Rivers AC Hails Achebe's Home-coming

After nine years of self-exile sojourn to Europe, the foremost African literary icon, Prof. Chinua Ache, has finally returned home on January 19, 2008 to deliver Ahiajoku Lecture and to celebrate the Things Fall Apart's 50 anniversary at Owerri, the Imo State capital.

The literati world is today agog that one of their own has come back home. The author of the famous Things Fall Apart that has been translated into over 50 languages, Achebe is receiving jubilations of friends and lovers of literature.

Prince Tonye TJT Princewill, the leader of the Action Congress (AC) in Rivers State is one of those litterateurs who are agog of this epoch event. Princewill threw yet another party in honour of the home-coming of Achebe at Protea Hotels, Evo crescent, Port Harcourt, on the 21st January 2008. This came after Rivers AC celebrated the 50th anniversary of Things Fall Apart in December last year, on the eve of the Rivers State carnival.

Princewill, who does not play with the sensibility of any tribe in Nigeria, sees Igbo people as a people so industrious and that share communal life that he can't explain with just mere words. Princewill shared in a statement credited to the Director of Lagos School, Prof. Pat Utomi, saying that, “This is home-coming after so many years for the purpose of celebrating Things Fall Apart and the light it brought to Igbo civilization is a great moment to reflect on the challenges of Igboland since the civil war.”

Apart from the external mammoth crowd that graced and witnessed the occasion at the Protea Hotels, were the members of the Rivers State chapter of the Action Congress (AC), which outnumbered three thousand people.

In his remark, Princewill said that the Ahiajoku lecture of Achebe would open the civilization of the Igbo perception and would help Igbo people brave-up being one of the most civilized ethnic groups in Nigeria dating pre-colonialism. Though he said that he does not believe in dichotomy, but in one Nigeria.

While the emotionally pierced Princewill (so much enthusiastic about literature) was commending Achebe for eschewing his decision not to come back home before since nine years now was rendering, Barrister Osimah Gina, the Hon. Commissioner for Urban and Rural Development Rivers State, said: “Especially for us who are passionate about literature and the Things Fall Apart, Achebe's home-coming shouldn't be only a joyous moment for those whose language is Igbo; for as a people that are so passionate about literature, I think we are one family irrespective of aborigine. And that is why we must celebrate Achebe's home-coming. Even in Europe, I think, people would be celebrating as we have experienced in the Things Fall Apart 50th anniversary all over the world”.

Princewill expressed delight about the Achebe's home-coming and the people that attended the celebration organized by the Rivers AC to pay obeisance to Achebe, a man who, according to Princewill, has written a dictionary of African culture and belief in his book, the Things Fall Apart.

Hear Princewill: “Achebe ones told me in an encounter with him that, “The only thing I knew about doing a story well was being honest. I wasn't going to show off. I wasn't going to make the people I was writing about or the places I was writing about better than they were.”

Princewill extolled the towering achievement of Achebe and the Things Fall Apart. In Achebe's words, Princewill quoted: “I was alone in my room, scribbling away, and if anybody had paid any attention at all to me, I wouldn't have been terribly surprised.” And that was how the famous Things Fall Apart was written.

Odimegwu Onwumere is the Founder of Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Rivers State. 08032552855. apoet_25@yahoo.com

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