| by Osita Ebiem
( January 01, 2013, New York City,
Sri Lanka Guardian) For forty something years Chinua Achebe’s 2012 book, There
Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, remained in the works. It took him
this long to write because the story is too personal and too painful to write.
Biafra Genocide took place from 1966 against the Igbo and other Southeasterners
(Biafrans); while the war started in 1967 and ended in 1970. Achebe finished
writing about it in 2012, forty two years after the war ended or forty six
years since the 1966 genocide.
 |
Achebe’s Biafra did not need five hundred years to succeed as many Nigerianists have always argued that what is needed for Nigeria to work is time. One year was enough for Achebe and the rest of his people to make Biafra work. There was no need and luxury of time for them to wait.
The story is compacted into 334
pages. And through the author’s mastery the story is easy and gripping to read.
It’s easy to read because the writer’s style is lucid and without any hint of
guiles. But difficult because of the pain and missed opportunities the author
and his loved ones had to and still go through. Since it is a personal
narrative the writer would not bog the reader down with too many details. That,
in itself, is one source of the pain of the writer.
What would he include and what
would be excluded and still satisfy his conscience? So many incidents and
details which are equally important crowd the author’s memory. To keep the sage
from being overwhelmed, he must suspend the writing for another day.... This is
how the writing got delayed for more than forty years. But finally the story is
written and the world is richer as a result. And a grateful world salutes
Achebe’s courage.
Biafra story is one of the most
painful of all stories in history and to write from the inside is even more
excruciating. Children, women and men were deliberately starved to death by the
deliberate, vicious actions of federal government of Nigeria under the
direction of Yakubu Gowon and Obafemi Awolowo.
Television had just become
popular among households around the world and Biafra became the first TV war
and what the people saw was too heartbreaking and frightening and gave the
world a rude prediction of what is to come if it would do nothing to change it.
Skeleton-like children and others with distended stomachs and with questioning
eyes held the gaze, discomfortingly, of a spectating world in the comfort of
their living quarters. The children and their parents were dying in Biafra from
Harold Wilson’s Disease or kwashiorkor.
Achebe’s There was a Country is
one of those very necessary stories ever written. Achebe and the rest of his
gallant fellow compatriots worked tirelessly to establish his Biafran country.
He played a pivotal part in that country and those of us who benefit directly
from those sacrifices are forever grateful. Because of great minds, men and
women of sterling character whose sinews seemed to be made of steel, Achebe’s
country of Biafra worked in the face of daunting challenges and pain. But then
a temporary wedge was put on the path of Achebe’s country’s march to true
greatness by the combined forces of Nigeria, Great Britain, Russia (former
USSR), Egypt and the Arab League. The wedge serves to delay and prolong the
wistfulness of Citizen Achebe but eventually his country that was, and will
still be.
Partly, Achebe waited so long to
write his memoir because he was waiting for Nigeria. After the defeat of Biafra
Achebe wanted Nigeria to succeed and so he waited and waited. Forty two years
after he would not wait no more. Nigeria is hopeless. As soon as Achebe wrote
the last word of his memoir, the last death nail was driven into the heart of
Nigerian country. On that day Achebe finally carried out the last wishes of his
friend and fellow citizen of Biafra, Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo. Okigbo had
specifically requested in one of his poems that Achebe and others should wake
him up near the sacrificial altar when the various fragments and aspects of
unjust wounds inflicted on him and his fellow Biafran compatriots by Nigeria’s
hatred and intolerance are counted and stitched together so that collectively
the beautiful and unassailable Biafra poem would be finished. With the public
showing of Achebe’s personal narrative of the Biafran story, the stars have
aligned and the last rituals for Okigbo’s and the other heroes of Biafra’s
final passage to glory begin.
On few occasions Achebe stated
that the trouble with Nigeria is mostly bad leadership. Achebe is one of the
brightest minds and greatest thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Achebe
lived through Nigeria, Biafra and then Nigeria and knows the truth. Achebe is
bold and tough as nail but on those occasions Achebe the infallible god
inadvertently massaged the ego of the Nigerian country by trying to be
politically correct as mere mortals do. But Achebe has transcended the
elemental foibles of mere mortals. Achebe since had ascended that realm in his
native Igbo culture, where after someone has washed his tongue, he cannot lie.
So in his usually clear and mesmerizing language as he told his personal story
in his book, There Was a Country he redeemed himself. Achebe knows the truth
which is that the real trouble with Nigeria is because it is a badly structured
country. The trouble with Nigeria is the terrible incongruent cultural mixture
of peoples without common interests and aspiration. Achebe knows that his
Biafran country succeeded not because of the type of leadership for Nigeria
that he spoke about on those occasions. Achebe’s Biafra succeeded because of
the structural make up of that country which in turn produced the excellent
leadership that Achebe and his fellow Biafrans witnessed and participated in.
When we talk about how to build a
successful country we are thankfully not subjected to the difficult dilemma of
trying to prove if the egg came before the chicken or the chicken before the
egg. In a succeeding country, a good structure most of the time gives birth to
good leadership. A bad structure or system has always produced bad leadership.
This is the trouble with Nigeria.
Achebe’s Biafra did not need five
hundred years to succeed as many Nigerianists have always argued that what is
needed for Nigeria to work is time. One year was enough for Achebe and the rest
of his people to make Biafra work. There was no need and luxury of time for
them to wait. Achebe’s Biafra either worked or did not work in a space of one
year. In Achebe’s Biafra they had a common aspiration and dreamed together. But
in Nigeria there are too many dreams and everyone is dreaming to the exclusion
of their neighbor. So, Achebe’s Biafra remains the only alternative that will
still be.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe in his blog,
www.rethinkingafrica.com calls Obafemi Awolowo’s edifices “a fast crumbling
edifice” in his answer to the irrational Awoist critics of Achebe’s recent
memoir. Obafemi Awolowo left behind an enormous and tremendous edifice. Awolowo
was a great Nigerian who gave the country the best he got. Because of Awolowo’s
gallant efforts and those of others like Yakubu Gowon Nigeria survived the
first threat by Biafra to divide it. Partly thanks to Awolowo, Nigeria still
stands today as a united country. On the whole Awolowo built up huge personal
and national edifices but Ekwe-Ekwe describes those intimidating edifices as
fast crumbling in the space of very little time, why? Many critical analysts of
Awolowo and Nigeria have concluded that this is so because Awolowo’s and
Nigeria’s edifices were built on falsehood and genocides and they cannot stand,
as a result. Nigeria is already a collapsed house of cards and the debris will
need to be cleaned out to enable the new Achebe’s country to be.
Biafra was a republic; a
democratic country. Decisions were taken collectively. Even the decision to
declare the country as free and independent from Nigeria was taken after so
many consultations and the unanimous agreement by all the provinces that were
in the old Eastern Region. This is why Emeka Ojukwu the then head of state of
Biafra is never synonymous with Biafra. Biafra was the entire people of Eastern
Region and Ojukwu was just an individual who played creditably his own part.
The people that ran Biafra were the best minds and Achebe is preeminent among
them. In the midst of fire and great tribulations they created Biafra and made
it work. This is why Nigeria’s failure pains Achebe especially. In Achebe’s
heart of hearts he knows that Nigeria would have worked if. . .
Yes, there was a country and will
still be the Biafran country. As always Achebe wrote honestly and sincerely and
wrote only facts and truth. But would there be no detractors just because
Achebe belongs in the category of great men and women of character and
integrity of all time? That will be unrealistic to contemplate. Detractors who
envy and with passion attack Achebe viciously for his audacity to choose
freedom and independence over slavery, human indignity and crime against
humanity as visited on him and his people, abound. They are many that attack
without countering the facts of Achebe’s testaments on Obafemi Awolowo’s,
Anthony Enahoro’s, Yakubu Gowon’s and Britain’s Harold Wilson’s genocidal
devastations of Biafra. Like court jesters the attackers risk self-ridicule in
the face of incontestable facts. But what difference does that make, anyway?
Achebe was in the Biafra of the 1960s and sacrificially dodged bullets and
endured the hunger for a better tomorrow for the next generation of his people.
Achebe in horror witnessed and endured the pain of losing two Achebes, friends
like Okigbo and a host of others to Nigeria’s extreme hatred, intolerance and
genocide.
Though very painful but Achebe
and others never regretted those sacrifices; they gave their lives for the
generation of Achebe’s children and those after them. For Biafrans of Achebe’s
era no sacrifice was too much.
Some of Achebe’s Nigerian critics
have called him a Biafran in Nigerian cloak. How apt and true. No one that
experienced Achebe’s Biafra, even for a day, ever renounced their citizenship
of that country. In fact, every one of Achebe’s people ceased from being Nigerians
and renounced their citizenship of Nigeria forever, since May 30, 1967. The
late poet and dramatist Esiaba Irobi said it even better when he described
himself as a Biafran citizen on exile in Nigeria.
Achebe has been through very hot
crucibles defending and working his Biafran country. Even if they were throwing
flames, Achebe will not be bothered with the present puny egg-throwers in their
desperate attempt to soil his sparkling image. Achebe’s position as the eagle
on the peak of the tallest iroko around is secured and Lilliputians at the foot
of the tree can try every antic in their bag of tricks.
The bottom line is: For Achebe
and the rest of his people, they know that there was genocide and there was a
Biafran country. Achebe is the most credible narrator and he has clearly and
emphatically said that, in part, because there was genocide then his people
were compelled to work towards establishing their own country from 1967.
Now, to the consternation of
Achebe’s critics the world finally accepts, from the testimony of a most
dependable witness, that there was genocide in Biafra and there was a Biafran
country. That is the first step. The next one is to call the perpetrators of
Achebe’s people killers to the tribunal so that the world, our world can be
made safer through the execution of remedial justice and the process of
collective global accountability. That has been done before.
( Osita Ebiem is a Biafran
citizen and the Sri Lanka Guardian's special correspondent on Nigeria.)
Subscribe Us
 For forty something years Chinua Achebe’s 2012 book, T...){kind=link}