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  • There was, indeed, a country

    There was, indeed, a country

    I have just finished reading Prof. Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country: A personal history of Biafra. Since the publication of the memoir last year to a welter of controversy over what the writer wrote or failed to write, I have declined to enter the fray because I didn’t want to fall into the same line of thought that I always accuse people of – that is judging a book only by its cover or blurb.

    Although I got the book almost as soon as it was off the press in Nigeria, but I never got to read it until recently because I already had some books lined up for reading before its publication. However, I read the excerpt published in The Guardian of London which led to the hail of controversy that subsequently made the book become such a hot cake that it instantly became the first book in Nigeria, at least to my knowledge, which though not a recommended text was pirated in the first few weeks of its publication. In Lagos traffic today the pirated copy is the most hawked and available book apart from the ubiquitous ‘pure water’.

    Although many reviews of the book have been written both in local and international newspapers, I feel that as a reader and as someone who grew up reading the respected writer and regarding him as a role model and no doubt one of the early influences that made me chose my line of career, the book under consideration falls short of what he has, for me, stood for in all his other books, most especially The Problem with Nigeria.

    There is no doubt that Nigeria is a country in search of heroes and role models and intellectuals such as Achebe and the rest of them should at the twilight of their lives look for things that would unite rather than further divide their country of birth.

    In reading There was a Country, I came away with the impression that despite the fact that the civil war ended over four decades ago, people like the much-respected Achebe still, feel the war against his people was still on. This siege mentality must stop and those in a better position to stop it are the Achebes of this world. But if people like him still feel the way he wrote about it in the book, then we have a long way to go.

    I was barely five or so when the war started and I was living in the north then, and though it was not the centre of the war I can, however, attest to it that the pogrom was real and those not killed there died while running back to the East just as it has been happening of recent with the incessant ethno-religious crises that have gripped the North in recent past.

    However, as the Yoruba say, “if you don’t forget yesterday’s shortcomings you will never get one to play with.” It is high time we put the war behind us and think more of how to move beyond our present challenges. The unfortunate civil war has become a sort of industry for many who use it as an excuse to be aggressive and ride roughshod over others and feel sidelined (the siege mentality).

    I was born in the North and lived and schooled there for over three decades, I have also lived in the East and now live in the West. so if anything, I can claim to know Nigeria and Nigerians as much as I know the back of my hand, if you permit the cliché.

    There are so many claims and assertions in There was a Country, which should not have come from a writer with the standing of Achebe. Take for instance this, “There are many international observers who believe that Gowon’s action after the war were magnanimous and laudable. There are tons of treatise that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated into Nigeria. Well, I have news for them: The Igbo were not and continue not to be integrated into Nigeria, one of the reasons for the country’s continued backwardness, in my estimation.”

    I beg to differ. What I can deduce from this claim by this respected writer is that only the Igbo hold the key to the development of this country! I am afraid; it is this kind of thinking and frame of mind that is holding our country down and responsible for our predicament. This is ethnic supremacy and nonsensical dismissal of other ethnic groups as backward and only meant to be gatemen, gardeners and cooks.

    That is not all; the respected writer believes the decision by the federal government to ban the importation of stockfish and second hand clothes, “two trade items that they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi needed to re-emerge. Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.” How can the use of second hand clothes and consumption of stockfish achieve this? Come on we must grow up.

    By my own reading, one of the major pitfalls of the book is that the writer with the role he played as an envoy for the late Chukwuemeka Ojukwu to the former President of Senegal who himself was a distinguished poet and writer, shows that he (Achebe) was a close ally of the late Ojukwu, and based on this premise, a reader like me expected that he should give us a more accurate and detailed portrait of the late Biafran leader.

    But what do we have? Just passing comments that in no way pointed to the mind of the chief planner and executioner of the plan to take his part of Nigeria out of the federation.

    In this memoir at least, we know where the writer stands where the issue of the war, the federation known as Nigeria, General Yakubu Gowon and most especially the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo are concerned, and to some extent, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. But what does he think of the late Ojukwu? He was dodgy and unclear where the late Biafran leader was concerned. This is not the Achebe I grew up to know and admire. Many things were left unsaid while some of those things said were done with a forked tongue.

    There was, indeed, a country and a war memoir.

     

  • This Okada Country (1)

    This Okada Country (1)

    There is a silent ‘war’ going on in Lagos at the moment. You may call it ‘Okada War’. The war was ignited recently when the Lagos State Government placed a restriction on the operation of motorcycles, particularly the ones being used for commercial purpose, popularly called okada, along certain routes in the state. The okadaoperators are saying that the restriction, which emanated from legislation by the State House of Assembly, has put them out of business. This is more so as they claimed that the 451 roads and bridges in the state along which their movement have been restricted are the most lucrative routes.

    On its part, the Lagos State Government has maintained that the government is determined to curb the rate of fatal accidents involving these okada riders, check the rampant use of okada to commit violent crimes as well as bring sanity to the Lagos chaotic traffic system. Many public enlightenment and sensitization programmes have been held by the government in its attempt to make these okada riders to see reason and comply with the law. The okada riders too have held protests and even introduced violence to their resentment of the law.

    A few weeks ago, there was tension on Lagos roads as the commercial motorcyclists took up ‘arms’ and vandalised government vehicles on sight. Mostly affected were the state’s mass transit buses, popularly called BRT. Some of them were torched, while many more had their wind screens and side glasses shattered. In the orgy of violence, the government and security agencies in the state quickly employed tact and caution to bring the situation under control. For almost a week, it was a hide-and-seek game as security agencies battle the warring okada riders to submission.

    As they say, when two elephants fight, it is the grass beneath them that suffers. But in this case, the fight was between an elephant, which is the state government, and a ‘horse’, which is the okadariders. And instead of the proverbial grasses, it was the Lagos commuters that bore the brunt of the crisis while it lasted, although the smoldering effect could take eternity to overcome.

    I have metaphorically referred to okada riders as the ‘horse’ instead of dismissing them as mere ants waging war against the elephant because of their resilience and die-hard spirit to fight any perceived ‘injustice’. For this group of people, the first thing that takes flight is their sense of reasoning. Otherwise, what particular importance or benefit will wanton destruction of public property and brigandage do to their agitation, if not to further portray them as good-for-nothing hoodlums.

    It was a pitiful sight and it is still much so to see hundreds and thousands of stranded commuters at bus stops in Lagos metropolis waiting for the few buses on the roads. In many instances, many of the commuters have always resorted to trekking to their various destinations no matter the distance. Even the few buses available, I mean both private and government vehicles, have been overwhelmed by the flood of passengers.

    Anyway, a regime of relative peace has since taken over. The new phase of the ‘struggle’ is the ongoing silent war between the okadaoperators and policemen. Perhaps, for lack of other things to do, by this I mean for lack of any gainful employment, the okada riders have been indulging in occasional forays to many of the routes where they have been banned. The incursions are done mostly in the evenings and early in the morning to avoid the prying eyes of security agents.

    The police are not relenting either. Many a time, you notice them running after these okada riders who take the risk to thread where they are not wanted. This is why I believe that most of them still do the business for lack of any other thing to do. Otherwise, when you weigh the risk involved – police brutality, extortion, confiscation of motorcycles and the rest – you may begin to wonder why people still indulge in the business. That is the never-say-die spirit of the okadariders or mafia.

    But why is this so? Lagos is the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria. It is this status that is responsible for the influx of people to the state in search of the proverbial “milk and honey” which, perhaps, may no longer flow as it used to be. That is, if at all there had been anything near that in the past. It is also a fact that Lagos is home to indigenes of all the states of the federation. What this means is that there is no state in the country that does not have a good presence of its indigenes in every nook and cranny of Lagos State. Many other people from other African countries and the diaspora have found sanctuary in Lagos.

    Though small in terms of landmass, the population of Lagos is conservatively put at an amazing 20 million people. This burgeoning population is daily in search of their daily bread. In a situation where white-collar jobs are in short supply or outright unavailable, the next easiest option appears to be okadabusiness. This situation is further fuelled by lack of adequate capital to embark on any tangible small or medium- scale business by those who are interested in trading and other commercial preoccupations.

    Therefore, over the years, okada business has become a major stake in the economy of many families both in Nigeria as a whole and Lagos in particular. A cursory peep into history could lead us to this okada age. In the 60s and the 70s, there was nothing like okada business in Nigeria. If it existed at all, it was in some neighboring countries like Republic of Benin and Togo. Then it crept into places like the old Cross River State and some other far-flung states from Lagos. Today, the whole country has been engulfed by the okada business.

    “Why okada?” you may ask. In the good old days, especially in the late 60s and early 70s, riding a motorcycle was both a social and status symbol. The one commonly used then was a brand of motorcycle called Vespa, with its tiny tires and alluring body design. Then there was Mobylette, a smaller version. And of course, there were Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and other brands. By the mid-70s, the Yamaha brand had entered the scene with its outstanding features.

    To own a motorcycle then was regarded as a rare luxury because the cars were very few and the motorcycles had come to displace the bicycles, especially the popular brand known as Raleigh. The motorcycles became more conspicuous on the roads after the salary windfall of 1973 commonly referred to as “Udoji Awards”.Salary arrears amounting to huge sums of money were paid to workers at that time. Many bought motorcycles, some small cars, others built houses while some married additional wives. Depending on what you wanted to ride – a motorcycle, a car or even a woman – there was enough ‘free’ money to do this courtesy of the military dictatorship of General Yakubu Gowon (retd) at that time. This was a scenario that gradually snowballed into today’s harvest of okada in Nigeria.

    However, the socio-economic importance of okadacannot be easily overlooked. It has filled the vacuum of inadequate transportation in most parts of the country. Where the vehicles are in drastic short supply, okada seems to be making up for the shortfall. Similarly, where the roads have been rendered more or less impassable either for lack of maintenance or poor construction, okada has come in handy for the commuters. This is because okada don’t discriminate. It can navigate its way along bush paths or many of the pothole-infested roads all over the country. Lagos is no exception.

     

  • There was a country: Blockade, starvation and a requiem for Biafra

    There was a country: Blockade, starvation and a requiem for Biafra

    “ Until now efforts to relieve the Biafran have been thwarted by  the desire of the central government of Nigeria to pursue total and unconditional victory and by fear of the Ibo people that surrender means wholesale atrocities and genocide. But genocide is what is taking place right now – and starvation is the grim reaper. This is not the time to stand on ceremony, or go through channels, or to observe the diplomatic niceties. The destruction of an entire people is an immoral objective even in the most moral of wars. It can never be justified; it can never be condoned.” U.S. President Richard Nixon’s campaign speech on September 10, 1968

    The Nigeria-Biafra war which was (under) estimated by Gowon and his top officers to last not more than three months, had lasted more than two years by July 1969. By an inexplicably suicidal instinct, Biafra had held on to the frustration of the Nigerian side. All the brutalities of an overwhelming force and the air bombardments overtly aided by British fire power had still not totally subdued the ‘rebels’. The economic blockade of the ‘rebels’ was thus reinforced and the noose tightened. All the seaports to Biafra had been closed at the beginning of hostilities with the creation of Mid-West, Rivers and South Eastern states which isolated the Biafra state of East Central State. Biafra had also been isolated from the major oil wells by this singular action.

    Further economic and food blockades had been devised as state policy and were being strictly implemented. No agreement could be reached between the two warring parties as to the modus of shipping essential supplies to the ‘rebel’ enclave. Ojukwu insisted on air routes, fearing food poisoning if supplies come through Nigeria moderated channels but the Nigerian government would not hear of it, worried that arms may be smuggled in via that method. In his writing for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ series, New Issues, Professor Nathaniel H Goetz of Pepperdine University thus captures the complexity of the standoff: “Politically, the possibility of a land corridor seemed impossible. One of the many disagreements between the warring parties was simple, yet it illustrates both the mistrust and complexity of what was occurring: Ojukwu forbade the necessary food to reach the country through the neutral corridor for fear Nigerian troops would poison it… on June 5 (1968), an ICRC DC-7 aircraft was shot down by the Federal air force over Biafra, killing the three aid workers on board. Because of this incident, serious disputes over the conduct of relief operations arose and the airlift was again suspended.”

    While the diplomatic face-off went on, the scourges of hunger, diseases and deaths raged on in war-ravaged Biafra eliciting uproar across the world. Dan Jacobs, author of the book, “The Brutality of Nations” wrote about the lamentations of Pope Paul VI over this situation: “The war seems to be reaching its conclusion, with the terror of possible reprisals and massacre against defenseless people worn out by deprivations, by hunger and by the loss of all they possess… there are those who actually fear a kind of genocide.”

    Jacobs also quoted the editorial of the Washington Post of July 2, 1969: “One word now describes the policy of the Nigerian military government towards secessionist Biafra: genocide. It is ugly and extreme but it is the only word which fits Nigeria’s decision to stop the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC), and other relief agencies from flying food to Biafra.”

    The International Committee in the Investigation of Crimes of Genocide led by a Ghanaian, Dr. Mensah after its investigation of the conflict, reported thus: “I am of the opinion that in many of the cases cited to me, hatred of the Biafrans (mainly Igbos) and a wish to exterminate them was a foremost motivational factor.”

    Let us take a final quote on the international outcry against the Federal Government’s handling of Biafra from no less a personage than Arthur Schlesinger, American historian and scholar of note: “The terrible tragedy of the people of Biafra has now assumed catastrophic dimensions. Starvation is daily claiming the lives of estimated 6,000 Igbo tribesmen, most of them children. If adequate food is not delivered to the people in the immediate future, hundreds of thousands of human beings will die of hunger.”

    It is from the foregoing, from the gloomy umbra of this genocidal turn of events that Achebe concludes that the highly respected Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo could not be watching this gory Biafran drama happen, not to talk of being part of it and worse, being the master mind. “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.” This is the alleged refrain from Chief Awolowo and reechoed by people like Chief Allison Ayida, says Achebe. This pogrom by hunger was steadfastly reinforced with such grim policies as state creation, secret currency change, the 20 pounds punishment, the ban on importation of certain commodities and the Indigenisation Act. All this orchestrated war of attrition to what end than to asphyxiate Ndigbo?

    How, when and why did Igbo brothers and sisters suddenly become mortal ‘enemies’ to be strafed, starved to death and exterminated so that the rest of Nigeria would have peace? Why was the reprisal coup not stopped at killing Aguiyi-Ironsi and Igbo officers; why did over 30,000 defenceless civilians have to be slaughtered with no questions asked? What manner of leader would fold his hands and watch while his people are killed like rats in a senseless pogrom without putting up a fight no matter how feeble?

    Achebe is saying that Chief Awolowo providing the intellectual prowess behind these sinister policies means that we still did not know at which point the rain started to beat us. He is saying that Igbo is not the problem of Nigeria. Achebe is asking: who jailed Awolowo on trumped up charges; who killed Adekunle Fajuyi, then governor of Western Region in cold blood, for no reason; who chased away the most senior military officer (Brigadier Ogundipe) and installed a stooge as head of state; who made sure Awo never became president of Nigeria; who killed Ken Saro-Wiwa, who made sure M.K.O. Abiola never became president and eventually killed him, his wife and damaged his businesses; who jailed Obasanjo; who always insists that he always must rule or determine who rules?

    Achebe expected Chief Awolowo, as the Yoruba leader of that era, who had just been freed from an unjust imprisonment to stand up against the injustice of the pogrom against Igbo in the north; he expected him to speak up against the raging genocide unleashed on Ndigbo the way others like Wole Soyinka, Victor Banjo and a few other Yoruba spoke against it, instead of aiding and abetting it.

    EPILOGUE: REQUIEM FOR BIAFRA; QUO VADIS NIGERIA? On January 15, 1970, the Biafran delegation, which was led by Major-General Philip Effiong and included Sir Louis Mbanefo, M.T. Mbu, Col. David Ogunewe and other Biafran military officers, formally surrendered at Dodan Barracks to the troops of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    Forty-two years ago, the rest of Nigeria teamed up seeking to exterminate the Igbo race in Nigeria, putting down more than two million and leaving the rest deprived, wretched and psychologically traumatised for no just cause. Forty two years after, all the rehabilitation and reconstruction promised was never to be. A trip through Igbo land today is enough proof of an ongoing ‘war’ by other means. Today, Igbo that was a pillar of the land, one of the majority tribes has been deliberately reduced to sub- minority. The people now are the least in population! It has the least number of states, local government areas and consequently, the least share of the federal revenue allocation. All these wars of attrition notwithstanding, the current attitude is: we dare you to talk about it. But Achebe insists: “My aim is not to provide all the answers but to raise questions, and perhaps to cause a few headaches in the process.”

    Sadly, Igbo land, the wretched remains of Biafra still bears the ugly marks of that near-annihilation, both physically and in the mind. For over four decades, Igbo still cannot dare to produce the President of Nigeria. For forty years, it remains tattered, disheveled and unkempt like an old hag. And because we have backed up the wrong tree, Nigeria generally has not fared much better either. The contorted creature sits pitiably today at a precipice staring down her deep, dark doom. Quo Vadis Nigeria?

  • ‘There was a country’: Ogbunigwe, Abagana ambush; Achebe, Okigbo and Ifeajuna

    THE OGBUNIGWE BOMB: commonly known as Ogbunigwe during the Biafran war, its fame and mystique traveled wide on both sides of the divide. Considered a technological breakthrough of Igbos during the war, the bomb, which may well be a higher version of today’s I.E.Ds (improved explosive device) was deployed to great effect by the Biafran army.

    With the economic blockade of Biafra having a telling effect, the people turned inwards, devising survival strategies and apparatuses. Apart from extracting and refining their own petrol; they also had improvised armoured tanks and piloted their planes. The renowned Professor Godian Ezekwe led a team of scientists in what was known as the Biafran Research and Production Unit, RAP. This think-tank group is said to have developed rockets, bombs and telecommunications gadgets.

    According to Achebe, quoting another great author, Professor Chukwuemeka Ike, the ogbunigwe was put to so much devastating effect against the federal troops that the fear of the explosive was the beginning of wisdom for them; to the extent that the Biafrans succeeded more with it than any imported weapons. Ike in his book, Sunset at Dawn: A Novel about Biafra, captures it thus: “You must have heard that the Nigerians are now so mortally afraid of Ogbunigwe that each advancing battalion is now preceded by a herd of cattle.”

    Boasting about this feat in what is regarded his last official wartime speech, Ojukwu said: “ in three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention… we built bombs, rockets, and we designed and built our own refinery, and our own delivery systems and guided them far. For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles.

    “The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, we maintained them under heavy bombardment… we spoke to the world through a telecommunications system engineered by local ingenuity.

    “In three years, we had broken the technological barrier, became the most advanced black people on earth.”

    THE ABAGANA AMBUSH: March 25, 1968 probably remains one of the most memorable days in the Nigeria –Biafra war. It was the day the Nigerian side suffered the heaviest single loss in the war. Known as the Abagana Ambush, the Second Division of the Nigerian Army led by Col. Murtala Muhammed had finally crossed the Niger Bridge after failing in the first attempt (having been repelled by the Col. Joe Achuzia’s guerrilla army and suffering heavy casualties). Having crossed into Biafra, the plan was to link up with the First Division led by Col. Shuwa penetrating the Igbo heartland through the north from Nsukka. As Achebe notes: “The amalgamation of these two forces, the Nigerian Army hoped, would then serve as a formidable force that would ‘smash the Biafrans’”. Col. Muhammed was said to have assembled and deployed, a convoy of 96 vehicles and four armoured cars to facilitate this plan on March 31, 1968.

    However, Biafran intelligence was said to have got wind of the move and a Major Jonathan Uchendu was charged with working out a counter-attack strategy. With a 700-man team, a counter- attack plan was hatched that essentially sealed up the Abagana Road while the troops lie in ambush in a nearby bush waiting patiently for the advancing Nigerians and their reinforcements.

    Achebe writes that “Major Uchendu’s strategy proved to be highly successful. His troops destroyed Muhammed’s entire convoy within one and half hours. All told, the Nigerians suffered about 500 casualties. There was minimal loss on the Biafran side.” It was probably the most resounding battle ever won by the Biafrans in the entire war.

    ACHEBE, OKIGBO AND MAJOR IFEAJUNA: Christopher Okigbo, the cerebral poet and Achebe had known from their Government College, Umuahia days. Though Okigbo was two years junior to Achebe in class, they struck up friendship very quickly and maintained the closeness till Okigbo’s tragic end in the war front. After Umuahia, they were to meet again at the University College, Ibadan, and while Achebe was in the Nigerian Broadcasting Service in Ikoyi , Lagos, Okigbo was West Africa manager for Cambridge University Press. Their friendship was such that Okigbo was godfather to one of Achebe’s sons and on many occasions during the ensuing tumult in Igboland, Okigbo played ‘father ‘ role to the Achebe house- hold.

    When the war was in full force and all the Igbo personalities had returned, Enugu was the natural settlement for most of the elite returnees in the early days before the ancient town was bombed into submission by the federal forces. It was in Enugu; precisely on Michael Okpara Avenue, that Achebe and Okigbo set up their publishing outfit called Citadel Press. It was indeed the idea of Okigbo who thought out and even worked out the whole project before getting Achebe to come on board. The crux of it all was to publish educational materials, including children’s books and books that would capture the ongoing crisis.

    The first book Citadel Press worked on was, “How the Dog Became a Domesticated Animal,” by John Iroaganachi. Achebe and Okigbo chose to rework the folktale and turn it around to become, “How the Leopard got its Claws.” This book never got to see the light of the day before the shelling of Enugu became unbearable and most people had to scamper and relocate further into the hinterland.

    While Citadel still functioned, Okigbo had brought a manuscript from Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, one of the five majors who plotted the January 1966 coup. The twain were thoroughly disappointed with Ifeajuna’s account of that critical event of Nigeria’s life. Hear Achebe: “I read the treatise through quickly and became more and more disappointed as I went along. Ifeajuna’s account showcased a writer trying to pass himself off as something that he wasn’t. For one, the manuscript claimed that the entire coup d’etat was his show, that he was the chief strategist, complete master mind, and executer, not just one of several. He recognized the presence of his coconspirators but did not elevate their involvement to any level of importance.”

    Chukwuma Nzeogwu, one of the chief protagonists of the January 1966 coup called the manuscript a lie while Achebe and Okigbo thought it too irresponsible to deserve publication. The manuscript was later to vanish to the regret of Achebe who thought it could have been preserved at least as a version of what transpired on that fateful January of 1966. Christopher Okigbo who had become a Major in the Biafran army was to be felled in the war front in August 1967, in Ekwegbe, close to Nsukka.

    Achebe who had fled from Enugu under the hale of shelling returned to Citadel Press after the war to find the small building reduced to ruble. It was instructive that a number of buildings in the vicinity had been unscathed by the conflict, but this one was pummeled to the ground. It was the work of someone or some people with an ax to grind, he thinks. TOMORROW: THE ECONOMIC BLOCKADE AND STARVATION; EPILOGUE

  • Achebe: Between A Man of the People and There was a Country

    Achebe: Between A Man of the People and There was a Country

    Does Chinua Achebe’s new offering portend the augury of his 1966 book, A Man of the People? This must be the silent question niggling the mind of the more perceptive reader of the mint fresh “There was a Country.” The book could well have been eerily titled, There was a Nigeria. Is this the central message of this 82 year-old sage and national icon who has lived through it all? Unlike in 1966 when the publication of his A man of the People almost heralded the first coup in Nigeria which he had predicted in the book, will Nigeria’s grim history repeat itself?

    The book which has unfortunately welled up an ocean of controversy, having come to the world legs-first like an abnormal childbirth because of a mischievous excerpt published in a British newspaper, may have its vital message lost to a bickering that has degenerated to the age-old Igbo-Yoruba supremacy tussle. There is no doubt that had that particular portion of the book not been highlighted by The Guardian of London, not many Nigerians would have found, or for that matter, noticed that contentious characterisation of Chief Obafemi Awolowo which is tucked away near the end of the book.

    But in There was a Country, Achebe has written a strange little book that is at once his life story, his history of the Biafra War and Nigeria’s crises; a work of prose and a dash of poetry all skillfully meshed together. Shall we say that this is Achebe’s catharsis, a distillation of all that was good and all that was baleful for a man who was 30 years old, an established author and a senior civil servant under a colonial entity before the birth of Nigeria in 1960? By this tale, he has bequeathed to Nigeria a sprawling canvass of her once beautiful era, a political independence placed delicately on faulty pedestal like an accident designed to occur, the regression, the war and the eerie danger of an impending violent end.

    In a four-part book, he tells his story from the beginning: his early Christian convert father who embraced the Whiteman’s faith so very religiously and immersing his family unquestioningly into it. The seed of Achebe’s epic novel, Things Fall Apart was probably sown in these early days when in spite of early indoctrination inexorably found an undying fascination in the Igbo traditional religion practiced by many kinsmen of that era.

    Achebe also gives us a glimpse of his precocious childhood, his appetite for study and books; his plucky school days, especially at Government College, Umuahia, and the University College, Ibadan. From his St. Philips Primary School in his rural Ogidi, now in Anambra State, and a stint in Central School, Nekede, Owerri, Achebe (aka Dictionary as he was nicknamed then) had come out tops in the national common entrance to Government College, Umuahia, GCU, and earning a scholarship to boot. In like manner, he came out top graduating student at GCU too and again, winning what was called a “major” national scholarship to study medicine at the University College, Ibadan, in 1948.

    Hear him: “I grew up at a time when the colonial educational infrastructure celebrated hard work and high achievement and so did our families and communities. Government College, Umuahia, was so proud of my work that they put up a big sign announcing my performance in the national entrance examination. That notice stayed on the wall for years.”

    Achebe had great company in the pioneer set at the University College, Ibadan; the very best of young Nigerians from every corner of the country. A most remarkable group made up of the likes of Chike Momah, Flora Nwapa, Mabel Segun, Ben Obumselu, Emmanuel Obiechina, Kelsey Harrison, Gamaliel Onosode, Wande Abimbola, Iya Abubakar, Adiele Afigbo, Igwe Aja Nwachukwu, Theophilus Adeleke Akinyele, Grace Alele-Williams, Mohammed Bello, Elechi Amadi. This group was joined later by Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Oluwakayo Oshuntokun, M.J.C. Echeruo, Christopher Okigbo, Ayo Bamgbose, Christine Okoli (his future wife), Chukwuemeka Ike, Abiola Irele, Zulu Sofola, and several others.

    With such an array of home grown intellectuals of Nigeria’s pre-independence era and a horde of foreign trained ones, how could the new country have gone awry and disintegrated almost soon as it was ‘founded’? Achebe asserts that the British compromised the country right from day one. Describing Nigeria’s immediate post-independence era, Achebe says: “Within six years of this tragic colonial manipulation Nigeria was a cesspool of corruption and misrule. Public servants helped themselves freely to the nation’s wealth. Elections were blatantly rigged, the subsequent national census was outrageously stage-managed; judges and magistrates were manipulated by politicians in power. The politicians themselves were pawns of foreign business interests.

    “The social malaise in the Nigerian society was political corruption. The structure of the country was such that there was inbuilt power struggle among the ethnic groups, and of course those who were in power wanted to stay in power…”

    If this was the situation in the 1950s and 1960s as Achebe observed, the situation has reached its nadir today, 52 years after, taking the country to a tipping point whence there may cease to be a country. To this chronic and nation-threatening condition, Achebe proffers solution thus: “Africa’s post-colonial disposition is the result of a people who have lost the habit of ruling themselves. We have also had difficulty running the new systems foisted upon us at the dawn of independence by our “colonial masters”. Because the West has had a long but uneven engagement with the continent, it is imperative that it understand what happened to Africa. It must also play a part in the solution. A meaningful solution will require the goodwill and concerted efforts on the part of all those who share the weight of Africa’s historical burden.

    There was a Country is a quaintly nice book which, had Achebe not written it, he would have done grave harm to the history of Nigeria, being a learned, enlightened witness and a participant to this peculiar history. Obviously tortured by his own story, he must have found some relieve in disgorging it. TOMORROW: THE POGROMS, THE ABURI ACCORD AND THE WAR BEGINS.

  • The memoir: There was a country

    The memoir: There was a country

    The persecution of the Igbo didn’t end with the Biafran conflict. Until the nation faces up to this, its mediocrity will continue

    Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people-mothers, children, babies, civilians-lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria.

    As a writer, I believe that it is fundamentally important, indeed essential to our humanity, to ask the hard questions, in order to better understand ourselves and our neighbours. Where there is justification for further investigation, justice should be served.

    In the case of the Nigeria-Biafra war there is precious little relevant literature that helps answer these questions. Did the federal government of Nigeria engage in the genocide of its Igbo citizens who set up the Republic of Biafra in 1967 through punitive policies, the most notorious being starvation as a legitimate weapon of war? Is the information blockade around the war a case of calculated historical suppression? Why has the war not been discussed, or taught to the young, more than 40 years after its end? Are we perpetually doomed to repeat the errors of the past because we are too stubborn to learn from them?

    The Oxford English Dictionary defines genocide as the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group … The UN general assembly defined it in 1946 as …a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups. Throughout the conflict the Biafrans consistently charged that the Nigerians had a design to exterminate the Igbo people from the face of the earth. This calculation, the Biafrans insisted, was predicated on a holy jihad proclaimed by mainly Islamic extremists in the Nigerian army and supported by the policies of economic blockade that prevented shipments of humanitarian aid, food and supplies to the needy in Biafra.

    Supporters of the federal government position maintain that a war was being waged and the premise of all wars is for one side to emerge as the victor. Overly ambitious actors may have taken actions unbecoming of international conventions of human rights, but these things happen everywhere. This same group often cites findings, from organisations (sanctioned by the federal government) that sent observers during the crisis, that there was no clear intent on behalf of the Nigerian troops to wipe out the Igbo people … pointing out that over 30,000 Igbo still lived in Lagos, and half a million in the mid-west.But if the diabolical disregard for human life seen during the war was not due to the northern military elite’s jihadist or genocidal obsession, then why were there more small arms used on Biafran soil than during the entire second world war? Why were there 100,000 casualties on the much larger Nigerian side compared with more than 2 million “mainly children” Biafrans killed?

    It is important to point out that most Nigerians were against the war and abhorred the senseless violence that ensued. 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 with 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.

    The federal government’s actions soon after the war could be seen not as conciliatory but as outright hostile. After the conflict ended, the same hardliners in the Nigerian government cast Igbo in the role of treasonable felons and wreckers of the nation and got the regime to adopt a banking policy that nullified any bank account operated during the war by the Biafrans. A flat sum of 20 Nigerian pounds was approved for each Igbo depositor, regardless of the amount of deposit. If there was ever a measure put in place to stunt, or even obliterate, the economy of a people, this was it.

    After that outrageous charade, Nigeria ’s leaders sought to devastate the resilient and emerging eastern commercial sector even further by banning the import of secondhand clothing and stockfish, two trade items that they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha , Aba and Nnewi needed to re-emerge. Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.

    There are many international observers who believe that Gowon’s actions after the war were magnanimous and laudable. There are tons of treatises that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated into Nigeria . Well, I have news for them: The Igbos were not and continue not to be reintegrated into Nigeria , one of the main reasons for the country’s continued backwardness.

    Borrowing from the Marshall plan for Europe after the second world war, the federal government launched an elaborate scheme highlighted by three Rs “for reconstruction, rehabilitation, and reconciliation. The only difference is that, while the Americans actually carried out all three prongs of the strategy, Nigeria ’s federal government did not.

    What has consistently escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that mediocrity destroys the very fabric of a country as surely as a war ushering in all sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption and debauchery. Nations enshrine mediocrity as their modus operandi, and create the fertile ground for the rise of tyrants and other base elements of the society, by silently assenting to the dismantling of systems of excellence because they do not immediately benefit one specific ethnic, racial, political, or special-interest group. That, in my humble opinion, is precisely where Nigeria finds itself today.

  • Is Nigeria a toilet of a country?

    Is Nigeria a toilet of a country?

    Lord Apsley and I were colleagues at Harrow School in England approximately 36 years ago. I have never forgotten his uncharitable remarks about Nigeria which led to a heated arguement between us. At that time I found it ironic, and I still do, that this quintessential member of the English upper class not only had the nerve to say such things to me about my country but that he could say it with such confidence. My response to him was that if Nigeria was indeed a ‘’toilet where evil reigns’’ then it was a toilet that was created by his British forefathers who not only dumped the evil there by defecating in it but who also refused to wash their hands, to flush and to leave the toilet after they had finished. My point was simple and it was that Nigeria was as much their mess as it was ours. For a young man who had been born into wealth and power and who had been brought up to believe that ‘’Brittania’’ had civilised the world and had brought nothing but immense benefits to the natives of her colonies, he found my response most disconcerting. I have never forgotten what he said about my beloved country on that occassion. It was painful and regrettable.

    Yet I look at what has happened to us in the last 52 years of our existence as an independent nation and what we have suffered in the last 98 years since the 1914 amalglamation of the northern and southern protectorates and I really do wonder. If the truth must be told, things have not gone too well for us. I was born in the same year as we gained our independence and as I ponder and reflect on the last 52 years all I see is violence, bloodshed, dashed hopes, lost opportunities and shattered dreams. I see a brutal civil war in which two million people died. I see a string of violent military coups and repressive military dictatorships and I see suspicion and division between the peoples of the north and the south. I see dangerous tensions between the numerous ethnic nationalities, continous strife and sectarian violence. I see church bombings, the slaughter of the innocents, islamic fundamentalist rebellions, battle-ready ethnic militias and bloodthirsty local war lords. I see economic degradation, decaying infrastructures, environmental disasters and untold suffering and hardship. And finally I see poverty and unemployment, poor quality leadership and a dysfunctional semi-failed state which is still struggling to find it’s true identity. If this sounds like a scene from Dante’s hell please forgive me but this is what I see.

    On October 1st every year we make nostalgic and inspirational speeches about the ‘’labours of our heroes past’’, pop the champagne, pat each other on the back, go to churches and mosques to give thanks to God, dance at owambe parties and congratulate one another on our independence. Yet we refuse to sit back in deep reflection, take stock of what has really been going on in our country and carry out an honest and candid appraisal of our situation. We are not ‘’a toilet of a country where evil reigns’’ but we must admit that we are in a mess. A really terrible mess. And the question is why are we in such a mess, how did we get there, why have we not been able to get out of it in 52 years and what role did our former colonial masters play, and are still playing, in creating and sustaining that mess.That is the subject of this essay.

    If we want to answer these questions we must go back to the beginning. The problem is that the British established a faulty foundation for Nigeria right from the start which they knew could not produce anything wholesome. The Nigeria that they handed over to us in 1960 was nothing but an unworkable artificial state and a “poisoned chalice”. It was destined to fail right from the outset. Worse still they handed us that poisoned chalice with a malicious and mischevous intent and without any recourse to our people in terms of any form of a national referendum. The British did the same thing in varying degrees when they left virtually each and every one of their other ‘’third world’’ colonies. The most obvious cases however were Nigeria, the Sudan, India and the nation that was formerly known as Malaya. Every single one of these four countries had monuemental problems with sustaining their unity after independence and all of them, with the exception of Nigeria, were compelled to break up into smaller entities before they could bring out the best in themselves as a people and fully exercise their human potentials. Consequently India broke up into three and became India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Sudan broke into two and became Southern Sudan and the Sudan and Malaya broke into two and became Malaysia and Singapore. Nigeria is yet to find the courage and fortitude to go that far and whether we will eventually break up or not remains to be seen.

    Yet the truth is that when you force two incompatibles with completely different world views together into an unhappy marriage, lock the gates of the house, throw away the keys and bestow leadership upon a “poor husband” to rule over a ‘’rich wife’’ in perpetuity, you are looking for trouble. The bible says “if the foundation be faulty what can the righteous do?” Our foundation as a nation is faulty and the consequence of that is that everything that is built on that faulty foundation is unproductive, unsustainable and unpleasant. And until that foundation is fixed the biblical ‘’righteous’’, no matter how well intentioned, can do nothing about it. It will always be a case of one step forward and ten steps back. Some have made the point that what exists in the Nigerian space today was once a collection of confederations and that our level of integration centuries before the British came to our shores was far greater than many care to admit. This may be true but upon their arrival the British, rather than build on that and allow us to forge a united nation ourselves based on dialogue, trust and consensus, instead played up our differences, drove us further apart, set us against each other all the more and compelled us to remain in the same cage hoping that we would eventually kill each other in the process.

    The result of the amalgamation was therefore predictable. It was either that the “poor husband” (the north) would fully subjugate and eventually kill the “rich wife”(the south) or the “rich wife” would fully subjugate and eventually kill the “poor husband”. And we are right in the middle of that struggle for mutual subjugation till today. In 1960 the British ensured that power was handed over to the most pliable region at the Federal level by establishing an alliance with the northern traditional institutions and political ruling elite and fixing the census figures in their favour. Consequently by 1960 we had a situation where the well-educated, enlightened, progressive and predominantly christian south was played out through intrigue, deceit and fixed census figures and instead power was given to a fatalistic and ultra-conservative muslim north who were prepared to do anything the British wanted them to do, who had already overwhelmed and supressed their own ethnic and christian minority groups and whose major preoccupation was to dominate and control the entire federation, to keep the south out of power at the centre and to “dip the koran in the Atlantic ocean”. It did not stop there.

    Even after the British left in 1960 they continued to meddle in our affairs and they encouraged, sponsored and supported a string of repressive military regimes, all of which derived their power from a northern-controlled army officers corps whose retired generals, up until today, are the ones that determine who will be what in our country. That is our story. Some have argued that despite the ignoble intentions of the British we ought to have been able to sort out our own problems 52 years after they left us. This is a good point. It does however betray a tinge of naivety and a lack of appreciation of just how chronic those problems were right from the start and just how malevolent a hand the British dealt us. I say this because the bitter truth is that the system in Nigeria cannot be changed simply because the forces that have controlled our country since 1960 are deeply conservative and the foundation and the structure upon which she has been established has been designed in such a way that makes radical and fundamental change impossible. Some have compared Nigeria to a badly wounded, gangerous and dieased leg which can only be cured through restructuring or which needs to be cut off in order to save the rest of the body. The consequence of doing neither is death for the whole body. It follows that the only way real change can come is if the country is broken up into two or more independent nations or, if we insist on remaining as one, through the auspices of a peoples revolution (our very own ‘’Nigerian Spring’’,

     

    similar to the ‘’Arab spring’’ that we witnessed in Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt last year and that we are witnessing in Syria today) which will sweep away the old order, convene a Sovereign National Conference, restructure the country drastically and devolve power from the centre. If you are looking for fundamental change in Nigeria these are the only two courses of action that can produce it.

    The line up in our country is therefore clear-on the one hand you have the ordinary people, who have nothing and little hope for a brighter future, and on the other you have the ruling elite, who have everything. Those that are waiting for such a change to evolve under the present system and structure will wait forever. This is because under the present system there is no hope for a peaceful, purposeful and meaningful change because justice, equity and fairness has no place. Worse still the most courageous people with the best minds, that are prepared to speak the truth no matter how bitter that truth is and that have an element of vision are always destroyed, discredited or set aside. If anyone doubts this they should consider the fate of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Moshood Abiola. Those that have a clear vision about the way that Nigeria needs to go have no say and those that have a say have no vision. Our country is in the hands and grip of mediocres that just don’t care.

    Unfortunately the Nigerian people do not seem to have the resilience or strength to effect either of the two options for true change anytime soon. They seem to have been so traumatised, demoralised and subjugated in the last 50 years that they have lost their will to resist inequity, tyranny and injustice, to insist on determining their own fate and to fight for their own future. And who can blame them because the state itself is extreemly violent and ruthless in the way and manner in which it fights and resists change and those that advocate it. Very few good leaders can emerge at the federal level in such a system because it was not designed to produce truly progressive leaders. There are a few exceptions to the rule but generally speaking the type of leaders that the Nigerian system is designed to throw up are leaders that are not minded to bring any benefit or hope to the ordinary people but rather that are there to protect the archaic system and to maintain the nebulous and dysfunctional status quo. The relevance of the British today is that they are not only the architects of this monuemental monstrosity but they are also the ones that have continued to encourage and support the ruling elite that runs and sustains it.

    If they were being fair to us they would have been amongst those that have been encouraging the idea of restructuring our country, devolving power from the centre and effecting a fundamental and radical change in our attitudes and affairs. That is precisely what they are doing in the United Kingdom itself today where power is being systematically and gradually devolved from the centre at Westminster in England to the hitherto supressed and occupied regions of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. This is good enough for them yet our erstwhile colonial masters have never supported a similar course of action for us. Instead they have done all they can to support those that believe that power should continue to be centralised and concentrated in Abuja, to maintain the “ancien regime” and to preserve the chronically conservative system and the status quo. The idea of a properly-led, prosperous, peaceful and truly united Nigeria has never been something that the British ever sought to establish. It is for this reason that we can blame Lord Apsley’s forefathers almost as much as we can blame ourselves for the mess that our country is in up until today. May God deliver Nigeria.

     

    •Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Aviation.