By PRISCA SAM DURU

THE demise of the great African writer known as the Eagle on Iroko Tree, late Professor Chinualumogu Achebe, whose transition occurred on 21st March 2013, was one death that shook the foundation of the global art community.

The Ogidi, Anambra State born literary icon and acclaimed father of African literature, most renowned for his best seller, “Things Fall Apart”  passed on at 82 in the United States where he was until his death, a University Professor.
Prof. Achebe’s classic novel “Things Fall Apart”, published in 1958, is considered the most widely read book in modern African Literature, with over 12 million copies sold and has been translated to over 50 languages worldwide.

Many of his other novels, including Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, Anthills of the Savannah, and A man of the People, were equally influential.
He also played a major role during the Nigeria Civil War where he joined the Biafran Government as an ambassador, an experience which largely influenced his last work, entitled “There was a Country: A personal History of Biafra”
“There Was a Country”, is an autobiography on his experiences and views of the civil war.

The book turned out the most criticised of his writings especially by Nigerians, with many condemning him for what they termed writing an unbalanced account of the war since according to the critics, he wrote more as a Biafran, than as a Nigerian.

Prof. Achebe was a consistent critic of various military dictators that ruled Nigeria and lent an angry  voice against bad governance in the country. Twice, he rejected national honour, citing the deplorable political situations in the country, particularly in his home state Anambra, as reason.

Few months after the death of Achebe, precisely September 21st, Ghanaian poet and a one time  diplomat, Professor Kofi Awoonor died in the Kenyan Westgate mall terrorist attack, at the age of 78 . He died  while attending the Storymoja Hay literary festival, a celebration of Pan-African writing and storytelling.

Awoonor, reputed as Ghana’s greatest contemporary poet, was a member of the literary generation that came of age in the fifties and sixties. Like Achebe, Awonoor also gave “voice to a culture under rapid and destructive change from colonial influences”. His novel This Earth, My Brother and Poetry titled Songs Of Sorrow, remain evergreen.
Former Vanguard’s Arts Editor, Mcphillips Nwachukwu’s death at Golden Cross hospital, Festac Town, Lagos, occurred while people still mourned Prof. Awonoor.

His passage on Sunday, September 29, 2013 at age 47 after he returned from South Africa two days earlier, where he had gone for medical check up, fed the art community, with a most shocking news.
Until his death, Nwachukwu was a poet, writer and frontline journalist and was the Arts Editor of Vanguard Newspapers. He was the author of the collection of poetry entitled, “So Long A Night” and was pursuing his doctorate degree in the area of Oral Literature, at the University of Lagos, Akoka, before death called.

Fatai Olayiwola Olagunju, popularly known as Fatai Rolling Dollars, a highlife musician also died in Lagos at 85. Rolling Dollars was reportedly on a musical tour of the United States when he took ill and was flown back home where he passed on.
Renowned as one of Nigeria’s godfathers of Juju music, Rolling Dollars, died as the oldest music artiste in the country. With a musical career that spanned decades, the great artiste began his musical career in 1953 and trained many professional musicians, such as Evangelist Ebenezer Obey, late Dr. Orlando Owoh, Bob Aladeniyi and many others.

Until his transition to immortality, Rolling Dollars was endeared to many for his dexterity on the guitar while his carriage of life and energy, even in old age, marveled all who watched him perform.
As the year was rounding up, news of the death of Iyetade Soyinka, daughter  of one of the world’s foremost dramatists and winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature, Wole Soyinka was announced.  Ms. Soyinka, who was born June 6, 1965, died at the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital where she was being treated for an undisclosed ailment.

The death which was disclosed in a statement signed by Jahman Anikulapo, an aide to Mr. Soyinka, noted that the late Iyetade Soyinka was a student at the Staff School and Queens School, Ibadan before she studied Medicine at the University of Ibadan.