That’s how it gets out these days, the final goodbye from legends, a simple tweet, a two hundred-word post or a few lines of breaking news online. But the news gets out anyway. So it did when renowned Nigerian author Elechi Amadi recently died at age 82 in a hospital in Port Harcourt.
Professor Sam Ukala, 68, Nigerian playwright and winner of the 2014 NLNG (Nigeria Liquefied natural Gas) Prize for Literature learnt about Amadi’s death on social media and in a sober voice describes his first meeting with the literary icon.
It was in 1991 at Akure, where they stayed in the same hotel during a gathering of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). “I was talking with him with due reverence and when I mentioned my name, he said ‘I have read your work. You are an author like me,’” Ukala recalls. “He was a perfect gentleman to interact with.”
Ukala describes Amadi as one of the naturally endowed creative writers from Nigeria. “If you have read ‘The Concubine’, you will know that Amadi is next to Chinua Achebe, as far as the art of writing a novel is concerned. It’s very interesting and exciting. He wrote as if writing is his calling and his career. He was a soldier. It’s a great loss to this country. But he was very old, although death does not come by age. Maybe because the man is old people will say it’s not unexpected. There are people you will want to live much longer because of their contribution to the society. He is one of them. But can we question God? So we wish him eternal rest.”
There will be tears, and quite some from the young generation writers who still have memories of ‘that story I can never forget.’ Lagos-based poet Jumoke Verissimo, author of the collection, ‘I Am Memory’ and more recently, ‘The Birth of Illusion’ is one of these. She has read two of Amadi’s books, ‘The Concubine’ and ‘Sunset in Biafra’ and describes him as “a significant writer whose book marked a foundation to Nigerian prose for many of us.”
It’s been years since Richard Ali, co-owner of Parressia Publishers, published his debut novel, ‘City of Memories’. He’s one among those responsible for making the voices of African writers be heard. So, with reason, that book, ‘The Concubine’, is what quickly comes to his mind now that Amadi is gone.
“I was absolutely devastated. It was unexpected, but at the same time, you can’t say you don’t expect an old man to die. Many people talk about contemporary African writing,” Ali says, explaining how Amadi’s work made an impact on African literature.
The location was Owerri, 2007 and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim — author of the novel ‘Season of Crimson Blossoms’ and short story collection, ‘Whispering Trees’ — was still a scrawny, budding writer trying to build a name for himself, when he saw Amadi for the first time at the first convention of ANA he attended.
“He was imposing, standing tall like the reputation he had built in my mind. He was being mobbed by people, many going up to shake his hands, to pose for photos with him. I bid my time and when I saw an opening, walked up to him and politely asked for a photo,” Ibrahim narrates.
Amadi looked at Ibrahim. “Sorry, I don’t take photos with people I don’t know.” Ibrahim left, his pride hanging like a wet flag.
But the temple of adoration Elechi Amadi had built in Ibrahim’s mind, since he first read ‘The Concubine’ as a teenager in Jos, could not be washed away by a snub like that. The book, like the veneration he had for the man, was endured, nestling deep in his heart where it couldn’t be reached by a bashed pride. Ekweueme and Ihouma were not just names on the pages, they were people who thrived in the fictional world Amadi had cultivated in Ibrahim’s mind.
“So I made excuses for the snub. He was tired, I mean, he had been grinning into cameras with people who he had never met all day long, he was old, he just needed to rest. But the biggest excuse I made for him was that he was Elechi Amadi, he had earned the right to. And that was enough,” Ibrahim added.
Ibrahim saw him several times after that, and even though he saw by his (Amadi) interactions with other admirers, that he was by no means a snub, he was content to admire him from a distance. “I bought copies of his books to be sure there is always an Elechi Amadi on my shelf, or to gift them to friends, to extend the world he had created into other minds.”
When Amadi launched his science fiction novel in 2013, Ibrahim was curious to see what the man who earned praise for writing about pre-colonial Africa, who was almost 80, will write about science fiction. He bought the book but a friend whose curiosity was greater than his borrowed before he could read and he has never seen the book since.
“He may not know me, but I consoled myself that he got to know my writing before he died. He was one of the judges for the Africa 39 project and when my name popped up on that list, I thought well, Elechi Amadi read my story and probably liked it. And that was enough for me,” Ibrahim concludes.
Achebe is late and now Amadi, and Nigerians may just be wondering what the literary scene in Nigeria will be like in the near future. Will other writers impact the continent and indeed the world the way they did?
Amadi was most famous for his novel ‘The Concubine’, originally published in 1966 and still a recommended text in schools across Africa, a tale that pictured the culture of marriage and forbidden traditions. His other books include ‘Sunset in Biafra, The Slave and the Road to Ibadan, and Peppersoup.
A physics and mathematics graduate of the University of Ibadan, he also joined the Nigerian army and continued serving in it during the Civil War, despite coming from the Niger Delta, which was part of the breakaway state of Biafra.
