Lest we forget! Professor Chinwe Christie Achebe is 90, by Omoniyi Ibietan
Professor Chinwe Achebe is a scholar through and through, educator and great teacher who left her mark in many citadels of learning, particularly Queens College, Lagos, University of London and University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Not many people know how much this woman has offered humanity and quite charitably. She seems perpetually tied to the strings of her inimitable, iconic husband, Albert Chinualumogu (Chinua) Achebe (sorry, I think he succeeded in getting rid of his British name).
Even the digital culture has done little to ‘help her’. As you tried to get quick facts about her, the moment you add ‘Achebe’ in the search engine, her late husband’s name being more pervasive is dominant in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). No one would dispute Chinua Achebe’s space in the constellation of those who enriched our civilisation and thus, he sits comfortably in the pantheon of our ancestors. His classic, THINGS FALL APART (1958) has been translated into more than 50 languages.
Her son, Chidi Achebe, a physician and phenomenal entrepreneur, recently thanked humanity for celebrating his dad sufficiently but called attention to his mom too as she turned 90.
If Mommy Achebe is hidden, her nature explains it. She reticent, self-effacing, modest and humble. She’s a naturally quiet person, whom by her son’s reckoning, may even ‘cringe at the publicity’ of her birth anniversary. But Dr. Achebe insists, “we must celebrate you mother.”
Her son described her as the “matriarch of of the Chinua Achebe clan, child of God, beautiful in and out, elegance and class personified.”
But she’s certainly more than that. Prof. Chinwe Achebe authored more than 60 publications, besides four books, all signposting values in reputable pedagogic spaces and nudging didactics as a contributor to knowledge production. Her books include two great works on guidance and counselling, the first documenting a theoretical universe of individual guidance and counselling. And of course another book, THE WORLD OF OGBANJE. No one should be surprised at that title. The Yorubas say a leaf that stays so long on a soap turns soapy itself.
Educated at Queens College Lagos and University of London where she studied history and took a graduate degree in education to arm herself with the tools of dialectics of teaching, Prof. Chinwe Achebe guided thousands of people through knowledge at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UMass, Amherst and Bard College, New York.
I join all persons of good conscience globally to celebrate Prof. Chinwe Christie Achebe at 90. God willing, we shall celebrate your centennial.
