A Man of the People (1966)
by Chinua Achebe
Heinemann Publishers, 149pp
This book is unavailable in the Penguin Modern Classics range
Chinua Achebe’s 1966 novella, A Man of the People, was selected by Anthony Burgess as one of the best novels in English since 1939. So reading this work one comes with high expectations. It is present day (1966) in an unnamed African nation and a well educated man is about to meet the countries leader, Chief the Honourable M. A. Nanga M.P., or M. A. Minus Opportunity as he is sometimes known. Our hero Odili Samalu is ambitious, and as his life becomes entwined with Nanga’s, his sense of ambition inflates.
Upon its release the Nigerian poet and playwright John Pepper Clark declared “Chinua, I know you are a prophet. Everything in this book has happened except a military coup!” Later that year, Nigerian Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu seized control of the northern region of the country as part of a larger coup attempt.
Reading Achebe’s political satire on the same day as the Zimbabwean elections were internationally called a disgrace was an odd convergence of fiction and reality and a prescient reminder that Achebe is a writer with a keen socio-political awareness and that his involvement with Nigerian politics at the time would have placed him in a position to witness the corruption and scandal that can more some African politics.
A Man of the People contains two firsts for Achebe as a novelist: this is the first time he attempts comedy and satire – much of the doom and portent of Things Fall Apart has now gone – and this is also the first time he has chosen to write in the first person. This form of narration works well, placing us directly in Odili’s head, writing after the events of the novel have transpired – so we know from the outset that he cannot win the election race in which he places himself. But the build-up to it still retains much tension, and the bloody dénouement even manages to shock with its sudden, unexpected deaths.
But Achebe is as interested in telling this dramatic (albeit comic) story as he is in exploring the deeper questions of how such deeply repellent men such as Nanga can remain in power. In an early sequence of the novel, when Odili meets Nanga again for the first time in decades and from where he secures his first job with the leader, Nanga is wowing the crowds, leading Odili to muse:
“Somehow I found myself admiring the man for his lack of modesty. For what is modesty but inverted pride? We all think we are first-class people. Modesty forbids us from saying so ourselves though, presumably, not from wanting to hear it from others. Perhaps it was their impatience with this kind of hypocrisy that made men like Nanga successful politicians while starry-eyed idealists strove vaingloriously to bring into politics niceties and delicate refinements that belong elsewhere.” (P.11)
Odili, at the start of the novella, is one of those starry-eyed idealists:
“As I stood in one corner of that vast tumult waiting for the arrival of the minister I felt intense bitterness welling up in my mouth: Here were silly, ignorant villagers dancing themselves lame and waiting to blow off their gunpowder in honour of one of those who had started the country off down the slopes of inflation.” (P.2)
Odili is one of those men that sit at home feeling he knows how things could be improved, if only he had the chance. Nanga gives him that chance. Knowing and now seeing firsthand how Nanga’s government is betraying the common man, Odili and his friends strive to do something about it:
“That first night I not only heard of a new political party about to be born but got myself enrolled as a foundation member. Max and some of his friends having watched with deepening disillusion the use to which our hard-won freedom was being put by corrupt, mediocre politicians had decided to come together and launch the Common People’s Convention.” (P.77)
Only as we know and they know, the enterprise is doomed to failure. The subsequent reprisals launched by Nanga leave one in no doubt that the country is corrupt, where everybody is on the make, and that where there is no overall law – just tribal groupings – that the corrupt will always win. Only Achebe has one final twist of the knife, and to spoil that would be wrong.
It is interesting to compare this book with Achebe’s more famous works. In No Longer at Ease, Achebe’s only other contemporary novel (at this stage in his career – another, Anthills of the Savannah, would follow in 1987), we see a Lagos that is still an African city in thrall to Western ways. The unnamed country of this novel is almost devoid of white men, and though the political figures in this work have all had a British education, though are not keen to retain those Western ideals. The country in this novel is one the white men have clearly abandoned – as was done all over Africa in reality – so that tin-pot dictators such as Nanga can come to power and be overthrown by another power hungry figure indecently quickly. There is no sense of permanence here, no sense of history of tradition. In Things Fall Apart we saw a culture whose history was ingrained in the very skin of its people. In A Man of the People, history has no relevance, and the mistakes are destined to be repeated.
Achebe’s novel is a deeply satirical one, in tune with modern African politics that retains much of the resonance it must have had for a 1960s audience as it does to us, forty years later.
