Catherine Obianuju Acholonu

Catherine Obianuju Acholonu (26 October 1951 – 18 March 2014) was a Nigerian author, researcher and political activist. She served as the Senior Special Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Arts and Culture and was a founder-member of the Association of Nigerian Authors.

Early life, marriage and education Catherine Acholonu was born in an affluent Catholic Igbo family to Chief Lazarus Emejuru Olumba and Josephine Olumba, at Umuokwara Village, in the town of Orlu, Imo State, southeastern region of Nigeria. She was the eldest of four children. She completed her primary and secondary education in The Holy Rosary School, before being married off at the age of 17 to Brendan Douglas Acholonu, a surgeon from the same clan, who was then-settled in Germany. During that time, her husband was the deputy-governor of Imo State from the same party.

From 1999, she served as the Senior Special Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on Arts and Culture before resigning in 2002, to contest for the Orlu senatorial district seat of Imo State as a National Democratic Party candidate and re-enter active electoral politics.

Western and Indigenous Traditions in Modern Igbo Literature The book was an edited reprint of her PhD thesis by the Düsseldorf University Press; a typical trend in German Universities. Chidi T. Maduka, reviewing over Research in African Literatures, noted it to be an extremely poor agenda-driven work which failed to justify its central theme of English works in Igbo being a part of Igbo literature, and in the process, denounced any and all dissenting views from within academic circles using ad-hominem polemics lacking in logic. However, the findings were rejected near-unanimously, and her historiographic methods were widely criticized by other historians.

In a review in The Journal of African History, Elizabeth Isichei noted of Acholonu's book to be an enthusiastic venture in pseudo-history, with a genealogy that allotted ridiculous life-spans to many members of Equiano's family. In a review over Research in African Literatures, Paul Edwards dismissed the entire work as an essential exercise in speculation, which was bereft of any scholarly rigor. Ode Ogede penned a scathing critique of the work and noted of it to be an express example about how oral history can be abused to fulfill preset goals, without any veneer of scholarly rigor and objectivity; he also deemed her to be ignorant about recent studies concerning Olaudah Equiano's autobiography.

Christopher Fyfe, reviewing for the International Journal of African Historical Studies, noted it to be a fascinating contribution to African folk-history but also noted of Edward's critiques, and the presupposition of her findings on the validity of genealogical records assigning extraordinarily long time-spans to Equiano's relatives. Erving Beauregard of the University of Dayton deemed it as an interesting work, that made a plausible case for its central assertion despite her accepting oral testimonies from persons claiming to be 200 years old.

Acholonu had rejected her critics and has been accused of engaging in ad-hominem attacks against them.

These works are not widely known outside of Nigeria. She disagreed with the thought-schools of Alice Walker, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa and other feminists, accusing them of harboring excessive misandry and radical concepts like lesbianism squarely situated outside the boundary of African morality, while glossing over the concepts of motherhood, central to African femininity. She instead asserted that it is not gender but rather economic status that determines power hierarchies in Africa. Thus, the concept of motherism that promotes a theme of "motherhood, nature and nurture"—it advocates for a return to traditional pro-natal womanhood, and promotes conciliatory stance rather than confrontations, as to male-female cooperation. Her views have been challenged by the later generation of African feminists.

Acholonu viewed the introduction of Islam into Africa as a form of colonialism, which subverted indigenous African systems and reduced the quality of life for native women.

Honours She was enlisted among the greatest women achievers of Nigeria by the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS) in 1997. Her works have been selected as reading material for secondary schools and universities in Nigeria, and African Studies Departments of universities across America and Europe. 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 Eden in Sumer on the Niger: Archaeological, Linguistic, and Genetic Evidence of 450,000 Years of Atlantis, Eden and Sumer in West Africa, 2014

Books authored

The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano: An Anthropological Research. 1 January 1989 The Deal and Who is the Head of State "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).