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By Biko Agozino
When literary theorists talk about the death of the author,
they do not refer to the death of the physical being but to the symbolic death
of the text that the author could no longer keep alive with the addition of new
words, sentences, paragraphs, pages and chapters. The published text becomes
like a cadaver to be dissected by communities of interpretation and decoded either
in line with hegemonic elite perspectives by conservatives, or in agreement
with negotiated decoding by reformists, or bold decoding by revolutionaries in
counter-hegemonic ways.
Thus, the death of the author actually signifies that the
author has attained immortality in the sense that thousands of years to come,
readers will continue to decode what is encoded in those books and continue to
quote that Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo says this or that as if he is still sitting
with us in the Chancery of the Eastern Mandate Union – his home and office that
was open to all without security guards and gate-keepers at all hours of the
day and with generous supply of food and drinks. Arthur is Dead: Long Live
His Body of Works!
Few intellectuals today can lay claim to over 20 books to
their credit and even fewer could do that while also publishing thousands of
other authors that he sometimes commissioned for his own publishing house. To
do all that while being a leading activist, philanthropist, and mentor to
younger scholars but without any offer of research grants or professorship by
any university in the decidedly anti-intellectual country lusting after filthy
lucre is nothing but heroic. Thousands of years to come, we may forget who was
the richest Igbo person at the time of the passing of Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo
but I bet that the world will keep rediscovering his brave intellectual and
moral leadership especially if professors encourage their doctoral students to
subject his immense contributions to critical appraisal in their dissertations
instead of parroting irrelevant Eurocentric jargon as the privileged
theoretical perspectives for explaining African realities.
When I visited his home on January 3rd 2020 with
my High School teacher who mentored me on study skills and who also wrote for
the publisher, a submission to the Justice Oputa Commission on Human Rights Violations
in Nigeria, we sat outside his Chancery residence and started a seminar on
political philosophy. My mentor said that he did not like democracy and would
prefer a strong ruler who got things done well. Arthur lighted up and glanced at
me. I smiled and said that Churchill also observed that democracy was the worst
system of government, except for all the other alternatives. Plato and
Aristotle also rejected democracy as mob rule and preferred the philosopher king
or the aristocracy, respectively. That was probably why an Oxford educated
theologian, C.K. Meek, was dispatched as a colonial anthropologist in 1930 to
figure out why Igbo women declared war on colonialism. In his ‘intelligence
report’ on Igbo Law, Meek said that
the Igbo were ‘politically backward and undeveloped ‘because they were headless
or acephalous societies and so could not be subjected to indirect rule like
their more ‘advanced’ neighbors who had natural rulers.
Although Meek recommended direct rule under the British District
Commissioners for the democratic Igbo, another Oxford anthropologist Margery Perham
advised the military dictatorship in 1970 that what made the Igbo rebellious enough
to secede (after being subjected to inhumane pogroms and genocide) was because
they had no chiefs and were supposedly jealous of their more advanced neighbors
with chiefs. To make the Igbo easier to control, the military dictatorship was
advised to impose chiefs on them and this was decreed by General Obasanjo in
1976. I concluded that the Igbo should defend their democratic philosophy which
says that all heads are equal and that the Igbo know no king because that is
the philosophy of government promised by the republican constitution of Nigeria
with no role for traditional rulers. In defense of democracy, those traditional
rulers should have been abolished and replaced with town mayors and city
councils who would be elected on fixed terms for more accountability. Arthur
loved the exchange and told us that he was feeling a lot better with the fresh
air before he asked us to help him back to his room upstairs.
His sister called me to inform me that her ‘father’ chose
the beginning of Black History Month, February 1, to journey to the land of the
ancestors with the assurance that his body of work will live on after him. Being
in the presence of Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo always felt like having a front row
seat in the performance of living history. I visited him in December and twice
in January, the last being in hospital on January 8th where he
looked as if he was recovering. It was a shock to learn that he was gone to the
next world but the sense of shock quickly gave way to the celebration of his
immense achievements as a scholar-activist with enduring contributions to
social thought, pro-democracy activism, and institution-building.
In January 2016, I conducted an interview with him about his
celebrated Appeal Court case that struck down and deleted the clause of sedition
from the Nigerian Criminal Code as being in conflict with the Presidential
Constitution which provides for freedom of expression. If that court victory
was his only contribution to the advancement of human freedom, it was enough to
guarantee his eminence as a historical leader. But he went much farther than
winning the court case. Before that case, he had already established himself as
a conscience of the nation by writing timely books after books to challenge
every dictatorial regime in the country and that was how a civilian
administration arrested him and jailed him for a critical book on how his
home state was being governed, offering him the chance to make history on
appeal. Beyond writing his own books, he established a leading indigenous
publishing house to provide the opportunity for thousands of African authors to
be published at home. He still went beyond that to become a national leader of
a pro-democracy movement, NADECO, that challenged the annulment of the Abiola
Presidential election victory in 1993 and thereby earned himself more stints in
detention. He went on to found a political organization to advocate for the
Eastern region that remained neglected by successive regimes decades after the
Nigeria-Biafra war.
After interviewing him in 2016 on his historic victory
against sedition laws, he gave me a present of 20 books that he had written. I
told him that I would write a book about all his books and he promised me that
when I wrote it he would publish it. I wrote the book within two months and he
published it instantly in 2016 as Critical,
Creative and Centered Scholar-Activism: The Fourth Dimensionalism of Agwuncha
Arthur Nwankwo. In the book, I summarized and critiqued all his books, fiction
and non-fiction. This approach differs from previous reviews about his work
that mostly praised his genius without much criticism and they left out his
creative writings whereas I took a critical approach and also covered his
creative works. As I was writing, he was sending me more photocopies of more
books to add to the review. I am sure that when his family goes through his
papers, they will discover even more manuscripts that are yet to be published.
When I visited his younger brother, Dr. Ejiofor Benjack
Nwankwo, who is now the Managing Director of the now struggling Fourth
Dimension Publishing Co, one of the books he gave me in January 2020 was the
2018 fresh publication of his elder brother, Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo – Nigeria and Her Path to Doom. I was
hoping to review this book, maybe the planned review
essay would be an addition as a chapter to my earlier book about his work, in
case a second edition with better copy editing was forthcoming. That review essay
may wait but I am now struck by the sense of foreboding by the author who
opened the book with the prophetic announcement as follows:
‘This little book is motivated by the fact that I have
become an elder statesman; a man in the twilight of his career as well as
earthly existence and as is our custom, an elder does not stay in the house and
watch the she-goat deliver in her tethers.’ With that proverb, he went on to
outline the broad history of how Nigeria was established on a faulty trajectory
that would lead to ruin and conclude with a critical appraisal of the Buhari
administration and a recommendation for restructuring as the solution to the
problems he identified. Personally, I hope that the restructuring will include
the democratic option of the United Republic of African States, one of the
points that I made earlier in my book about his body of works.
President Buhari and other politicians were quick to offer
praise for Nwankwo when his death was announced but I doubt if they have
bothered to read his living books. Buhari reportedly recognized Nwankwo as a
national leader of NADECO and praised him for supporting the handshake across
the Niger. The administration or his well-wishers should endow a research center and professorship in his name to encourage students to read his books and learn from the timely
analysis and warning of how to avert the doom that is predictably looming before
the people.
I thank the author for touching me personally and rubbing
off on me a bit of his leadership gifts. I wish Nwankwo well on his journey
to get some rest in the land of the ancestors before he returns with his fellow
intellectuals, especially those of the Igbo School – Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chinua Achebe, Mokwugo Okoye,
Victor Nwankwo, Hebert Ekwe-Ekwe, Adiele Afigbo, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta,
Chike Obi, Chris Okigbo, Onwuka Dike, Ikenna Nzimiro, Chikezie Uchendu, and
many others - to continue the struggle for democracy and social justice
throughout Africa. To the family, I say; cherish the memories and celebrate the
gift of an avatar that you gave to the world. His name, Agwuncha, means infinity and his works will live forever and ever.
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