In his rebuke of Professor Achebe, President Jonathan described the respected writer-scholar’s widely reported decision to reject the offer of the national honour of ‘Commander of the Federal Republic’ as that ‘’which may have been borne out of misinformation as to the true state of affairs in Nigeria…’’ Strange as the President’s rebuke is, it shows the disdain he holds those who disagree with him on the direction he is taking our country. And sadly, too, the importance he attaches to literary icons and intellectual giants who seek and pose alternative vision for our country.
In his rebuke of Professor Achebe, President Jonathan described the respected writer-scholar’s widely reported decision to reject the offer of the national honour of ‘Commander of the Federal Republic’ as that ‘’which may have been borne out of misinformation as to the true state of affairs in Nigeria…’’ Strange as the President’s rebuke is, it shows the disdain he holds those who disagree with him on the direction he is taking our country. And sadly, too, the importance he attaches to literary icons and intellectual giants who seek and pose alternative vision for our country.
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That the press statement which carried the public rebuke also affirmed that the President holds Professor Achebe ‘in very high esteem’ cannot make light the import of ignorance that the noun,’ misinformation’, sadly conveys. Come to think of it, whether President Jonathan holds him in very high esteem or not, he won’t lose a moment of sleep or dwell on the thought of being held high by a younger compatriot who considers him as being misinformed. That ordinary Nigerians and the world hold our preeminent writer in the highest esteem is gratifying enough. So what informed the public rebuke? The reason isn’t far-fetched.
Recently, Professor Achebe was offered the national honour of ‘Commander of the Federal Republic’. Professor Achebe put out a terse press release, stating that ‘’the reasons for rejecting the offer of national honour when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must therefore regrettably decline the offer again’’. It will be recalled that on October 15th 2004, Professor Achebe ejected the offer of national honour and stated that ‘’Nigeria’s condition today under your watch (President Obasanjo’s) is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honour awarded me in the 2004 Honours list’’.
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It is important to understand the mind-set from which such rebuke is issued; and how public intellectuals are viewed by our leaders. Every society produces its own public intellectuals. For societies constantly torn by the dialectical tensions that exist between classes and interests, there are public intellectuals who provide ideological guidance to the dominant class. Such intellectuals hardly ever fetch the rebukes of members of the dominant class because they too operate from that same skewed mind-set that intellectualises the greater good as that which belongs to the dominant few. Any objector to such criminal enterprise of expropriation is met with name calling and in extreme cases death. But there are those Vaclav Havel, echoing no less a figure than late Edward Said, described in his ‘Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvizdala’ as intellectuals who ‘’should constantly disturb, should bear witnesses to the misery of the world, should be provocative by being independent, should rebel against all hidden and open pressure and manipulations, should be the chief doubter of systems, of power and its incantations, should be witness to their mendacity’’. For the engaged intellectual there are no gods to be worshipped, or pantheons to look upon and cringe. Therefore, Professor Achebe’s rejection of the offer of the national honour ought to have been taken by President Jonathan in the context of Edward Said’s charge to intellectuals to speak the truth to power. Unfortunately, President Jonathan didn’t. Whatever purpose the public rebuke intended, the tradition of public enquiry which Professor Achebe helped to establish and nurture remains vibrant. Happily, incisive minds like Okey Ndibe, Pius Adesanmi, Wale Adebanwi, Ebenezer Obadare, Ogaga Ifowodo, Farooq Kperogi, Chido Onumah, Ikhide Ikheloa, Odion Akhaine, Obi Nwakanma and many others found their profoundly endearing niches within this tradition.
Had Professor Achebe been born in a different country, and perhaps, in a different time, he would have been respected, venerated as an avatar. Take Jean-Paul Sartre. During the 1968 students’ revolt in France, Sartre was arrested in the streets of Paris for civil disobedience.
General Charles De Gaulle on learning of his arrest personally secured his release, commenting that ‘’you don’t arrest Voltaire’’. Was the ‘Legion d’Honneur’ not conferred on Sartre by the renegade Second World War’s Vichy government, and did he not reject it? Was he ever labelled by Vichy as an intellectual exile who knew next to nothing about the Nazi-occupied France? The response of the Swedish Academy to Sartre’s rejection of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature even in today’s summation is startling. The text signed by Anders Osterling is worth reproducing in part here: ‘’ This year the Nobel Prize in Literature has been granted by the Swedish Academy to the French writer Jean-Paul Sartre for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far reaching influence on our age. It will be recalled that the laureate has made it known that he did not wish to accept the prize. The fact that he has declined this distinction does not in the least modify the validity of the award. Under the circumstances, however, the Academy can only state that the presentation of the prize cannot take place.’’ And Osterling added that ‘’Sartre has been a central figure in post-war literary and intellectual discussions-admired, debated, criticized. His explosive production, in its entirely, has the impress of a message; it has been sustained by a profoundly serious endeavour to improve the reader, the world at large.’’ Say no more.
Today in our country name calling creeps over as attacks on dissentient intellectuals. That ‘’The President continues to hold Professor Achebe in very high esteem inspite of his regrettable decision which may have been borne out of misinformation as to the true state of affairs in Nigeria’’, as Reuben Abati tried to make us believe, don’t explain why President Jonathan cannot understand the subtext of Professor Achebe’s terse statement or see into the condition that the preeminent scholar insists ails our country.
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