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Opinion: Chinua Achebe’s Country, Biafra
_________________________________________________________
By Osita Ebiem
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Copyrights © 2007  All Rights Reserved African Examiner Online is owned by RD Frontline LLC, a state of Maryland registered company
P. O. Box 11582 Baltimore, Maryland, 21229, USA Tel: 443-904-1239. Editor-In-Chief: Oludare Sunday Fase
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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.

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.

By Osita Ebiem
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