The irreparable death of the literary giant and social reformer of our times, Professor Chinualumuogu Achebe on Thursday, 22^nd day of March, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, has come and is going, but the breaking news is that prayers and wishes in torrents, offered for Achebe De Rejected by reigning Nigerian politicians and military apologists are expressly being cerebrated in Hell and shielded from contaminating soul by the Angels of the Heaven. For records, Professor Chinua Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 at Ogidi, Idemmili North LGA, Anambra State, Southeast Nigeria. He was a student of the famous and, some say infamous Government College, Umuahia, Abia State, Southeast Nigeria, between 1944 and 1947. His experiences in the hands of his white tutors, who forbade African way of life and promoted un-African way of life, motivated him, to an extent, if not more, into writing the Things Fall Apart in 1958; No longer at Ease in 1960; and The Arrow of god in 1964. He further wrote The Problem with Nigeria in 1983 and The Anthills of the Savannah in 1988. In 2012, he wrote There Was A Country (a personal history of Biafra), which earned him thunderous accolades from millions of young thinkers home and abroad as well as coordinated attacks from other side of the divides particularly the Southwest Nigerian press, which many have described as the anti Igbo emancipation media industry. He won many local and international literary awards, prominent among them, was Man Booker Award given to him in 2007 during which the South African writer and Nobel Laureate in Literature, Nadine Gordiner, described him as The Father of Modern African Literature, a title attached to him even in his irreparable death.

But for the Government of the United States of America, directly or indirectly as well as humanists resident in overseas, Professor Chinua Achebe would have died 23 years ago-1990 in a Nigerian hospital owing to total neglect and quackery in the country’s public and private healthcare. Professor Achebe’s fatal road accident took place sometime in 1990 and he was abandoned to die by the military administrations at federal and State levels with their civilian aides and associates who, mostly, are today’s political office holders in Nigeria. Then he was on professorial appointment with the Federal Government of Nigeria. Most of the politicians praying for him and wishing him farewell in death today were either ministers, commissioners, contractors, SAs or members of the five fingers of a leprous hand and two pillars of a yam tendril during the military regimes of 1990 to 1998, yet Achebe De Rejected was abandoned to die like a street destitute. Today, prayers and wishes from the same hypocritical politicians and military apologists have rented the air in the form of Adieu, Achebe the Great, An Iroko Has Fallen, No, Achebe cannot die, Achebe can never die, A Giant has fallen, We have lost a genius, to mention but a few.

The abandonment of the erudite professorial scholar in literature in the intensive unit of his hospital bed by those conscienceless mortals is not only the grouse Achebe De Great, his teeming friends and associates had and still have against them, serial corruption, abuse of office, unabated massacre of the Igbos , insecurity and mis-governance of highest order are other legitimate grouses. In 2004, some renegades as described by him, with federal backing, ousted a roguishly sitting governor of Anambra State, his home State, and later burnt down sacred public institutions including the sacred judicial, legislative and executive seats of power, which the roguishly sitting governor putting the cost at N30Billion. While N1Billion was earmarked in the 2006 appropriation Law of the State for their partial reconstruction, the government that succeeded it in the same year spent N325million to reconstruct all that were burnt. This commendable act of the latter earned its governor an inglorious impeachment which was reversed by the courts of law in December 2006 and February 2007. To these effects, vagabonds and vagrants, heavily backed with the federal might, took over the public affairs of men and women in Professor Chinua Achebe’s home State of Anambra with reckless abandon while the political noble class in the State took off and fled.

These were the grounds for his rejection of the highly tainted Honour of the Commander of the Federal Republic award in 2004 under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, himself a chief accomplice in the Anambra political brigandage. Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe’s rejection of the 2011 tainted national award of same category by President Goodluck Jonathan was incontestably based on three major grounds: first being that the country’s corruption index was at its peak with over $100Billion domestic and foreign public debts; over $500Billion stolen public funds stashed in overseas; over 70% of annual national wealth going into recurrent spending; and steady decay in public infrastructures. The second incontestable ground for rejecting the un-meritorious award was the unabated massacre of Igbo sons and daughters in different parts of the country particularly in the northern parts. Erudite Professor Achebe must have been saddened that the Igbo race is not safe both in the hands of the Nigerian security forces particularly the Police and illegally armed brigades such as Boko-Haram and Asaru militant Islamists. The third reason is the high incidence of insecurity in Nigeria as well as uncontrollable proliferation of small arms and their illicit bearers in Nigeria. A UN body recently estimated that there are 5.7million small arms in circulation in wrong hands in Nigeria.

Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe’s love for Nigeria and particularly his Igbo race is inestimable. His belief in the Nigerianness of unfettered equity knows no bounds. In 1961, barely one year after Nigeria’s independence proclamation, he accepted and received the Nigeria National Trophy for Literature award. In 1979, he accepted and received the Nigeria National Order of Merit and the Order of the Federal Republic awards. In 1999, hoping that the exit or planned exit of the military’s inglorious epoch would bring a social salvation for Nigeria; he accepted and received the First National Creativity Award. Years later, he was ferociously attacked by the Southwest Nigerian press for daring to express his displeasure over the continued massacre of the Igbo race, which lost over 1million of her sons and daughters in the 1967-1970 Nigerian-Biafran Civil War and has lost thousands to ethno-religious and extra judicial killings since 1999 in the hands of Nigerian security forces, civil butchers and armed opposition groups. For instance, following his 2012 cerebral book-There Was A Country (a personal history of Biafra), the News Nigeria Magazine, controlled by the Yorubas of the Southwest dedicated three editions attacking him. Series of sponsored editorials, columns and articles were also written against him with rebellious descriptions of his person. Today, to them, Achebe De Rejected & Achebe De Vilified has suddenly become a hero, an iroko, a colossus, a giant, an icon, to mention but a few. These information warfare mongers have joined those that Erudite Professor Achebe despised while alive such as unrepentant political profligates, election riggers and electoral robbers, failed public administrators, political tea makers and flute blowers, abusers of public offices and butchers-in-chief to offer wishes and prayers of the graveyard for Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe’s gentle soul which already got bedded place in Heaven long before its master’s demise.

We thank immensely the Government and great peoples of the United States of America particularly the University of Massachusetts for taking good care of our erudite literary professor in the last 23 years. The Nigerians in Diaspora particularly the Igbo-Nigerians in the United States are immensely commended for standing behind our Great Professor as well. We must not forget to thank the present Government of Anambra State led by Mr. Peter Obi for remembering and acknowledging the great roles of the forgotten heroes of our times both while they live and after they have died. From those who served our State at high capacities both meritoriously and un-meritoriously, such as the Aniagolus, Ezenwas, Enenchukwus, Amechis, Ikpeazus, Mbadinujus; to the irreplaceable heroes of our times such as the Ojukwus, Chike Obis, Kenneth Dilkes and the Achebes. If our erudite professor is given a befitting federating unit burial, he will eternally rest in peace and swear to come from our great State of Anambra and Southeast when next he re-incarnates. We thank pricelessly the Great Angels of the Heaven and our Heavenly General Overseer for shielding the soul of Erudite Professor Chinua Achebe from being tainted and contaminated by Hell-bound prayers and wishes of Nigerian politicians above categorized. The demonic gate keepers of the Hell are congratulated for express reception in torrents of the prayers and wishes above mentioned. We suggest that our Erudite Professor Chinualumuogu Achebe should be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize in Literature if applicable.

•Being the text of a public statement issued this evening by Emeka Umeagbalasi, Chairman of the Board of International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law, Nigeria (Intersociety).

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