Chimamanda Adichie to speak at inaugural Ben Obumselu Memorial Lecture

As the nation collectively grapples with the legacy of our rulers past and we prepare ourselves for the task of selecting new ones, we must reflect on what kind of leaders we seek.  In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates sets out a warning: “Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide…cities will have no rest from evils.”

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Prof. Ben Obumselu’s death, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will be delivering a lecture titled “The Intellectual and Public Service in 21^st Century Africa”.

Pulitzer Prize winner Dele Olojede, poet and writer Professor Niyi Osundare, the lawyer and activist Ayo Obe and many more will also be speaking at the virtual event billed for 4pm on Thursday the 25^th of August. It will be open to the public. You can join for free here.

The lecture commemorates an outstanding public intellectual.

Prof. Ben Obumselu, was a distinguished Professor of English, and a member of that generation described in Chiunua Achebe’s The Education of a British-Protected Child; a generation that includes, in addition to Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Christopher Okigbo, but also notable business people, politicians and civil servants.

Obumselu had the distinction of being the first president of the National Union of Nigerian Students in 1956/57.  Following that debut, he lived a life filled with both scholarly and political pursuits. In addition to being the key writer behind the Ahiara Declaration, Professor Obumselu is also widely viewed as one of the founding fathers of African literary criticism. He also contributed to laying the initial intellectual frameworks of both the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

Chimamanda Adichie is one of the world’s leading contemporary novelists. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize.

Her 2013 novel Americanah won the US National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013.

She has delivered two landmark TED talks: her 2009 TED Talk The Danger of A Single Story and her 2012 TEDx Euston talk We Should All Be Feminists, which started a worldwide conversation about feminism and was published as a book in 2014.

The speech marks a celebration of the life of Ben Obumselu. It couldn’t come at a more significant time. Register here to join.