Connect with us

Education

There is a report that Prof. Soyinka just repeated his stance about Achebe not being “the father of Africa literature.”

Published

7 months ago

on

Chinua Achebe
Spread the love

 

Chinua Achebe, the father of African literature?
“For many people all around the world, Chinua Achebe was their first African writer”
-Kwame Anthony Appiah

There is a report that Prof. Soyinka just repeated his stance about Achebe not being “the father of Africa literature.”

Well, we all could remember that just few weeks after Achebe’s demise, Soyinka had this to say; “Chinua himself repudiated such a tag—he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject…Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe literary scholars and consumers think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity?”
He maybe right there. That’s his opinion. Just like everyone else has their own.

Of course, I have my own opinion on this issue but will mostly be sighting the opinions of great minds and institutions on the place of Achebe in African literature.

I think it was Noble Laureate Nadine Gordimer, the South African author that first called Achebe “the father of African literature when in 2007 he won the Man Booker International Price.

Writing on this issue, Kwame Appiah would say; “It would be impossible to say how “Things Fall Apart” influenced African writting. It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or how Pushkin influenced Russians.”

Ainehi Edoro, a Nigerian from Akure and a professor of Global Black Literature at University of Wisconsin-Madison, writing in the Brittle Paper, an online literary magazine for readers of African Literature, had this to say on the topic; “The first mistake that Soyinka makes.. is taking the idea of “the father” or “the inventor” way too literally.

Achebe is the father of African literature only in a metaphorical sense.

No one is saying that Achebe was physically present when African literature came into being—like he was some kind of god who stood before the expanse of Africa’s literary nothingness and said “let there be African literature, and then there was African literature.” She continued; “Before Achebe, if you were black and you were African, the world most likely did not see your work as literary.

They would evaluate your work as folklore, myth, or things that should interest an anthropologist, but not literature. This affected the way African writing was circulated globally.

Instead of African fiction to be reviewed by the New York Times or shelved alongside Franz Kafka and Virginia Woolf, it was published by religious presses and reviewed in anthropological journals.

Things began to change in a big way after the global success of Things Fall Apart. It took a novel like Things Fall Apart for the global literary market, readership, and literary institution to see African writers the same way they saw Virginia Woolf or James Joyce or William Shakespeare—people writing things called literature and not myth, or folklore or historical documents or anthropological texts.”

Simon Gokandi, a Kenyan, Chair, Department of English, Class of 1943 University Professor of English at Princeton University has this to say; “Achebe is the man who invented African literature because he was able to show… that the future of African writing did not lie in the simple imitation of European forms but in the fusion of such forms with the oral tradition.”

As the founding editor of Heinemann’s African Writers Series from 1958, Achebe was managing editorial operations and the refinement of books published under this label.

Under Achebe’s editorship, many of the great literary works of great African minds and leaders went through him and this includes Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Keneth Kaunda, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkuruma, Flora Nwakpa, Aluko T. M, Ekwensi Cyprian, Ferdinand Léopold Oyono, La Guma Alex, John Munonye and many more.

After Achebe left Heinemann’s in 1972 works of people like Mandela, Soyinka and Obasanjo also came to Heinemann’s.

It’s not just for his great books that Achebe is called by many all over the world “The father of African Literature” but also for his person and his overall contribution to the development of African Literature.

Perhaps that was why while writing in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch, an American author and journalist and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker has this to say; “the fact that [Achebe] must be remembered as not only the father but the godfather of modern African literature owed at least as much to the decades he spent as the editor of Heinemann’s African Writers Series.”

Ngugi wa Thiongo would say; “There’s hardly any African writer of my generation who has not been mistaken for Chinua Achebe. Every African novel became Things Fall Apart, and every writer some sort of Chinua Achebe.

He never bragged about it, even refusing the unofficial title of father of African literature.” Writing in his tribute to Chinua Achebe, Ngugi also said that Soyinka agreed that he had been mistaken for Achebe in many occasions by so many in many country.

Certainly, it made not little sense when Mandela told Achebe what his novels brought to him among all the African literature he had while in prison: “There was a writer named Chinua Achebe in whose company the prison walls fell.”

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Education

ASUU kicks against Senate attempt to dismantle the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) through the proposed tax reform bill.

Published

3 days ago

on

January 15, 2025

By

Spread the love

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has warned the National Assembly and the National Economic Council against any attempt to dismantle the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) through the proposed tax reform bill.
In a press conference at Bayero University, Kano, on Wednesday, ASUU Zonal Coordinator for Kano Zone, Professor Abdulkadir Muhammad, stressed that the union would not stand by while its key initiative is dismantled.

Titled Nigeria Tax Bill 2024 and Its Consequences on TETFund: Killing the Brainchild of ASUU, Professor Muhammad argued that Nigerian universities could face imminent collapse if the bill currently before the assembly is passed

Read the full story www.ekwutosblog.com follow our social media handles @ekwutosblog

Continue Reading

Education

Ibadan stampede: Court grants Principal, Hamzat, Silekunola bail

Published

5 days ago

on

January 13, 2025

By

Spread the love

An Oyo State High Court sitting in Ibadan, the state capital, has granted bail to the principal of Islamic High School, Bashorun, Ibadan, Mr. Abdullahi Fasasi; the proprietor of Agidigbo FM, Alhaji Oriyomi Hamzat; and Olori Naomi Silekunola, an estranged wife of the Ooni of Ile-Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi.

The bail was granted by Justice K.B. Olawoyin on Monday.

Our correspondent reports that the trio were granted bail after the judge listened to the arguments of their counsels.

DAILY POST reports that the three were being prosecuted over a stampede that occurred at the school.

No fewer than thirty-five children died during the incident, which happened on Wednesday, December 18, 2024.

An Oyo State Magistrate Court in Iyaganku had earlier ordered that the trio be remanded at the Agodi Correctional Facility.

Details later…

Continue Reading

Education

Minimum wage: Shortage of teachers hits private schools in Oyo

Published

5 days ago

on

January 13, 2025

By

Spread the love

Private primary and secondary schools in Oyo State, South-West Nigeria, have been hit with shortage of teachers, Ekwutosblog reports.

 

A source hinted that the development is visible in major cities and towns such as Ogbomoso, Oyo, Saki, Iseyin, Eruwa and other locations in the state.

Findings by Ekwutosblog revealed that this was noticed at the beginning of the second term of the 2024/2025 academic session on Monday, 6th January, 2025.

 

It was observed that hundreds of teachers in both private primary and secondary schools across the state failed to resume when the new term began.

This is said to be due to the employment of some teachers by the Oyo State government and the implementation of the new minimum wage.

It could be recalled that the state government under the leadership of Engineer Seyi Makinde recently employed no fewer than 5,600 teachers across the state, in order to fill the vacant positions in public schools across the state.

Investigation by Ekwutosblog at the weekend revealed that the state government had on Monday, 6th January 2025 began the distribution of letters of appointment to the newly recruited basic school teachers in the state.

 

Adeniran, who restated the Board’s zero tolerance for examination malpractices, said the new teachers’ appointments take effect from January 1st, 2025.

He, however, noted that about 12 local governments are over-bloated with teachers, while some local governments are under-staffed, saying a redistribution would be done to ensure equity and justice.

Adeniran urged the newly recruited teachers to display patriotic commitment, high level of integrity, and professional diligence to their duties.

“As young teachers, you are expected to be creative, adaptive, talented, and progressive. We urge you to be innovative, I therefore urge you to be the teacher for this age and the game-changing teacher for the future.

“You will be expected to be part of our dream to revolutionalize the basic education sub-sector,” he said.

Our correspondent learnt that the majority of those who were employed by the state government are teachers who were teaching in private primary and secondary schools in the state.

Ekwutosblog  also gathered that the state government in November approved N80,000 as minimum wage for workers in the state.

Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Dotun Oyelade, made this declaration in a statement made available to Ekwutosblog .

Oyelade said that the Technical Committee set up by the state government recommended the amount.

He said: “This new scale will be implemented as soon as the consequential adjustments process is completed by the committee which comprises Government and Labour top officials.”

Following these developments, private schools are now faced with an acute shortage of teachers.

From Ido, to Akinyele, Lagelu to Egbeda, Ona Ara to Oluyole, Ibadan North to Ibadan North West, Ibadan North East to Ibadan South West and Ibadan North, our correspondent reports that the situation remains the same.

A similar thing is currently happening in other cities and towns in the state such as Ogbomoso, Oyo, Saki, Iseyin and Eruwa.

Some of the teachers and parents who spoke with Ekwutosblog attributed the development to the employment of teachers by the state government and the new minimum wage policy.

A school administrator in one of the affected schools in Lagelu local government area, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that no fewer than 20 teachers left the school this term.

He attributed the development to the recent recruitment of teachers and the new minimum wage.

“The recent recruitment by Oyo State Government and the quest for the new minimum wage by the workers had negatively affected us.

“As of today, no fewer than 27 teachers left our school at the beginning of this term.

“We are looking for ways to replace them immediately but we are yet to see the new ones that are qualified.

“We have to increase our salary to be able to attract quality teachers and retain the remaining ones that are with us in the school,” he said.

A teacher in one of the private schools in Ibadan North local government area, Mrs. Busayo Akindele disclosed that no fewer than three teachers did not resume when the new term began.

She said that the school was now looking for ways to replace those who left.

“In our school, three teachers have left. You know the state government recently employed over 5,000 teachers.

“We that are here are also demanding the payment of the new minimum wage. So, this is negatively affecting the majority of the schools in the state.

“We are affected and I am sure other schools are being affected too,” she stated.

A parent who resides in Ido local government area, Mrs. Sade Oladele also confirmed that some teachers have left her children’s schools.

“The employment of new teachers by the state government is having negative consequences on private schools in the state.

“You know that the state government recently employed some teachers. I commend the state government for the opportunity given to the qualified teachers.

“It is commendable, at least it will help to increase the standard of education in the state.

“But, at the same time, it is having negative consequences on the private schools,” she noted.

An indigene of Iseyin in Oke Ogun geopolitical zone identified as Omolara said that the situation remained the same in the Oke Ogun geopolitical zone.

According to him, “It is the same thing we are experiencing in Iseyin.

“Many of the people who are teaching in private schools have left because they have been given letters of appointments by the state government.

“You also need to understand the issue of the new minimum wage. Some schools do not have the capacity to pay, so many teachers have left.”

The distribution took place at Local Government Universal Basic Education Authorities, LGUBEAs, situated in all local government areas across the state.

Chairman, Oyo State Universal Basic Education Board, Dr. Nureni Aderemi Adeniran, who spoke on the development recently, charged the new teachers to be innovative and embrace modern techniques and approach in imparting knowledge.

Continue Reading

Trending