Conrad's popularity took a hit after the accusation -- a testament to Achebe's credibility.
Chinua Achebe came to Bard after suffering an accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Achebe's stories included proverbs and tackled complex issues of African identity, nationalism and decolonization, adding to his books' popularity.
Previous recipients have included Bob Dylan, Arthur Miller, Chinua Achebe and Robert Redford.
The other winners are Albanian writer Ismail Kadare (2005), Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (2007) and Canadian short story writer Alice Munro (2009).
Walker, an associate professor and chair of the department of Africana Studies at Brown University, said Achebe's loss was a great one.
Readers should be encouraged to look at the novels Achebe wrote aftewards.
Mr Achebe has lived in the US since he suffered a car accident in 1990, which left him paralysed and in a wheelchair.
One of Achebe's most fervent admirers has been Nelson Mandela, who once described the sense of hope he derived from reading Achebe in prison.
While Achebe will be greatly missed, Jonathan said, he will live on in the minds of present and future generations through his great works.
Achebe, drawing from his heritage and traditions, used his talent and gift of imagination to generate a visual and moral landscape entirely unfamiliar to most readers.
And it occurs to me that the novel I'd most love to write would be a 21st-century update of Achebe's final novel, "Anthills of the Savannah" (1987).
In his two-page letter about rejecting the honour, published in Nigerian newspapers, Achebe was most scathing about the situation in his home state of Anambra in the south-east.
What Mandela saw in Achebe was the characteristic that inhabits all great literature: details that seem very particular retain their uniqueness in the hands of a great writer.
After a car crash in 1990 which left him partially paralysed and in a wheel chair, Achebe moved to live in the US - only returning to Nigeria infrequently.
Former South African President and anti-apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail, once said that in the company of Chinua Achebe's novels "prison walls fell down".
Achebe told the BBC's Network Africa programme that he hoped that rejecting the Commander of the Federal Republic - Nigeria's second highest honour - would serve as a "wake-up call".
He also highlighted Achebe's "extraordinary generosity of time and spirit" during more than 20 years as a member of the Bard College community, adding that he will be deeply missed.
The former South African president and anti-apartheid fighter, who spent 27 years in jail, "referred to Prof Achebe as a writer 'in whose company the prison walls fell down'", the statement said.
In 1990, a car accident in Lagos left Mr. Achebe paralyzed from the waist down, and sent him to Bard College in New York, an easier setting than Nigeria for a wheelchair-constrained author.
Within months, Nigeria was engulfed in independent Africa's first humanitarian catastrophe: a war for the independence of Mr. Achebe's Igbo homeland that left one million people dead, most of them children who starved.
In an interview for the Paris Review of Books in 1994, Achebe spoke of how his early love of stories made him realize that they only reflected the point of view of the white man.
Mr Achebe has drawn support from the publishers and academics, who say the sex scenes are central to the book and argue the purpose of literature is to mirror life rather than set moral codes.
In an interview for the Paris Review of Books in 1994, Achebe spoke of how his early love of stories led him to realize that they reflected only the point of view of the white man.
In the course of a long academic career, Achebe took up university posts in Nigeria and overseas, including teaching at Brown University in Rhode Island, where he was professor of Africana Studies, and Bard College in New York.
If there was one dimension of disappointment that one could detect in Chinua Achebe, it was the fact that he was famous for one great book when in fact he had written a whole series of great books.
He says it is absurd for anybody to imagine Chinua Achebe being a writer with a dirty mind, adding that the Church's moral police could utilise their energies better crusading against the lewd publications that litter the newsstands and which any teenager with a few pennies to spare can snap up.
"Achebe's frank, truthful and fearless interventions in national affairs will be greatly missed at home in Nigeria because while others may have disagreed with his views, most Nigerians never doubted his immense patriotism and sincere commitment to the building of a greater, more united and prosperous nation that all Africans and the entire black race could be proud of, " the president said in a statement.
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