Monday, February 3, 2020

The Author is Dead: Long Live His Work


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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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