Chinua Achebe Remains to Be Interred Today

The body of revered writer Chinua Achebe arrived Wednesday in his home state in Nigeria, where hundreds of admirers packed a stadium to pay tribute a day ahead of his funeral today.

A wooden coffin transported the body of Achebe, the celebrated author of the novel Things Fall Apart, who died in March in the US at age 82. His coffin was taken on Wednesday to a stadium in Awka in Anambra State in Nigeria’s southeast, where some 2,000 people gathered and the Anglican archbishop of Anambra prayed over his body.

Photo|AP

Some mourners dressed in shirts with his picture emblazoned on them, while local chiefs wore traditional red caps common among Igbos, Achebe’s ethnic group. His body had initially arrived back in Nigeria in the capital Abuja on Tuesday.

Prof Achebe is to be buried today in his native town of Ogidi in Anambra State in a ceremony expected to draw fellow writers, local officials, foreign dignitaries and the Archbishop of Canterbury, according to local media.

Achebe is widely regarded as the founding father of African literature in English.

[Africa Review]