Remembering Catherine Acholonu

CHUKS OLUIGBO

It was early in June 2009. I was then Arts reporter for The Statesman, the Imo State government-owned newspaper based in Owerri. Steve Osuji, then managing director, called me to his office that morning and handed me an invitation card. “Chuks, you have to cover this,” he said to me. I studied the information on the card. The event was to hold at the Michael Okpara Square in Enugu. It was the public presentation of her revolutionary book on the origins of the Igbo, They Lived Before Adam: Pre-historic Origins of the Igbo – The Never-Been Ruled, a product of 18 years of intense research under the aegis of The Catherine Acholonu Research Centre (CARC).

Prof Catherine Obianuju Acholonu (1951-2014)

My excitement knew no bounds. I had admired Catherine Acholonu from afar long before then. As an undergraduate student in the English Department of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, I had read some of her poems, ever so deeply engrossed with Igbo mythology. When the book launch brought me face to face with her, I was not disappointed, especially when she mounted the podium to speak on the essence of the book. She was a firebrand intellectual.

When I approached her to introduce myself, she was filled with profound joy that her own people, all the way from Imo State, came to identify with her. I replied that she had my MD, Steve Osuji, to thank for that. She promptly agreed to an interview and, on the sidelines of the launch, granted me a thought-provoking interview that dwelt essentially on the book she had just presented to the reading public and other things she was working on. I also got a chance to speak with the Indian, Ajay Prabhakar, who worked on the research with her.

Back in Owerri, I did what I consider a good report, which was prominently carried by The Statesman, and ran a full-page interview subsequently. That marked the genesis of what would become a vibrant, mutually-beneficial relationship. The Prof, when she read the publication, came to The Statesman premises herself to thank us for a job well done. She met with my MD, and after discussions with him, took up a back page column, called The Catherine Acholonu Column, which appeared every Thursday, where she espoused her theses on Igbo origins.

Thereafter, she became my regular source. In several live interviews and phone chats, she enlightened me on such cultural issues as the annual Ahiajoku Lecture Series organised by the Imo State government, women exclusion in the kolanut ritual in Igboland, and so on. And once I took her up on Feminism. That was when I learnt about her Theory of Motherism, her personal brand of Feminism. “There is something women have that men do not have,” she told me in that interview, by way of further explanation. “It is called ‘milk of human kindness’. This milk is the only thing that makes a human being compassionate. Nigeria needs this milk of human kindness now to save its people from leaders who milk them like cows from one generation to the next. Women leaders are more prone to feed their followers with milk, while men will, more often than not, milk their followers by depriving them of the means of survival.”

I last spoke with Prof Acholonu in 2012. I lost her contact shortly after that. However, not long ago I found her on Facebook and we became friends again. Just last week, while discussing with a colleague, the name of Catherine Acholonu came up and I promised myself to do everything possible to reconnect with her. But alas! While I was on this, Prof Acholonu was already lying cold in the morgue! She was buried on Friday, April 11, 2014.

Acholonu, erudite scholar, culture ambassador, author of many books, one-time presidential adviser on cultural matters, and country ambassador, the United Nations Forum of Arts and Culture, remains one of the greatest researchers I’ve known. Of all her works, three stand out. Popularly known as The Adam Trilogy, the books comprise The Gram Code of African Adam, a 500-page book about the monoliths of Ikom in Cross River State and how they contain evidence that Eden was in Nigeria; They Lived Before Adam: Pre-historic Origins of the Igbo – The Never-Been Ruled; and The Lost Testament of the Ancestors of Adam, Unearthing Heliopolis/Igbo Ukwu – The Celestial City of the Gods of Egypt and India which, she told me, was adopted by the World Igbo Congress in 2010.

To buttress their international acceptance, the second book of The Adam Trilogy, They Lived Before Adam, won the 2009 International Book Awards (Multi-cultural Non Fiction Category) in the USA. At the 2009 Harlem Book Fair in New York, it also won the Phillis Wheatley Award for Work that Transcends Culture and Perception as well as the Flora Nwapa Award for Excellence (dedicated to Nigerian-born Africa’s first female novelist). Max Rodriguez, director of Harlem Book Fair, said while presenting the awards: “As groundbreaking as Ivan Van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus, Prof Catherine Acholonu’s They Lived Before Adam is pushing the limits of accepted human history and has the potential to redefine the parameters of knowledge.”

Acholonu seized every opportunity that presented itself to shed light on her research findings. In a paper she presented at the 2010 Nigerian National New Yam Festival held in Igbo Ukwu, Anambra State, on recent findings regarding the archaeological discoveries at Igbo Ukwu by British archaeologist Thurstan Shaw, Acholonu said: “In 1990, we began research on the African cultural phenomenon. Our intention was to challenge the misconception that Africa had no long history and that the continent had no contribution to knowledge, technology and global civilisations. Twenty years of research and five major publications later, we have more than enough evidence that Africa was not just the mother of humanity, but the mother of culture and of human civilisations.”

She maintained that Nigeria was not just the foundation of Black culture but the centre of the civilisation known today as Egypt, explaining that Egypt was initiated in 3100 BC by a Nubian called Menes whom Egyptologists have maintained that no one knew where he came from. “We have discovered that whenever researchers say that something cannot be known, or that it is a mystery, it is usually an indication that that thing has to do with the Black race, and the information is being intentionally withheld…. The Igbo Ukwu phenomenon is one such example,” she said.

Catherine Acholonu dedicated her life to the service of Igboland, Nigeria and Africa through relentless research efforts that yielded innumerable groundbreaking publications. By so doing, even if we sometimes disagree with her conclusions, I daresay she earned herself a place in the company of other eminent scholars whose pioneering works continue to shape our understanding of the Igbo past. May her memory not be lost like many others before her.