Nwando Achebe: The woman and her works

 Nwando Achebe is a professor of History at the Michigan State University, America. The last of Professor Chinua Achebe’s children was in Abuja to present two of her books. Arts & Ideas cornered her for an interview. Could you tell us about your books and the motivation to write them? My two books- ‘Farmers, Traders, […]

 Nwando Achebe is a professor of History at the Michigan State University, America. The last of Professor Chinua Achebe’s children was in Abuja to present two of her books. Arts & Ideas cornered her for an interview.
Could you tell us about your books and the motivation to write them?
My two books- ‘Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland’ and ‘The Female King of Colonial Nigeria’ represent a culmination of over twenty years of research on the Nsukka Igbo. My first book, Farmers, Traders, Warriors and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland’, 1900-1960 explores the politics of gender and the evolution of female power and authority over the first six decades of the twentieth century.
My study expands conventional discourse on women by advancing new ways of analyzing women’s worlds, encouraging especially investigations into non-human forms of female power-goddesses, priestesses, female medicines, female masked spirits etc.-presences which would otherwise be ignored in conventional studies.
It also contributes to knowledge by presenting new ways of analyzing African gender systems, which I argue are for the most part fluid and flexible and allow women to become men and men, women. Hence, categories like, female husband, female son, female father, female king, female warrior and male priestess. About ‘The Female King of Colonial Nigeria,’ in 1918, a woman, Ahebi Ugbabe, was made warrant chief by the British in colonial Nigeria.
This decision would represent a departure from British colonial practice, for they had never before offered a warrant chief position to a Nigerian woman or any indigenous woman from British Africa, for that matter. Ahebi Ugbabe would be the first and last woman to hold this office. But her position as warrant chief had been earned. Presented to her in recognition of past services, Ahebi had worked herself up from the British imposed rank of Headman. Chief Ahebi would eventually be crowned king by an Igala monarch-her third in a series of gendered transformations.
However, these gendered transformations would not be enough for the ambitious and talented Ahebi. In her attempt to achieve ‘full manhood,’ she would invade and violate the ultimate sanctuary of men-the masquerade cult. The masquerade cult in West Africa was constructed as that which separated men from women, and men from ‘full’ men. The book explores the case study of this extraordinary woman, revealing much about the shifting bases of gendered power under British indirect rule and the ways in which Igbo women and men negotiated and shaped the colonial environment.
Why did you decide to focus on the history of Nsukka women?
The book was borne out of a desire to see myself in history. I was incensed by the ever-present negative image of African women in our so-called African history texts. I asked myself: Could I possibly be the “beast of burden” that Western historians were writing about? Why was my interpretation of the historical evidence used by these scholars so different from their own analysis?
Why were African women not being presented as active players in the making of their cultures and histories? I was eager to present another interpretation, call it rewriting history if you like, to talk back to these scholars and say that African women with all their imperfections were definitely not “beasts of burden” nor women who were sold to the highest bidder for their productive and reproductive labour! I decided to focus on Nsukka women’s history because it represented the familiar, yet different. Nsukka Division boasted a complex and diverse gender dynamic, which allowed women to become kings, and men, priestesses.
How much of your story is in their stories?
A lot. My name is Nwabundo (a child is a shade), Unoalo (the house has settled), Achebe (our family name is actually Anichebe, which means, the goddess of the lands, protect me). Nwando is the short form of Nwabundo, and I am so named because as the youngest child, I am expected to look after and protect my parents in their old age. Unoalo is a name that my parents created, and consequently, I became the butt of many childhood jokes.
It is actually a rather delightful name, which draws on the imagery of well-cooked okro soup (laughter). In the Igbo language, we say that “ofe okro na alo alo.” This means that when okro soup is cooked to perfection, it is rich, balanced, and has the right texture and consistency. “The house has settled” is its literal translation, and indeed our house had settled after I was born. My parents now had two boys and two girls. I am a daughter of two Igbo parents and a sister of three siblings. My father, Chinua Achebe, was a novelist and university professor, and my mother, Christie Achebe, is a Guidance Counselor and university professor as well. My family story provides a glimpse into the history of the Igbo. It vividly recounts and captures a history of interactions, and the resulting outcome of this contact. My grandparents on both sides were first generation Christian converts.
They went to the first ever teachers training college in the then British Nigeria. My mother’s father was a postmaster, and my father’s parents were both schoolteachers. When the British missionaries first came to Ogidi, my father’s great-uncle, Udo Osinyi, a prominent village elder, welcomed them. It was from his compound that the missionaries spread their gospel. Their stay in his home was, however, short lived because no sooner did they move in, did they start singing sad and dreary songs. This upset him that he sent them packing.
My mother tells a fascinating story about her grandfather, a powerful and feared medicine man, renowned in the whole of Awka. His praise name was Oji azu aga, meaning he that walks backwards. As the story goes, Oji azu aga was one of the first people in his village to interact with the British. He even renamed his only son, my grandfather, Chukwukadibia, (the white man’s God is greater and more powerful than all native medicines) as a tribute to the British, their ways and religion.
Why Ahebi?
My mentor and advisor, late Professor Boniface Obichere, plunged me into a nervous state of trepidation every time he would chuckle, ‘No one will grant you a Ph.D. for writing another history of the women’s war.’
The ‘women’s war’ he denounced, was of course, the Igbo women’s war of 1929-that systematically organized rebellion that the women themselves called ‘ogu umunwanyi’ (war of the women), but the colonial government disparagingly dismissed as a women’s riot! It was the war that was in fact responsible for the vast number of colonial reports on Igboland and culture-a war that fuelled an overwhelming British colonial preoccupation with trying to determine for themselves what it was about Igboland and its culture that would encourage Igbo women to behave in so uncouth a manner.
At the time, I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what it was I wanted to write my doctoral dissertation on.
Actually, that is not all together true, because I did know that I wanted to write a history of Igbo women; but which Igbo women and what history? I had no intelligent answer for myself or my advisor. It would take me another few months to be able to give voice to my own rhetorical question-of which women and what Igbo history-and answer it I would, with much confidence.
The answer was, tucked away in the first paragraph of C. K. Meek’s ‘Law and Authority in a Nigerian Tribe.’ Eleven words that introduced me to a nameless king of female persuasion read: ‘The village-group of Ogurte is distinguished by having a female Eze.’ It was this remarkable woman who had transformed herself into a man; that would from that point on, consume many of my waking thoughts. It was this eze on whom my critical biography is based.
What about growing up has influenced you and your work?
I was born in Nigeria and raised in both Nigeria and the United States. I therefore live at the crossroads of two vastly different worlds and cultures. The crossroads in the African system is the meeting point-a meeting point between the world of the humans and the spiritual world.
It is a dangerous and uncertain place because, a person might perish there wrestling with multiple headed spirit or might be lucky and return to her/his people with the boon of prophetic vision. I inhabit that dangerous and uncertain point between two civilizations, one African and the other American. I am therefore, whether I like it or not, neither one nor the other exclusively, but both. These make me who I am and influence what I do.