SIR: Chinua Achebe’s love for the Igbo people obviously is boundless. And his commitment to ‘Biafra’ was or continues to be profound. Hence, his latest book:There was a country. But like most human beings, Achebe is a ‘bundle of contradictions’. Not once has he publicly decried the cruel treatment meted out to the peoples in present day Rivers, Cross Rivers, Akwa-Ibom and Bayelsa States of Nigeria by ‘Biafran’ authorities, which he represented as a roving ambassador.
In The trouble with Nigeria, Achebe, in Chapters 4 and 10, accuses both Dr. Nmandi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, SAN, of poverty of thought. Their offence? A documented desire to improve
themselves financially and morally in the capitalist society they dwelt in and to help others, both in their public and private capacities, even from their private income. Achebe bases his position on a single paragraph each from the respective biographies of Zik and Awo, without attempting a cursory analysis of other published works of theirs and achievements in public service, and the factors that
contributed to their stated position. Thus an illustrious novelist may be capable of downright shallowness.
Major Nzeogwu did not plan a ‘sectional’ coup, but the execution in January 1966 was sectional and Easterners were spared. Azikiwe was tipped off by Major Ifeajuna and conveniently left Nigeria in advance. Both Northern and Western soldiers and politicians were shot dead. The (counter) coup of July 1966 was the ‘return match’. Hundreds of Igbo soldiers were killed. Some Yoruba, i.e. Major Adegoke, were killed, others brutalized, i.e. B.A.M. Adekunle (Black Scorpion), and others went into hiding, i.e. Olusegun Obasanjo, who took refuge in the Emir of Katsina’s palace. The immediate aftermath of the ‘return-match’ was the widespread killings of Igbo people all over the North (and hundreds of Westerners and others peoples from the present day South-South were killed too).
Igbo remnants fled back to the East, so also thousands of Westerners and ‘South-Southerners. Some Yoruba, i.e. Wole Soyinka, were jailed while others, i.e. Professor Sam Aluko, were harassed by security agencies, for ‘supporting’ Biafra. But the fate of the other Nigerians not of Igbo extraction that lost their lives and those that suffered has never been Achebe’s direct concern.
If Achebe were to be believed, the Nigerian Federal Government with General Yakubu Gowon as Head of State and Awolowo as Vice Chairman, Federal Executive Council, Alhaji Shehu Shagari [Nigerian President during the second republic] and Alhaji Aminu Kano as ministers designed and executed genocidal policies against the Igbo people. Yet, Achebe singles out Awolowo for special mention in regard to allocation of opprobrium.
Blatant revisionism cannot alter the fact that Awolowo’s reference to starvation being a legitimate instrument of war was in specific reference to not allowing food supplies to reach Biafran soldiers,
while Biafran High Command refused the passage of humanitarian supplies, food inclusive, during day time. In any case, Emeka Ojukwu, the Biafran warlord, whom Achebe obviously prefers to Azikiwe, frankly stated in an interview granted to Tell newsmagazine well over a decade ago that there was never an agreement between him and Awolowo that the West would support or follow the East in secession.
Achebe’s predictable, consistent and virulent denigration of Awolowo and his reference to Yoruba people profiting from alleged genocidal treatment of Igbo people and his prior references to the
‘fantastic burst of energy’ with which Igbo people ‘equaled’ the educational achievements of Yoruba people perhaps indicate a mind somewhat in bondage to ethnic chauvinism and a morbid and baleful
fascination with Yoruba people, despite ‘lip service’ to Nigerian unity and progress.
• Paul Temitope,
Lagos
