. Olusunle and I did not know how to respond to the President’s charge that we had invited Achebe’s attack on him. “You people kept quiet. You did not tell the world that you were the ones who forced Achebe on me”, Obasanjo continued.

“His state of Anambra did not nominate him for the award. You people forced him on me. And I accepted him because of you people. I will never take anything from you two again’’.

Olusunle and I said we were sorry for the embarrassment and that we had recommended Achebe and others with honest intention and that we did not know Achebe would respond the way he did.

“Perhaps, we can still write to explain how and why we nominated Achebe,” we said without much conviction if it was actually necessary.

“It’s too late!” The President said, brusquely.

There was a long silence. Olusunle was winking at me to take our leave. The President was standing by the window, looking at the beautiful, well-kept garden in front of him. He was expecting the Sultan of Sokoto, the Emir of Kano and other frontline northern traditional rulers for breakfast. They had gone to the nearby State House mosque to pray. The President was waiting for them to join him at the dining table. Olusunle was still trying to pull me away. But I felt the President should know why we came.

“We actually came to break the fast with you,” I said, confidently.

The President was livid with anger.

“Did I invite you? Come on, get out of here now!

“Ooouuutt!”

Olusunle was not prepared to tempt the President any further. He fled from the dining room into the main sitting room and headed for the security checkpoint.

“Mr. President, it’s me,” I said, still refusing to leave.

“Did I invite you? Get out of here now!

Oooouuutttt!”

I was trying to make light of everything, smiling as I back-stepped towards the exit. But Obasanjo was in no mood for that. He was boiling. He chased me up to the door of the dining room, and stood there to make sure that I had actually gone.

I caught up with Olusunle at the security check-point. The guards were surprised that we had finished our business so soon. We collected our mobile phones and stepped outside.

We sat in our car at the visitors’ car park, trying to catch our breath. We couldn’t understand why we should be paying for Achebe’s snub.

– Excerpted from Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo’s yet-to-be published book, The Olusegun Obasanjo Years, 1999 to 2007