Catherine Obianuju Acholonu
Catherine Obianuju Acholonu (26 October 1951 – 18 March 2014) was a Nigerian writer,
researcher and former lecturer on African Cultural and Gender Studies. She
served as the former Senior Special Adviser (SSA) to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Arts and Culture, and foundation member of the Association of
Nigerian Authors (ANA).
Biography
Catherine Acholonu was born in Orlu to the family of Chief Lazarus Olumba. She attended
secondary schools in Orlu before becoming the first African woman to gain a
master's degree (1977) and a PhD (1987) from the University
of Düsseldorf, Germany.[1] She taught
at Alvan
Ikoku College of Education, Owerri,
commencing 1978.
Acholonu was the author of over 16
books, many of which are used in secondary schools and universities in Nigeria,
and in African Studies Departments in USA and Europe. Her works and projects
enjoyed the collaboration and the support of United
States Information Service (USIS),
the British Council, the Rockefeller
Foundation and in 1989 she was invited to tour
educational institutions in USA, lecturing on her works under the United States
International Visitor's Program. In 1990 Catherine Acholonu was honoured with
the Fulbright Scholar in Residency award by the US government, during which she
lectured at four colleges of the Westchester Consortium for International
studies, NY, USA.
Part of her work took her into the
wider sphere of sustainable
development. In 1986 she was the only Nigerian,
and one of two Africans to participate in the United Nations Expert Group
Meeting on "Women, Population and Sustainable Development: the Road to
Rio, Cairo and Beijing”, which was organised jointly by the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA), the Division for the
Advancement of Women, and the Division for Sustainable Development. This took
place in the Dominican Republic, and focused on the mainstreaming of gender into the Plans
of Action of the UN world conferences of Rio, Beijing and Cairo.
From 1999 to 2002, she was the
Special Adviser on Arts and Culture to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a post she resigned from to seek election, along with a
number of other writers who felt their inclusion in Nigerian politics would for
the good. However, she lost the contest for the Orlu senatorial district seat
of Imo State, and drew attention to irregularities and rigging.
She was recently appointed African
Renaissance Ambassador by the African
Renaissance Conference with
headquarters in the Republic of Benin,
and Nigeria's sole representative at the global Forum of Arts and Culture for
the Implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNFAC). Prof
Acholonu holds several awards from home and abroad. She was listed in the
International Who's Who of World Leadership, USA; the African Women Writers'
Who's Who; the Top 500 Women in Nigeria; Who's Who in Nigeria; and the
International Authors and Writers Who's Who, published in Cambridge, UK.
Acholonu was the Director of the
Catherine Acholonu Research Center, Abuja (CARC), which she co-founded with Ambassador (Dr.)
Ajay Prabhakar.[2] The center, based in
Abuja,
is pioneering research into Africa's pre-history, stone inscriptions, cave art,
and linguistic analyses of ancient symbols and communication mediums from the
continent. She argues that Nigerian rock-art inscriptions, known as Ikom
Monoliths, prove that "Sub-Saharan African Blacks possessed an organized
system of writing before 2000 B.C." and that she and her assistants are
able to translate these.[3]
In her book, They Lived Before Adam:
Prehistoric Origins of the Igbo The Never-Been-Ruled, she says that Igbo oral
tradition is consistent with scientific research into the origins of humanity.
Our research includes the origin and
meanings of symbols used in every religion and sacred literature all over the
world. In these, we found that the Hebrew Bible, the Kabbalahs
of the Hebrews and the Chinese, the Hindu Vedas
and Ramayana,
and the recently discovered Egyptian Christian Bible called the Nag Hammadi are of immense importance in revealing lost knowledge.
Wherever we looked we found evidence confirming the claims by geneticists who
have been conducting mitochondrial DNA research in four leading universities here in the USA that
all mankind came from sub-Saharan Africa, that Eve and Adam were black
Africans...Igbo oral traditions confirm the findings of geneticists, that by
208000BC – 208000 BC – human evolution was interrupted and Adam, a hybrid, was
created through the process of genetic engineering. However, our findings
reveal that the creation of Adam was a downward climb on the evolutionary
ladder, because he lost his divine essence, he became divided, no longer whole,
or wholesome. All over Africa and in ancient Egyptian reports, oral and written
traditions maintain that homo erectus people were heavenly beings, and possessed mystical powers
such as telepathy, levitation, bi-location, that their words could move rocks
and mountains and change the course of rivers. Adam lost all that when his
right brain was shut down by those who made him.[4]
Works
Poems
- "Going Home"
- "Spring's Last Drop"
- "Dissidents"
- "Harvest of War"
- "Other Forms of Slaughter"
Collections
- The Spring's Last Drop, 1985
- Nigeria in the Year 1999, 1985
- Recite and Learn – Poems for Junior Primary Schools, 1986
- Recite and Learn – Poems for Senior Primary Schools, 1986
Drama/Plays
- Trial of the Beautiful Ones: a play in one act, Owerri, Nigeria: Totan, 1985
- The Deal and Who is the Head of State, Owerri, Nigeria: Totan, 1986
- Into the Heart of Biafra: a play in three acts, Owerri, Nigeria: C. Acholonu, 1970
Essays and non-fiction
- Western and Indigenous Traditions in Modern Igbo Literature , 1985.
- Motherism, The Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism, 1995.
- The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano, 1995, revised 2007.
- The Earth Unchained: A Quantum Leap in Consciousness: a reply to Al Gore, 1995
- Africa the New Frontier – Towards a Truly Global Literary Theory for the 21st Century. Lecture Delivered to the Association of Nigerian Authors annual Convention, 2002.
- The Gram Code of African Adam: Stone Books and Cave Libraries, Reconstructing 450,000 Years of Africa's Lost Civilizations, 2005
- They Lived Before Adam: Pre-Historic Origins of the Igbo – The Never-Been-Ruled (Ndi Igbo since 1.6 million B.C.), 2009. Winner of the USA-based International Book Awards (2009) in the Multi-cultural non-fiction category.
- The Lost Testament of the Ancestors of Adam: Unearthing Heliopolis/Igbo Ukwu – The Celestial City of the Gods of Egypt and India, 2010
Articles and chapters
- (with Joyce Ann Penfield), "Linguistic Processes of Lexical Innovation in Igbo." Anthropological Linguistics. 22 (1980). 118–130.
- "The Role of Nigerian Dancers in Drama." Nigeria Magazine. 53.1 (1985). 33–39.
- "The Home of Olaudah Equiano – A Linguistic and Anthropological Search", The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 22.1 (1987). 5–16.
- "L'Igbo Langue Litteraire: Le Cas du Nigeria." [Literary Igbo Language: The Case of Nigeria.] Notre Librairie: Revue du Livre: Afrique, Caraibes, Ocean Indien. 98 (Jul–Sept 1989). 26–30.
- "Mother was a Great Man." In The Heinemann Book of African Women's Writing. Ed. Charlotte H. Bruner. London: Heinemann, 1993. 7–14.
- "Motherism: The Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism." Ishmael Reed's Konch Magazine. (March–April 2002).
References
- Cynthia Hahn, 'Acholonu, Catherine', Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing, ed. Jane Eldredge Miller, Routledge, 2001, p. 2
- "Co-founder of CARC". Retrieved January 17, 2016.
- Catherine Acholonu Research Foundation
- "Adam and Eve: African?", The Daily Beast, 18 July 2009
- "Nigeria: Celebrated Scholar, Acholonu Dies At 63". allAfrica.com. 19 March 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
External links
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