Our Eagle on the Iroko has flown home... No, not really... Our Eagle is right here – with us. Our Eagle lives on. This has been the solemn promise made since age 28 with Things Fall Apart and followed by the unrelenting, exemplifying rigour of the entire consummate stretch of discourses and reflections and yet more discourses during the course of 54 subsequent years that culminated in that towering testament of our age, There was a Country. Our Eagle lives on. Focusing on the Eagle´s first discourse, a classic, Kwame Anthony Appiah, literary scholar and philosopher, has argued: “It would be impossible to say how Things Fall Apart influenced African writing. It would be like asking how Shakespeare influenced English writers or Pushkin influenced Russians. Achebe didn't only play the game, he invented it”. Chinua Achebe has indeed run a great race. Ka Chukwu anyi gozie his blessed soul and give comfort to his loving family. Odogwu Mmadu, ije oma. Our pledge at this time: Igbo will be free and we will surely bring to a halt this ongoing genocide against our people, which started on 29 May 1966, and we will transform Igboland to an advanced state and society as duly resolved in the Ahiara Declaration.
Ala puru Oji, nke Ugo bekwasara! Achebe you are greatness; others are being great. Well said Prof. Herbert. Freedom is ours.
ReplyDeleteAchebeism – An Ode
ReplyDeleteWhen a tree falls, the birds that made it their abode
All scatter in the bush for when great things happen
Like the death of a warrior, a retreat is swiftly made
To put the war wares on anvils that would sharpen
From the visions of the visionary to his mission
Here, we the birds have scattered from afar to gather
To lead the legend to the portal of ancestral mansion
For it's fitting that sons at an age mourn their father
No, we do not mourn as if there'd be no tomorrow
Nor would the tree that felled, not speak in the gongs
When a great thing like this happens, the tusks blow
As canon balls send thunderous ululation to the gods
Here, lies a man who told the tale of "Arrow of gods"
When, "Things Fall Apart" as it did, he told the world
Even “There Was a Country” he barbed with firebrands
So sojourn well thereof Chinua to immortality's abode!
Ositadimma Amakeze