Achebe’s A MAN OF THE PEOPLE and the lost voices of African literature
A man of the people is the fourth novel of, Chinua Achebe. It is a political satire set in a fictional country. It was a story which centered on a charming, charismatic, handsome, but corrupt minister, Honourable . M.P. Nanga as narrated by a school teacher, Odili Samalu Who himself had been taught by Honourable Nanga 15 years earlier when the minister was a teacher. They both reunite when the (honourable) minister returns to Anata grammar school where he had taught more than a decade ago to a friendly hangout with the people to get in good terms with them that will serve a good future purpose. The visit was one of those visits where there was no election at hand, mainly to consolidate electorate friendliness.
Certain things struck me about this novel. The first is the style in which it was written. In Achebe’s novels, he widely employed the use of oral tradition, A man of the people was no exception of this rule. However, beyond the use of oral tradition, there was a little bit of loose in the mastery of English in the mastery and frequent use of pidgin to properly suit the character’s voice who narrated the story. This was so that when I read the novel, it became more of the fact that I was reading a story narrated by Odili Samalu — the voice behind the story was totally given over to him. The second is that with Achebe’s earlier novels, Things fall apart, No longer at ease and Arrow of God, one gets the notion clearly that the man was as a novelist, a teacher, a sage, a philosopher, an intellectual among many other things but in A man of the people, he establishes himself as a satirist. I wouldn’t have used the word satirist because the novel didn’t really come off as a fully formed satire. But what do you call a novel that tells a bitter truth in a funny way? Or a novel where the narrator whose mother had died giving birth to him, narrated about how he had grown to observe the proverb that was used to console women who lost their children at childbirth that said “it is better for water to be spilled than for the pot to be broken” and said that he realised he should have died for his mother to live. Or a story where a corrupt minister had to be projected as A man of the people in order to make sense of the story?
The narrator character was a very funny, brilliant, idealistic young man who had gone through school by scholarship. And had only been a school teacher because of the pride that prevented him from doing the much needed boot licking that would have helped him get a better job. And he ends up in the position from where this story happened to him. He told every event in the story from the tragic ones to the emotional ones in a lighthearted way. He seemed to have a funny opinion about everybody that could as well differ from that of the reader. He also did not hide to the reader his own vanity and jealousies; a characteristic of characters created by mature novelists. Also, there was the fact that he turned out to be cunning in a few things in which he could have been straightforward only to be carried away by the spur of the moment. The first time, he had appeared so to Mr. Nwege, the owner of the school where he taught . This was because he had acted very contrary to popular opinion during the minister’s visit.
The story was written no doubt with Nigerian politicians and the state of the country at that time in mind. There is one thing the narrator points out about the Politicians like Nanga which always gives them an edge in elections. This is an excerpt in the beginning of chapter seven:
Chief Nanga was a born politician; he could get away with almost anything he said or did. And so long as people are swayed by their hearts and heads, the Chief Nangas of this world will continue to get away with anything. He had a rare gift of making people feel even while he was saying harsh things to them — that there was not a drop of ill will in his entire frame. (P.70)
This is no wonder why he himself had been carried away by the Chief’s charm even though he knew fully well his true nature. He had also earlier narrated the dubious means through which the Cabinet in which the minister belonged came to power though dubious means in the first chapter of the novel. And one thing was clear that things got worse afterwards in the country because the latter crop were less educated and less qualified than that which they replaced.
One of the things that endears one to this book is the fact that many things which took place in the novel did come to pass after the novel was written. For example, the novel ended with a coup and a coup had taken place in 1966 in Nigeria, the same year which the novel was published. The bad leadership is on another level of occurrence and reoccurrence and the dishonest rigmaroles of politicians with which they swayed the heart of the electorates is still a common feature in Nigeria today. Because looking at it, before our very eyes, interim politicians who have failed to live up to the billing have been voted to return for office because they have gone around sweet talking and sharing meagre dues to anybody who have voters card.
It is also not out of place to note that the kind of things Achebe did with this novel is what contemporary Nigerian writers are failing to do with their writings. These days, there are hardly writers who are speaking against the status quo of things. There is hardly any contemporary work of literature that is as much a voice against the despicable politics in the country. One would not be asking too much if he asked what has happened to our intellectuals who are supposed to be the conscience of the nation. Perhaps, this is the kind of novel the country has to read again to reexamine ourselves.
In all of Achebe’s novels which I have read in the past, there is always a tragic hero. This novel too is not an exception. It is in lieu of this that I would like to present the excerpt of the wonderful ending of this beautiful novel:
For I honestly believe that in the fat dripping, gummy, eat and let eat regime just ended — a regime which inspired the common saying that one could only be sure of only be sure of what he had put away safely in his gut or, in language ever more suited to the times: you chop, me I chop, palaver finish; a regime which you saw a fellow cursed in the morning for stealing a blind man’s stick and later in the day, mounting the alter in the presence of all the people to whisper into the ear of the chief celebrant — in such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward to shoot your murderer in chest — without asking to be paid.
