Re- Atah Pine's CHINUA ACHEBE'S STATE BURIAL: MATTERS ARISING
The immediate background to my tackling this issue is that I have just read The Story of Planet Earth, Part I – and am still pondering on the life to come after this one and the Judaic teaching that for loving the Almighty, you do not get your rewards in this mundane world, but in the world to come. So those who want to be rewarded in this world – must be seeing the fruits of their efforts , with their own eyes …ah... " All is vanity" concluded Solomon and it is in sickness or around funeral times that we ourselves are reminded about our own looming future as in the Almighty asking Adam, " Where are you?" - How far have you come ?
Some will then be beating their chests about their achieve-ments. I am a superior man, have won this and that prize, am more educated that the prophets etc. have done this and a million of that, climbed Mt. Everest, speak all the languages of the tower of babel but not mastered the holy tongue, I am not an idiot like Cornelius ! I won the Noble prize in Medicine ! Only one, asked the disappointed Jewish mother who expects much more of her son....
My take on this issue – or rather ethnically and internationally speaking, my stake on this issue about Achebe's funeral : "Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God !"
(Just kidding).
At all costs, we must honour the dead. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu himself was honoured by a national state funeral was he not?
But more seriously, as to the question of "a national funeral" with a Nigerian flag draping the casket and a twenty-one gun/cannonball salute, and the whole nation weeping at the graveside,with some a-them probably shedding some crocodile tears, and some of the pious-looking hypocrites near and far still "fasting" for dear Chinua and all of his books which they have read and studied like the Quran : Whether or not in his lifetime Chinua Achebe "had turned down on two occasions National Awards slated to be conferred on him by the Federal Government of Nigeria." , this time ,when he has no say-so in the matter, by popular consensus the Federal Government of Nigeria chose to honour him, even in death with a national funeral attended by all and sundry with the family close friends and some of the nation's dignitaries at the vanguard.
We are to suppose that if he did not want all this to happen then he would have been very explicit about this beforehand - publicly - or confided this in writing to his nearest and dearest that on no account should he be accorded a national funeral – after all Chinua Achebe - to my chagrin - was most vociferous in denying our Chief Jeremiah Oyeniyi Obafemi Awolowo a national funeral on the grounds that (and these are the exact words of Chinua Achebe the great author) on the grounds that AWO " was not an Igbo god".
Are we to conclude then, if or when he did not object to or put his foot down about the late Biafra's Ojukwu being accorded a national funeral, that it was on the grounds that Ojukwu was an Igbo god – even a dead one?
Now if Igbo god-ship should be the grounds for anyone being granted a national funeral, the question that remains to be answered is this: was Chinua Achebe an Igbo god? I am speaking in the name of justice and fairness, and according to his own criterion as applied to AWO being denied a national funeral. In the name of fair play as it has been written and in accordance with the Golden Rule : which is common to many of the world's religions, as in this song, that "You must do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
A humorous rendition of this understanding is what Dick Gregory did to that chick – he kissed her as narrated here:
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night.
Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, "We don't serve colored people here." I said, "That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken."
Then these three white boys came up to me and said, "Boy, we're giving you fair warning. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you". So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, "Line up, boys!"[3]
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