"The dexterous use of any of the colonial languages is considered to be a manifestation of stupendous intellectual accomplishment. It is also a target of satire. Chinua Achebe's novel No Longer at Ease offers us a "Welcome Address presented to Michael Obi Okonkwo BA (Hons), London, by the officers and members of the Umuofia Progressive Union on the occasion of his return from the United Kingdom in quest of the Golden Fleece". It opens with: "Sir, we the officer and the members of the above-named union, present with humility and gratitude this token of our appreciation of your unprecedented academic brilliance —" The union secretary also reads out a new arrangement by the town union so that "an endless stream of students will be enabled to drink deep at the Peirian Spring of knowledge".
Narrates Achebe: "Needless to say, this address was repeatedly interrupted by cheers and the clapping of hands. What a sharp young man their secretary was, all said. He deserved to go to England himself. He wrote the kind of English they admired if not understood: the kind that filled the mouth, like the proverbial dry meat.""
C. Don Adinuba
- Ikhide
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