The Nigerian Civil War may have ended about 43 years ago, but the ghost of the three-year-old conflict resurfaced, strangely in October, following the release of a book, There was a country: A personal history of Biafra, written by renowned novelist, Prof. Chinua Achebe.
In what was conceived as Achebe’s personal recollection of what went down during the war, turned out, ironically, a re-opening of old wounds.
While the conflict which formed the raw material for Achebe’s memoir was between Nigeria and the Igbo, the alleged genocide controversy as captured by the world celebrated story teller in his latest work ended up pitching not just a few of the disciples of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, one of the alleged perpetrators of genocide, but also some participants in the war from other zones of the country.
The controversy stoked by Achebe which became a feeding frenzy for the media may not have been about whether there was a war or there was a country, it was so much about a war story, either well told, half told, told with jaundice or better still, should have been left untold. And like a bolt out of the blue, arose a groundswell of emotions and sentiments, with some laden with either loyal or ethnic hue. Before long, the argument began to oscillate between the parochial and the primordial.
By the time the controversy was finally interred, it had taken another genocidal dimension of a media war and ethnic pyrotechnic.
The controversial book which had yet to make its grand entry into Nigeria at the time, and which many had not availed themselves of its content stirred the hornet’s nest with excerpts in the The Guardian of London.
While none of the warring parties in the controversial book was in dissonance about Achebe’s gift of artistry in painting pictures of some the events of the war, and his uncanny ability to still recollect the roles of actors in the conflict, despite his ebbing age, a little portion in the book reproduced below, seemingly stratified its expectant readers.
“The wartime cabinet of General Gowon, the military ruler, it should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals like Chief Obafemi Awolowo among others who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies. A statement credited to Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate: all is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder.
“It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on the surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations.
“However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbo at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose – the Nigeria-Biafra War – his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams.
“In the Biafran case, it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation – eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.”
Despite that Nigeria was at the time of the genocide saga battling with the unprecedented onslaught of floods ravaging the country, some Nigerians took time off their flooded and submerged homes to engage in some intellectual acrobatics.
While some argued that the author of the world celebrated Things fall Apart merely helped to refresh memory and reactivate discourse on the bloody civil war, others differed, arguing why Achebe would not allow a sleeping dog lie, but choose to reopen an already healed wound.
But while this wound was healed for others, but for Achebe, it was one still festering terminally and needing not only to be treated but permanently cured.
And for having fired the first salvo, neither Achebe nor his fans could determine the direction this new ‘genocide war’ was going to take. By the time it assumed a fever pitch, it went viral and multi-frontier.
The media war which saw the South West and South East furiously unified against each other, also helped to unify, albeit briefly, some of the ‘lost disciples’ of the late Awolowo, even as the controversy equally seemed to make the Igbo to be in accord with each other.
For instance, those long regarded as apostates and who had seemingly gone ahead to either renounce ‘Awoism’ or progressivism as an ideology and pitched tent with the retrogressive, suddenly found common ally in those they had deserted.
And for some Igbo who thought they could never find reason to agree, There was a country… unexpectedly became a temporary unifying casus belli to agree that there was a country and there was genocide.
And the battle line was drawn. Yoruba versus Igbo. Intellectuals, politicians, the media, none sat on the fence. It was a war of supports versus condemnations. Virtual commentators from the two divides deployed sumptuous invectives in defence of their ‘hero’. Even the philistines who would not hear of arts were not so phlegmatic this time. They joined the fray in their unbelief. Some were armed while some were not so armed in carrying out the Achebe/Awolowo ‘war’, with the former brandishing transcript of Awolowo’s interview in 1983 in response to the issues raised by Achebe.
In the interview, the late UPN leader during a campaign for the 1983 presidential election, admitted the policy, but denied it targeted civilians.
He said the policy targeted the fighting personnel, as a way to end the three-year-old conflict, as food supplies dispatched for civilians use in Biafra, were cornered by the soldiers.
In what appeared to be a fight to the finish, supporters of Awolowo and Achebe left no stone unturned and fought gallantly.
Secretary-General, Afenifere, Segun Arogbofa, had fired Achebe: “He has the right to live anywhere he likes but to start denigrating one of Nigeria’s founders and builders like the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo is not only unfortunate but a great abomination especially when he knows that the man is dead and cannot defend himself.”
However, as if responding to Arogbofa, immediate past president of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Dozie Ikedife, fired his own potshot: “The facts are naked, but only that truth is bitter. The Igbo would not start another war but for Nigeria to move forward, she must acknowledge injustice done to Ndigbo during the war.”
Similarly, former National Chairman of All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Chekwas Okorie, spoke in defense of Achebe: “It is a general knowledge that the civil war has only ended in the battle field but it has not in reality. Go to the South East and you will pity the Igbo. All the roads are impassable and there is no federal presence. The policies of federal character and educational disadvantage are created to deter the progress of the Igbo people.”
Ebenezar Babatope, a former minister and a protege of Awolowo, had said in a statement: “While Achebe is free to write on any topic that suits his fancy, he has no right whatsoever to irresponsibly murder history by his recklessly attacking a great leader like Papa Awolowo.”
For Yinka Odumakin, a member of the Save Nigeria Group, “It is unfortunate that a great man of letters of Achebe’s status has descended to the arena of Biafran propagandists who are always ready to sacrifice the truth to achieve emotional blackmail. He has betrayed his intellectual calling by joining in the circulation of low quality rumour against Awo. I had looked forward to reading the book, but now I doubt if I would pick up a copy even if dropped at my gate.”
former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, said by writing the book and “making some of these baseless and nonsensical assertions, Achebe was simply indulging in the greatest mendacity of Nigerian modern history and his crude distortion of the facts has no basis in reality or rationality. We must not mistake fiction and storytelling for historical fact. The two are completely different. The truth is that Professor Chinua Achebe owes the Awolowo family and the Yoruba people a big apology for his tale of pure fantasy.
He continued: “This subtle attempt to denigrate the Yoruba and their past leaders, to place a question mark on their noble and selfless role in the war and to belittle their efforts and sacrifice to keep Nigeria together as one will always be vigorously resisted by those of us that have the good fortune of still being alive and who are aware of the facts.”
Chinwoke Mbadinuju, former governor of Anambra State, lent his voice in support of his kinsman: “I have not read the book. I don’t want to speculate. During the civil war, I was studying in the United States of America. However, I have absolute confidence in Prof Chinua Achebe. He is an acclaimed international scholar and figure; whatever he says about the civil war should be taken seriously.”
For Dr. A.B.C. Nwosu, former Minister of Health, “This was predictable. Achebe, true to his character, will be unfazed by the insults and abuses, but will welcome criticisms. A writer of his stature should be used to all these.
‘’In my view, the controversy including the orgy of abuse is desirable because it brings out into the public domain, bottled-up and vile ethnic prejudices. In my view also, it is preferable for such prejudices to be aired rather for them to remain and fester in the innermost recesses of ethnic minds, to be secretly whispered around from door to door, neighbour to neighbour and passed on from generation to generation. Closet ethnicism to me is very dangerous and militates against nation-building.
‘’There are many who believe that certain things are best not said at this time. I disagree. It is best for these things to be said so that brethren and compatriots will be aware of what others truly think of them. Therefore, let the criticisms, insults and even abuse continue to come out into the open so we can better understand ourselves as individuals, and as micro-nations within the macro-nation Nigeria.”
Throwing his hat into the ring, Odia Ofeimun, a diehard Awoist, roared: “All that rubbish of children with ribs and swollen stomachs and the rest of it, what did you expect in a war?”
Refusing to allow Achebe cast aspersions on her father’s memory, daughter of the late Yoruba leader and former to The Netherlands, Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu, also took up the gauntlet against Awolowo’s accuser: “One is still trying to come to terms with the sense of disappointment about the person who wrote what is now a brewing controversy in the country. While a formal statement responding to the offensive comments of the writer is being prepared by the family, all I can say for now is that I feel so disappointed.”
Achebe wrote what were purely his personal reflections on the civil war, his own account of the war as a chronicler, but interestingly, it turned out to elicit robust debates and controversy, leading to the distillation of emotion on both sides of the divides.
Was Achebe worse for what he wrote? Not exactly, because he engineered a debate. Was the controversy necessary? Absolutely because it was healthy as it helped to let off steam. But in the final analysis, There was a country: A personal history of Biafra was the biggest beneficiary as the controversy only helped to popularise the book.
No comments:
Post a Comment