RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Chinua Achebe At 82: "We Remember Differently" By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I thought Adichie's tribute to Achebe was well done. She has shown to many, how to honor an idol while respectfully disagreeing with them. Adichie was courageous and dispassionate as one would expect an objective stakeholder to be. Her tribute to Achebe was distilled, not through an ethnic prism but a critically objective one.
A serious problem with unfettered loyalty and submission to ethnicity is the inability to see things as they really are, separate fact from interest and preference, reason from emotion, and most of all speak to truth. Because answers are put together before questions are asked, questions are shaped by answers.
That Britain may have cobbled different ethnicities into Nigeria for her imperial benefit is no reason for Nigerians not to try to actualize the potential that what might seem to be an imperfect construct (Nigeria) continues to promise. Politics in Nigeria has been poisoned by ethnicity. Religion in some parts of Nigeria has also been poisoned by ethnicity. The sooner Nigerians realize that the real big picture is national citizenship and development and not ethnic citizenship and separation, and always make their political choices in this realization, the more economic, political, and social progress shareable by all will be possible.

oa

-----Original Message-----
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Cornelius Hamelberg
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 4:59 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Chinua Achebe At 82: "We Remember Differently" By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Toyin,

Well I never!

What are you talking about? Even my great teacher Abiola Irele wouldn't say that. And if you said that about our Aminatta Forna, I'd sue you and still hope that someone doesn't put a curse on you so that you don't wind up in some cannibal's cooking pot where they could still make a delicious dish out of you and invite me & Chidi for cam chop. Dis na serious talk.

I know that your Mid-West / Bendel was hard hit at the beginning of the war but you can't hold a grudge towards the eternal Igbo nation, just because of that.

I don't find anything shallow in or about Chimamanda Adichie's latest essay - in fact I think her sweep is classic, a really forward- looking Nigeria literary chic and if we could only take even just this my favourite paragraph to heart we'd begin to see the glimmerings of a greater nation:

"Ethnicity has become, in Nigeria, more political than cultural, less about philosophy and customs and values and more about which bank is a Yoruba or Hausa or Igbo bank, which political office is held by which ethnicity, which revered leader must be turned into a flawless saint.
We cannot deny ethnicity. It matters. But our ethnic and national identities should not be spoken of as though they were mutually exclusive; I am as much Igbo as I am Nigerian. I have hope in the future of Nigeria, mostly because we have not yet made a real, conscious effort to begin creating a nation (We could start, for example, by not merely teaching Maths and English in primary schools, but also teaching idealism and citizenship.) "

https://www.google.com/search?q=Aminatta+Forna&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a


On Nov 29, 6:52 pm, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This essay is largely shallow on the issues discussed.
>
> It demonstrates little  awareness of the range of responses to the
> questions at stake that need to be tackled if one is to assert a position.
>
> It is largely a self serving presentation buttressing  a shallow
> school of the self described Igbo/Biafran side, a school whose claim
> to be representative of Igbos and Biafra needs to be questioned.
>
> If challenged, I can point out in detail the shallow self serving
> character of the essay.
>
> toyin
>
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 5:50 PM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tva...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Sahara Reporters <sahararepor...@yahoo.com>
> > Date: Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 5:16 PM
> > Subject: NigerianID | Chinua Achebe At 82: "We Remember Differently"
> > By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
>
> > **
>
> > I have met Chinua Achebe only three times. The first, at the
> > National Arts Club in Manhattan, I joined the admiring circle around
> > him. A gentle-faced man in a wheelchair.
>
> > READ MORE.
> >http://bit.ly/URlby4
>
> >  __._,_.___
> >   Reply via web
> > post<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NigerianID/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJyZmF0
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> > %20Ngozi%20Adichie>  Reply to group
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