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Fifty years ago
Chinua Achebe stunned the world with the novel, Things Fall Apart, a
muscular response to the stereotypical way the world viewed Africa in
her stories. Driven by fierce pride, recoiling from stories that had
turned Africa into a disease-ridden pit of mumbling savages, he set out
to prove the truth in the East African adage: “Until the lions produce
their own historian, the story of the hunt will glorify only the
hunter.”

Achebe was one of
an elite squad of super-bright intellectual leaders out of Africa that
jacked up conventional prejudiced opinion against the wall of the
world’s conscience. I am in awe of ‘Things Fall Apart’. I read it
regularly and I always discover something new and insightful in its
pages each time. I also marvel at the energy and fierce determination
that it took to produce such a masterpiece in a world without word
processors and the wondrous tools of the computer and the Internet.

Achebe’s
generation of writers certainly was seized by a grand vision and in
their books they laid it out often with sweeping imagery and majesty.
That generation’s energy and disciplined sense of purpose is awe
inspiring. Think of what it took to edit Achebe’s manuscript and the
energy it required to publish it overseas. It is impossible to detect
an editing issue in ‘Things Fall Apart’. This is a miracle considering
when, where and how it was written.

Achebe’s
generation also had the heavy burden of entertaining the community in
the absence of the ubiquity of television and the Internet. And they
delivered, writing books that even when bereft of any message or
ideology, simply delighted and entertained. There was coherence and a
consistency in quality and message and it was possible to define and
identify a great generation of African writers.

Fast forward to
today. Sad to say five decades later, the Nigerian publishing industry
is still virtually as inchoate as the environment that drove ‘Things
Fall Apart’ to be published abroad in the 50s. In many ways when you
adjust for all the enormous resources available to today’s publishers,
one could argue that the publishing industry has gotten worse since
then. Sure, there are bright spots, but these are sadly outliers.
Nigerian writers understandably continue to look to the West for relief
from the mediocrity at home. This is a shame; there are many reasons
why things are in near disarray; it is not all the fault of our
publishers: To say for instance that successive Nigerian governments
have been irresponsible is to engage in polite understatement. There is
not a shortage of passionate, talented writers willing to write today’s
story. But the sad quality of the production mirrors the sad quality of
virtually every production from virtually every Nigerian institution.
Art imitates life’s reality.

Many Nigerian
writers are worthy ambassadors and they do good things for Nigeria. The
best of them have been adopted by well funded Western individuals and
institutions. The unintended consequence has been to emphasise the
narcissistic individualism of our best thinkers. Too self-absorbed to
be relevant to Nigeria, they are busy grabbing prizes from the West
while giving Westerners condescending lectures for being avuncular and
patronising towards them. They openly eat the cake offered them and
demand it back.

Given the abysmal
state of today’s Nigeria it seems self indulgent for our writers to be
jetting around the world, lecturing white folks that we are humans
deserving respect. Many Nigerian writers seem obsessed with garnering
lucrative prizes, engaging in gimmicks to enhance book sales, etc. I
call it writing to the smell test of dollars. Short stories are
hurriedly written to order for the enjoyment of white Johns in return
for dollars: “Um, write us a story, fill it with huts, army generals
and peasants. I liked the line in your delectable short story, Things
Rotten in Nigeria “the fish in the egusi had a face! Brilliant!”

Apparently superciliousness is not exclusive to Nigerian writers. I
do love the Caine Prize for African Writing. It has been great for
African literature and I applaud the vision of its founders and
funders. The Sierra Leonean Olufemi Terry is the latest winner of the
prize. After winning, however, he assured the BBC that it was
“unhelpful” to see writers from Africa as a unique category. Hear
Terry: “There is a danger in seeking authenticity in African writing,”
He then hoped that winning the prize would help him get his book
published. This is where I lose it with our writers. Terry knew what
the Caine writing prize is all about. Hello, it is called the Caine
Prize for African Writing, for Heaven’s sakes. Nobody put a gun to his
head to compete for the prize. He wrote a short story to the test of
this particular prize and he won based on his very “African” short
story. He then proceeds to chide the West for calling him an African
writer. Olufemi Terry does not deserve the Caine prize. He should
return the prize.