Editorial
Chinua Achebe 1930 – 2013
The news of the sudden transition last week of Nigerian literary icon and father of modern African Literature, Professor Albert Chinualumogu Achebe came to many as a huge shock. He died in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States at the age of 82.
The demise at this period of our nation’s political history is saddening because many, particularly, the millions of his literary followers were unaware of any form of life threatening illness that could cut short an eventful life.
Born on November 16, 1930 in is home town Ogidi, Anambara State to proud parents, Mr. Isaiah Okafor Achebe and Janet Amaenechi Iloegbunam, converts of protestant Church Mission Society (CMS), Chinua Achebe separated from his parents at the age of 12 to the village of Nekede, near Owerri and enrolled as a student at Saint Philips Central School.
In 1944, young Chinua gained admission into the prestigious Dennis Memorial Grammar School in Onitsha and later moved to the famous Government College, Umuahia where he obtained his Secondary Education in four years. And in 1948, he gained admission into Nigeria’s Premier University College (now the University of Ibadan) where he studied English. In 1950, Achebe wrote a piece for the University Herald entitled: “Polar Undergraduate,” his debut as an author. He served as the Editor of the Herald during the 1951-1952 school year.
While at the university, Achebe wrote his first short story, “In a Village Church,” which combines details of life in rural Nigeria with Christian institutions and icons, a style which appears in many of his later works.
Achebe became an English teacher at the Merchants of Light School at Oba before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) which started operation by the colonial Masters in 1933 and soon moved to the Metropolis of Lagos.
Professor Chinua Achebe gained worldwide attention in the 1950s for his maiden novel “Things Fall Apart,” which got translated into well over 50 languages and sold over 12 million copies. His well crafted literary masterpieces were African-based, but with monumental universal appeal. That novel aptly amplifies the collision between British Colonial rule and traditional Igbo culture, in his native home.
Among a long list of works, Achebe’s global best sellers include: No Longer At Ease; Arrow of God, A man of the People; Beware, Soul Brother (anthology of poems). The Trouble with Nigeria; and his most recent, Controversial and Terminal Work, There Was A Country.
In 1960, shortly after he wrote his second novel, “No Longer At Ease, Achebe was announced a Rockefeller Fellowship for six months of travel, which he called, “the first important perk of my writing career.”
In acknowledgement of his immense contribution to the literary world, South African writer and Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer called Achebe the “father of Modern African Literature,” in 2007, when she was among the judges to award him the Man Booker International prize for fiction.
A defender of the masses, Achebe, for the first time provided a periscope into Africa and presented Africa from the African perspective. He emerged the greatest writer of prose in the African continent and gave pride to African writing to Africans.
Professor Chinua Achebe will also be remembered for identifying with the ordinary Nigerian. He shared the people’s pains and suffering.
Twice, Achebe was offered a national honour of the Commander of the Federal Republic, CFR, by both the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 2004 and the President Goodluck Jonathan government in 2010, twice he rejected the offer, arguing that he was not one that would pose as holy in the day time and be in cosy alliance in the night with people he accuses in the day time of bad governance.
The Tide joins the rest of Nigerians and indeed the literary world to mourn this beacon of national unity, advocate of integrity in governance and indeed a champion of political morality that fashion his adult life.
Married to Christie Okoli on September 10, 1961, with four children and six grand children, Professor Chinua Achebe will be remembered most for his invaluable contribution to the literary development in a world still battling with falling reading culture among its youth.
To the Professor of Africana studies of the Brown University, Massachusetts, United States of America, we say, adieu.
There are moments in the life of a legislature when plain speaking becomes a public service. Senator Adams Oshiomhole provided such a moment on the floor of the Senate when he accused the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, of manifestly neglecting critical federal arteries in Edo and Delta States, and implored his colleagues to prevail on the Minister to adopt a more equitable and genuinely national approach to road infrastructure delivery. It was blunt, it was uncomfortable, and it was necessary.
The specifics of his complaint deserve restating. Drawing attention to the recent approval of some 20 new road projects despite the parlous state of existing ones, the former Edo State governor lamented that Nigerians cannot travel from Benin to Warri, Benin to Asaba, Benin to Auchi, or Auchi to Okene without encountering severe distress. He alleged a deliberate omission of these corridors from the national budget in the last three years, save for palliative interventions directed by President Bola Tinubu through tax credit arrangements. His question — “What have we done wrong?” — resonates far beyond the chambers of the National Assembly.
We lend our full and unequivocal support to that call. The Auchi-Benin Road, for instance, has been in a deplorable and near-impassable condition for several years, turning what should be a two-hour journey into an all-day ordeal of broken axles, extortionate fares, and despondent commuters. The media have, on multiple occasions, chronicled the suffering of motorists, traders, and students who ply that route. To describe it as a federal road today is to stretch the meaning of the term beyond recognition.
This pattern of sidelining is not confined to Edo or Delta. Even here in Rivers State, the disposition of the Federal Ministry of Works has left much to be desired, particularly along the Eleme axis of the East-West Road. That road, which ought to be a flagship of federal presence in the Niger Delta, has remained in a wretched state for long. Those who use it daily — workers at the Eleme Petrochemical Complex, the two refineries, Onne Port, and the countless ancillary industries — can attest to its deterioration. Work has proceeded in fits and starts without the sustained urgency such a strategic road demands.
The Eleme stretch is not a mere intra-state byway. It is the gateway to the nation’s economic jugular. According to the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing’s 2023 Highway Condition Survey, only about 35 per cent of the country’s 36,000 kilometres of federal roads are rated as being in good or fair condition, with the remainder classified as poor or very poor. The East-West Road, conceived in the 1970s to bind the entire Niger Delta, remains unfinished in critical sections more than four decades after. If it had been treated as a priority, the perennial gridlock, carnage, and economic loss on the Eleme-Refinery junction would have long been consigned to history.
The irony is as painful as it is glaring. The Niger Delta remains the goose that lays the golden eggs. Data from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative [NEITI 2023 Oil and Gas Audit] show that the region still accounts for over 78 per cent of Nigeria’s federally collected export earnings and about 65 per cent of total government revenue. The National Bureau of Statistics [NBS Foreign Trade Report Q4 2024] similarly confirms that crude oil continues to dominate export receipts. By every metric of equity and economic logic, a region that sustains the national purse deserves first-rate consideration in the allocation of infrastructure, not afterthoughts and tokenism.
Road infrastructure is not largesse to be dispensed by favour; it is the skeleton upon which commerce, cohesion, and citizenship hang. When contracts are concentrated in one geopolitical zone while other zones are left to contend with craters, it erodes trust in the federation itself. The World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update [June 2023] estimated that poor transport connectivity inflates the cost of moving goods by up to 40 per cent and costs the Nigerian economy an estimated $1.5 billion annually in lost man-hours and vehicle maintenance. If we profess to be one country, then equity must be the compass that guides key institutions before any project is executed. Development must spread round, not pool in one place as though other regions do not matter.
There is also a grave security dimension that can no longer be ignored. The deplorable condition of federal roads has become a veritable enabler of criminality. The NBS Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey reported over 2.5 million incidents of kidnapping-related occurrences nationally, with transport workers identifying bad road spots as prime ambush points. When vehicles are forced to crawl at 10 kilometres per hour through failed sections at Auchi, Sapele Road, or Eleme, they become sitting ducks for armed gangs. Fixing bad roads, therefore, is not merely about convenience; it is about safeguarding lives.
By his intervention, Senator Oshiomhole has hit the nail on the head and reminded Minister Umahi of a fundamental constitutional truth: public office is held in trust. The Ministry of Works is not a personal estate where contracts are awarded according to whim or political convenience. It is a national institution funded by the collective resources of Nigerians, including the oil and gas rents from the very communities whose roads are now neglected. The Minister must demonstrate balance, transparency, and a pan-Nigerian outlook in the distribution of projects that impact the daily existence of citizens. Selective neglect breeds suspicion, and suspicion is corrosive at a time when the nation is preaching unity, oneness, equity, and justice.
Consequently, the National Assembly must go beyond rhetoric and assert its oversight powers with vigour. Sections 88 and 89 of the 1999 Constitution [as amended] empower the legislature to investigate and expose any maladministration in the execution of federal projects. If an office holder is not acting rightly, it is the duty of the Senate and the House of Representatives to call him to order. Oversight must not be reduced to budget approval ceremonies; it must translate to field verification, public hearings, and insistence that the Federal Character principle, as enshrined in Section 14(3) of the Constitution, reflects in road awards.
Let the Auchi-Okene, Benin-Warri, Benin-Asaba, and Eleme East-West gangways be restored to motorable dignity. Let priority be given to completing existing, economically vital roads before embarking on new ones. If those who, through their resources, sustain the federation are sidelined in the distribution of tangible dividends, it tells poorly of our nationhood. Bad roads must be fixed, and they must be fixed now, with fairness as the guiding standard.
