Honours –whether national or international are meant as appreciation of uncommon contribution to a nation or the international community shown to those who in their own callings have measured up to the high standards set for that purpose. In more martial times when warfare was the order, soldiers who returned from successful campaigns were bestowed with honours that befit their exploits in the war front. In ancient Rome, Julius Caesar came back from military campaigns in Europe, Asia and Africa to become the most important man in Rome, with a seat in the Roman senate and narrowly missed becoming an Emperor through assassination. The military all over the world have continued with the tradition by honouring those who exhibit gallantry in war with medals of achievements. In an age when warring has fallen in to disfavor and seen to be a barbarous preoccupation, less belligerent callings with salutary impact on society have been given recognition. In this the Swedish Nobel Prizes awarded in a wide range of intellectual and academic contributions and its Norwegian counterpart for peace are cases in point.
The Nobel Committee’s yearly awards are attempts at rewarding many years of painstaking and rigorous effort that have resulted into breaking new grounds in a particular area of study with the possibility of impacting positively on humanity. Over the years, the issue of national honours in Nigeria has become a subject of controversy, as an otherwise important bid to reward excellence and rigour has suffered degradation due to lack of proper definition and conceptualization and as a result the honours lists have continued to look like one for all comers, as every year the list is packed full of politicians and sundry elements known for little else other than the fact that they are related to people in high places.
This should worry every discerning and patriotic Nigerian. And one person that is certainly bothered is Professor Chinua Achebe who has had cause to refuse for the second time now Nigeria offers of national honours made to him. Now, the literary icon is not one who would reach a decision to reject a call to national recognition without due consideration. He surely must have given his decision a whole lot of thought before making it public. Some may wonder why a person of the caliber of Professor Achebe should allow his haughty disposition to overcome him by rejecting his country’s bid to acknowledge his immense contribution. Being our own Achebe they must have reasoned he should have been able to put everything on balance, bend over backward, as it were, and accept the honour.
Well, Professor Chinua Achebe, even for those who have not read his books are aware that he has become a national treasure of immense esteem. A status he achieved by dint of his literary and intellectual outputs whose immense global cultural impact far outweigh the paucity of his repertoire. He sits on the pantheon of African intellectuals with a few other giants who have propagated the cultural essence of the continent to the world to show its complexities and richness. In return he has himself gained world prominence and renown as he is sought after by many world class seats of learning to drink from his bountiful insights. Professor Achebe’s deep empathy for his country could be gleaned from his the Trouble with Nigeria, a small book in which he explains what he called the Nigerian malaise and how to surmount it.
Many of the issues he railed against are still very much with us almost some two decades after its publication. Some would say they have even worsened. We will all do well to go and read the book again because therein lies the great man’s reasons for rejecting the national honours. It is his own way of saying a nation adjudged to be performing far below the league of countries it started off with, whose leaders and people would rather go to other countries to help themselves to the sweat of other people’s creativity and hard work has no business awarding themselves honours with such nauseating frequency as to suggest that the realization has not even dawned on them. An example would suffice to illustrate this point.
Many years ago Nigeria used to be the Mecca of many Africans searching for reputable universities to study, and earn a degree to launch them in to life. Not anymore, indeed the role has been reversed in a telling manner. It was recently revealed by no less a person than the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi that Nigerian students studying in Ghana paid some N155 billion as tuition in various Ghanaian universities. According to the report there are some 71000 Nigerians pursuing various courses in that country. Add this number to those who have chosen to go to other places and the grim picture of how much Nigeria loses for refusing to put its tertiary institutions in the shape they were in the 1970s and early 1980s before the decline set in becomes clear.
Isn’t it then odd, to say the least, for a country whose citizens repudiate its learning institutions to go elsewhere to seek knowledge whose quality should have been freely available here, to mount an elaborate ceremony to award national honours? Really, what has been said for learning institutions go for many other areas—the decay is all over. What then are the awards for, if one may ask? Achebe’s rejection therefore is not difficult to fathom: he is saying raise the standard of governance from its pedestrian level it is at presently in order to build strong social and economic institutions that compare with what are available elsewhere, good enough to attract foreigners. Until that is done, then all the show for the awards is just mere ceremony and nothing else.
