Chinua Achebe begins his pocket-manifesto-like book The Trouble with Nigeria by talking about what he feels is the root cause of all the problems in Nigeria:
The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmark of true leadership.
The above statement can be used to read through A Man of the People not only in seeing who (and how) participates in failing the leadership institution, but in analyzing the aftermath of such a failure. Thus, although the story starts as a simple mundane visit to the Anata Grammar School by the local Member of Parliament (M.P.) it develops into a triangle, a kind of love wrangle of its own, between him and one of his former female students.
This is the initial stage at which the loopholes of leadership the text aims at start being exposed. They are developed slowly as the nation is finally led to a coup (led because the events of the revolution are necessitated by the events of the time) and the story finally reaches its climax as the people kind of turn back not to ask that resounding question by Achebe, “when did the rain start beating us?”, but to reflect on their mistakes. As you can see asking the ‘when did the rain start beating us’ question at this point is not of importance since they are fully aware of when the torrential rains started, to the extent, they had better just sit and plan how to dry themselves.
Like Anthills of the Savannah, A Man of the People can be seen as an Achebe’s commentary on the burning issues of his society. It's basis as a fictional text only makes sense when conceived from the point of view of its fictional characters, otherwise the setting is factual.
It is this feature perhaps that critics have picked on in placing the text as among postcolonial texts. Simon Gikandi in Reading Chinua Achebe for instance sees it as concerned with the ‘Realities of the new Nation’ which is better interpreted as post-colonial:
…the problems that were going to accompany the country as it tried to seek the norms and values which would define its nationhood and as it sought what Fanon calls ‘the seething pot’ out of which the learning of the future will emerge.
As seen above the nation is termed new, or better still as a young nation, for it has just been conceived after independence transferring leadership from the colonialists to post independence African leaders who not long ago may or may not have been part of the independence struggle.
On the other hand the problems are wide and the challenge is not their discovery but the discovery of the ‘norms and values' to fix them. But one can confidently say the major issue or setback in the new nation is the weakness of nationalism. This is what, as we have seen in Achebe’s earlier comment, the root of the absence of true leadership.
One Odili laments about the controversial issues surrounding the death of Max and Koko, the former having been avenged by his girlfriend Eunice, in the analogy of the village with a mind and the nation without any, and it is surely here where we know Achebe is talking about the ‘pitfalls of nationalism’:
The owner was the village, and the village had a (cosmic) mind; it could say no to sacrilege. But in the affairs of the nation there was no owner, the laws of the village became powerless.
Odili is first alluding to an earlier case where a shopkeeper, one Josiah, was chased away from the village after he cheated a blind man and took away his walking stick for he (Josiah) believed it could make him richer.
Odili’s comments on this incident are not very different from Frantz Fanon’s on commitment to nationhood in the new nations:
The faults that we find in it are quite sufficient explanation of the facility with which when dealing with young and independent nations, the nation is passed over for the race and the tribe is preferred to the state.
And more specifically the problem is worsened by the state’s lack of mind and in essence lack of voice to demand for its rights.
In a nutshell, A Man of the People exposes the intrigues of grand corruption, dirty politics, degraded morality, the tussle between old regimes and young-turks or to put it differently the generational friction as well as political immorality which fans the sycophancy of the masses so as to maintain the status quo.
As a writer Achebe feels deeply concerned in participating in shaping the destiny of his nation. One actually sees how he moves from the narration of the events during the initial encounter of Africans with their colonial masters to the relationship among Africans themselves in the absence of the rulers. It is however important to notice that the rulers are not completely out of the equation as they still dictate affairs of the new nation from their capitals.
Gikandi says the question has changed with the new role of the post colonial writer:
…what is the function of the writer in the new nation and is there a fundamental relationship between nation and nation…? The primary function of the post-colonial writer was the liberation of his country, the prison house of colonialism, especially as it was embodied in the colonial mentality.
Well, the role of the narrator in A Man of the People may not be too much emphasized as in Anthills of the Savannah. The two books however end on a low tone after some key characters in the story have been killed and the remnants are reflecting on their future – a way forward - becoming those who shall tell the story to the coming generations.
A Man of the People calls us to go deep in our reflection of the features of post-colonial Africa. It calls us to think critically of the leadership we have presently and whether that leadership is steering the ship in the right direction. There could be hope for the change for instance in the personalities such as that of Eunice who can avenge a fallen hero without asking to be paid, but the challenge lies in rallying enough people behind her for a similar cause, if not in killing ‘physically’ the likes of Koko, then in killing the rot in them.
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