Fashioning out new horizons for corruption-free Africa

IN the timeless novel, “No Longer at Ease”, Chinua Achebe explores the nature of hope in the dawn of a newly independent Africa struggling to wean itself from colonial clutches.

The desire to fashion out new possibilities, however, is impeded by corrupt tendencies and colonial inclinations epitomised in Western forms of education and Christianity, which Africans proudly consumed.

The protagonist, Obi Okonkwo, who is 26 years old, is an interesting character.

Born to Christian African parents, his tragedy is that he has been taught that whatever is prescribed by traditional customs of his people should be shunned as the quintessence of evil.

Nonetheless, his parents remain selectively ensconced in the same beliefs they purport to spurn; hypocritically preferring to support those customs which justify what they want.

Therefore, as a remnant of a dysfunctional and disengaged African family, which seeks solutions from spirituality, Obi struggles to locate himself in the national biography.

At one point he is asked to tell a folktale in class, and he stutters, stammers and weeps, as none comes out of his mouth, much to the delight of his classmates, who burst into delirious laughter.

His failure to tell a folk-story signifies the dearth of African values. His father forbids his mother, who is a good storyteller, to impart anything to their children through folklore, maintaining that they are Christians.

There is hope, however, when Obi’s mother, Hannah Okonkwo, defies her husband, and tells him a folk-story, which he thrillingly relates in class.

Obi is intelligent and always tops his class, which makes him win the hearts of many. Subsequently, he gets a scholarship, courtesy of the Progressive Union of Umuofia, which raises £800 for him to study law in England.

There is much hope for Nigeria, for Umuofia his hometown, and for Africa in general, as Western education is considered a passport into the European terrain through “European posts”.

Surprisingly, Obi decides to study English, instead of law, as his people back home hoped.

A close analysis of Obi’s character, and the way he betrays his family, community and nation reveals that his tragedy stems from both nature and nurture.

Nature places a burden on him as an African, despite his struggle to locate himself in the discourse shaping his people’s belief that “an only palm-tree does not get lost in the fire”. Naturally, he is still expected to be “the big tree” on whose back “smaller trees sit to reach the sun”.

His father, Isaac Okonkwo’s, conversion to

Christianity against his father’s will, depicted in “Things Fall Apart” (1958), plays havoc on Obi’s well-being as he has to live his life through the shadow of his Catechism.

As nature would have it, his parents bore four daughters in a row, which makes them anxious and crestfallen. Thus, when Obi was born, they named him Obiajulu — “the mind at last is at rest”.

In most patriarchal societies, a boy child is said to be the heir to his father’s estate, and the future head of the family. This places a burden on Obi as the only boy child in his family.

Through flashbacks, constant time shifts and fracturing of the plot, Achebe adeptly explores the natural traits that shape Obi’s character, which he has no control over. His procrastinating nature and alienation can be examined through his father’s foibles.

Unlike his grandfather, Okonkwo, in “Things Fall Apart”, who is violently inclined to take action without putting much thought into the aftermath, Obi, like Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, procrastinates, such that by the time he decides to act he would have been overtaken by events.

It is largely his idealism which spells doom for him.

Obi’s decision to study English, instead of law, to defend his oppressed people who starved themselves to raise money for his studies abroad, is as deceitful as it is individualistic. By studying English, he sides with the imperialist against his people, whose way of life is enshrined in the folktales of their existence and rich proverbs.

An only boy child, Obi is nurtured to believe in the individualistic nature of man; his overreliance on spirituality, and his religious intolerance.

When he later becomes a senior civil servant, Obi comes face-to-face with the ugly nature of corruption, which at first, he believes to be a result of “the so-called experienced men at the top”.

To him, those who overstay in control of the civil service are responsible for the collapse of the civil society, because corruption would have become a part of them, having risen to the top of power echelons on the strength of backhanders and not intellect or skill.

The protagonist abhors corruption in a country where it is in vogue, which earns him insults from many corners. Most of his countrymen believe that for one to get a favour, one naturally has to offer a bribe, even where it may not be necessary.

As the secretary to the Scholarship Board, Obi remains steadfast in his resolution that he would never accept anything; money, sex or other backhanders, from anyone, kin and kith included, to give favours or preference. Hence, he becomes the beacon of hope for a new dispensation.

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