Odia Ofeimun, renowned poet and playwright, worked closely with the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and seasoned author Prof. Chinua Achebe. He was private secretary to the late Awolowo and General Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) when Achebe was the President. In his latest book, When does a civil war come to an end? Ofeimun highlights some political and historical falsehoods, the late Awolowo’s philosophies and the civil war questions raised in Achebe’s controversial book: There was a Country. In this interview with Evelyn Osagie, Ofeimun reacts to some issues in Achebe’s book, among which is the divisiveness of ethnicity. Excerpts:
You’re coming out with the book, When does a civil war come to an end? But debates are brewing over Prof. Chinua Achebe’s publication on the civil war. Is it deliberate?
Actually, there were two essays that should have been published long before now, but somehow I wanted to do something extra. From the moment we started discussing Chinua Achebe’s book many people thought I was deliberately shirking my responsibilities by not publishing essays that I wrote long ago. They are not new essays. I just revised them in order to help people appreciate an alternative way of seeing what happened before, during and after the civil war.
We all know Nigeria’s story. It is just a question of how we know the story. For me, there is a particular way of knowing Nigeria that is close to the truth, and does not allow for a certain form of self deceit – self deceit that allows people of any particular ethnic group to imagine that they have a certain uniqueness that others do not have. There are no Nigerian groups that are not unique. That is part of the beauty of this country – the fact that the very differences some people think that is the problem constitute the very basis of the creativity that only countries like Nigeria can proffer.
Why bring your response out in the face of growing debates?
I didn’t even need to think about it. I had not read Chinua Achebe’s book when I decided to send it to the media because I didn’t want it to look as if I was replying. I wasn’t replying. Those are facts that needed to be stated. And I wasn’t intimidated by the possibilities of there being some form of information that I do not have, because I knew the information I had was authentic and that in terms of veracity, very unshakeable. I have said if I manage to ever write the history of Nigeria, and I tell you that your father was a thief that he stole three kobo; believe it because until I prove it and only if I can prove it will I let go.
What is your view on Achebe’s book?
I have talked so much about that book that honestly I’m beginning to get embarrassed by the constant request to re-explain. Read: When does a civil war come to an end? which was launched on November 16. I think Achebe’s book has played the role that many books should play, which is to say, challenged people to go for the heart of the matter – the truth. If he did not write that book in the way he has done, we probably would not go back to rethinking the civil war because we ran away from engaging the issue as a very serious matter. Once it was said that there were no victor no vanquished, Nigerians thought they could just go and sleep.
But the issue is, the civil war never ended in the minds of many Nigerians. The propaganda of the civil war on both sides has become natural history where as much of that propaganda was based on pure falsehood on both sides where you hear about genocidal war being played up. Yes, it was a genocidal war because on both sides they were just murdering people and destroying what you normally could not destroy under the general convention. It is no use telling me that you lost a brother because when one think of the problem one thinks only of the Igbo. I lost four close relations in the war, they were not Igbo. If a man says I lost 15 children, they destroy my house, etc; no particular kind of suffering is more than the suffering of other people, to try to raise your quality of suffering is above the suffering of others – it is frankly tolerably irresponsible. A man can only lose his finger; you can’t say because he does not lose his life, he has no right to quarrel or complain; that is actually where the problem is.
Don’t let us imagine that the future can only be lived on the basis of the falsehood of yesterday. The civil war will not end until when the falsehoods that divide the people and the stereotypes that ruin neighbours have been displaced by a harsher value – the truth. And in my view, it will end when we challenge those falsehoods; lay them bare so that those who used to live by them anytime they want to promote the falsehood will be looking right and left to see who is listening.
Based on people’s experiences, does a war really end?
A civil war never actually ends for a long time. And, here, some people believe that until you make an Igbo man a Nigerian president, the civil war will end. It is also a very poor blinded approach to the Nigeria politics even if you have 20 Igbo presidents unless that president is coming into office to destroy all of us, the memory of the civil war will remain because even if the man sets out to win all of us, it will still be the continuation of that civil war. The first thing we need to recognise is that there are falsehoods by which we have lived. The fracas between the Igbo and Yoruba in Nigerian history has led to the underdevelopment of Nigeria. And some people believe, especially around periods when the constitution is being discussed, on throwing stones just to make sure that any possibility of any healthy interaction between the Yoruba and Igbo will not happen. I am telling you Achebe’s book has fallen into this bracket of the book that enters the period of constitutional discussion to make sure that those two nationalities do not have a common ground. So, the fact that Awolowo gave free education and being Yoruba was supposed to be speaking for every Yoruba. Therefore, it is not true that Achebe being Igbo author is speaking for all the Igbo. There are so many people in Yorubaland who opposed Awolowo and all his ideas just as Chinua Achebe does not speak for so many poor Biafrans who could not ride Jaguar during the war.
Does your book tell a different story?
One of the seductions of this debate is that I needed to publish this book so that people will not be asking me questions they could just find in a book. If I say I have an alternative history, all Nigerians cannot be coming to ask me about that history. This is precisely why it is important to come out with a book like: When does a civil war come to an end.
I am lucky that I have followed Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s career fairly closely. In my view, he provides the finest example on how to solve Nigeria’s problems. A man who was so much lied against but never for one moment behaved in a manner that showed he was worried for himself. He was always more worried about people and for Nigerians. He was consistently providing answers that he never changed because until Nigeria accepted what was right, he did not see the point in changing his language. What this book attempts to do is to show how right Chief Awolowo was, in relation to his harshest critics. And I am more concerned about how the writers viewed him. A chapter which answers many of the questions is entitled: “Awolowo’s cultural politics: How Nigerian writers got it all wrong”. It is true that in that chapter, I concentrated on the argument between Awolowo and Achebe. But I am genuinely happy that I wrote it before I even had an idea about Achebe’s book-coming because I would have been tempted to respond to the book. But now, I don’t have to respond to anything because it is as if I had anticipated very many of the questions.
Also luckily for me, I had gone much beyond the questions raised by his book – because I am not interested in winning a debate. I am interested in concrete steps that can be taken to turn Nigeria into a proper ‘cultural expression’ rather than what Awolowo called ‘geographical expression’. When he called it a geographical expression that was precisely what it was. But over the years, we have all fought hard to turn many of the discordant values within the system into something close to a melting pot and, therefore, it is no longer proper to call Nigeria a mere ‘cultural expression’.
What is your take on the rumour of Nigeria splitting at a certain date?
Those, who believe that they would split Nigeria at some future date and then their children will live in paradise, are deceiving themselves. Even if Nigeria was split into several countries and they all supposedly went their separate ways we would just discover that it is impossible to escape one another. If you can imagine the day when the Igbo would not flood the Diaspora, then, you are probably close to the truth. There would never be that day. It is, therefore, in the interest of the Igbo and every other ethnic group in Nigeria and across Africa to design philosophies that would help them live with other people who do not share their ancestors, their religions, their political ideologies – that is how to know civilised people. People who cannot do it are barbaric.
You can’t go to others people village and want to impose your own traditional ruler on them. If you do that you are a barbarian because you are asking for violence – it would come. There are ways of running a multi-ethnic state. The beauty of it for us is that the whole world went multi-ethnic long ago. God must have a reason for having Nigeria laced with so many differences. Nigeria has more ethnic groups than any other country including those whose population is 10 and 15 times more than that of Nigeria. If we can resolve and make it work, then we are helping the world to solve a problem that every country faces. Even if we are divided and had only a Yoruba republic and Igbo republic, the fights between them will be exactly the way it is with the rest of Nigeria. Bola Ige’s wife from Oyo went to her husband’s state and was rejected because that was not her state. In her state she was asked to go to her husband’s state; that problem has just been repeated again in the swearing in of judges. Igbos in Abia State are being driven away from the Civil Service.
When you look at such problems, you will see that the uncivilised nature of Nigeria’s leadership is one we need to deal with and they are uncivilised not only towards other ethnic groups but also to their own people. In most cases, it is precisely the inability of the leadership to take care of their own that is the reason they don’t know how to take care of other people.
You hear everybody talking about creating jobs; we have imported ministers’ of finance from the biggest economic institution in the world to help us do it. There is only one way of creating jobs in the world: you build farms and create factories. It is from that experience that all other things come that deliver jobs.
Those who are not delivering farms and factories and are pretending that they want to create jobs are deceiving everybody. The very cabals that prevented us from having proper refineries are promising us jobs if they take over. The cabals have taken over in every aspect of Nigerian life: upstream, downstream, banks, electricity, education, name it. The heads of states that destroyed education are the very ones that have built model nursery, primary, secondary schools and universities. I can assure you that they are building on sand; and there will be repercussions. When people hear of repercussions, they think of violence. That is not the only way repercussions can come to a country.
What other way?
The very fact that Nigeria cannot produce anything today; and that when you are looking for artisans, you go to neighbouring countries is enough to show that there are repercussions. But what many people do not know is that people who lose skills and cannot acquire skills, who are therefore, uneducatable because of the circumstances of their upbringing since those who should have built the institutions for them did not build the institutions, when those people start fighting back they don’t fight back rationally. The rationality of the disposed can be more dangerous than anything in the world. All it requires is for one clear-eyed and educated person to stay in their front and show them where to throw the stones.
Nigeria The Beautiful, what is its relevance to all of these?
The simple story of the Nigeria The Beautiful is that all the differences we talk about are the things that have empowered and given us the creativity we don’t know how to harness. It is not just about our having beautiful things: it is about how the many uglinesses of our society interact in ways that actually make it impossible for really terrible things to happen. Many people can’t see it. But the differences that we talk about are actually not differences.
There is a book written by a Nigerian professor on when Yoruba and Igbo were one language. It is very difficult to get an Igbo man to agree that it is possible. But if that Igboman has any doubt all you need to do is put the Yoruba and Igbo dictionaries side by side and take the words one by one, you would discover that all the root words are the same. It is actually very easy to determine how close the two people have always been and their behaviours are really not too different.
Although when I joked about it recently, I realised that it is no longer quite a joke to say that Awolowo should have been the leader of the Igbo and Nnamdi Azikiwe, leader of the Yoruba because Azikiwe was an Oyo man proper. He was even an Ogboni. Awolowo wasn’t an Ogboni, although he was a Yoruba. But there is also this uncanny thing that the Yoruba who may be very corrupt, fun-loving and a womaniser always preferred that man who was not a womaniser, one who believed in speaking the truth even if it hurts him and was generally known to be disciplined. That is to say even the most corrupt Yoruba man knew that such a disciplined leader was best for them. And if you recall, Nnamdi Azikiwe was very much the leader of the Yoruba before Awolowo came on the scene and even after Awolowo came on the scene.
When you look at the two ethnic groups, they may pretend to be at war with themselves but I think it is precisely because when people want the same thing and have common means of achieving such things, they tend to fight often. Brothers too do it all the time, and, therefore, we should not let them use the quarrels between them to disrupt our capacity as a country to move forward. They have done it for more than half-a-century. The rest of us should not allow them to tell the kind of lies that prevented co-operations between the two nationalities. They were based on bracing lies told by the leaders. I think we should find a way to reduce the capacity of those falsehoods to do harm. Many young people today are dying for the lies told long ago and repeated so often by everybody that some people pretend they no longer know what is true. We know what is true, for instance, the carpet crossing t hey talked about in the western region never happened.
The so-called 1941 fighting of the Nigerian Youth Movement had no ethnic content. It was just a case of two newspaper magnets fighting over space in society. And all that talk about 1959 general election and how it was rigged: the British out-rigged both sides. They rigged the election in the western region to make sure that there would be a group in the western region that would vote for the NPC; and went to the east to do the same. The truth is that eastern branch of the NCNC actually wanted Awolowo, but Zik had been thoroughly compromised by his other associations and disagreed with his own eastern branch.
