For forty-odd years, Chinua Achebe’s 2012 book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, remained in the making. She took so long to write because the story is too personal and too painful to write. The Biafran genocide took place beginning in 1966 against the Igbo and other inhabitants of the south-east (Biafranos); 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 thanks to the mastery of the author, the story is easy and exciting to read. It is easy to read because the writer’s style is lucid and without any hint of deceit. But difficult because of the pain and lost opportunities that the author and his loved ones had to go through 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 a source of the writer’s pain.
What would you include and what would you exclude and still satisfy your conscience? So many equally important incidents and details clutter the author’s memory. So that the sage does not feel overwhelmed, he must suspend the writing for another day… This is how the writing was delayed for more than forty years. But eventually the story is written and the world is richer as a result. And a grateful world salutes Achebe’s courage.
The Biafra story is one of the most painful of all stories in history and writing from the inside is even more excruciating. Children, women and men were deliberately starved to death by the deliberate and vicious actions of the Nigerian federal government under the leadership of Yakubu Gowon and Obafemi Awolowo.
TV had just become popular with households all over the world and Biafra became the first war on TV and what people saw was too heartbreaking and scary and gave the world a rude prediction of what is to come if they do nothing to change it. Skeleton-like children and others with distended stomachs and questioning eyes stared uncomfortably at a watching world in the comfort of their homes. Children and their parents were dying in Biafra from Harold Wilson’s disease, or kwashiorkor.
There Was Achebe Country is one of those much-needed stories ever written. Achebe and the rest of his brave compatriots worked tirelessly to establish their country of Biafra. He played a pivotal role in that country, and those of us who directly benefited from those sacrifices are forever grateful. Thanks to great minds, men and women of great character whose sinews seemed to be made of steel, Achebe’s country of Biafra labored in the face of enormous challenges and pain. But then the combined forces of Nigeria, Britain, Russia (formerly USSR), Egypt and the Arab League put a temporary wedge in the path of Achebe’s country’s march towards true greatness. The wedge serves to delay and prolong the melancholy of the citizen Achebe but finally his country that was, and will continue to be.
In part, Achebe waited so long to write his memoirs because he was waiting for Nigeria. After the Biafra defeat, Achebe wanted Nigeria to win and he waited and waited. Forty-two years later he would not wait any longer. Nigeria is hopeless. As soon as Achebe wrote the last word of his memoir, the last deadly nail was driven into the heart of the Nigerian country. That day, Achebe finally carried out the last wishes of his friend and fellow Biafran citizen, Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo. Okigbo had specifically requested in one of his poems that Achebe and others wake him up near the sacrificial altar when the various bits and pieces of the unjust wounds inflicted on him and his Biafran compatriots by Nigerian hatred and intolerance are counted and recounted. unite so that collectively, Biafra’s beautiful and impregnable poem would be finished. With Achebe’s personal narrative of Biafran history on public display, the stars have aligned and the last rituals begin for Okigbo and the other heroes’ final step to Biafran glory.
On a few occasions, Achebe has stated that the problem with Nigeria is mainly bad leadership. Achebe is one of the greatest minds and greatest thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Achebe lived through Nigeria, Biafra and then Nigeria and he knows the truth. Achebe is bold and tough as nails, but on those occasions Achebe, the infallible god, inadvertently massaged the ego of the Nigerian country by trying to be politically correct like mortal mothers do. But Achebe has transcended the elemental weaknesses of mere mortals. Since then, Achebe had ascended to that realm in his native Igbo culture, where after someone has washed his tongue, he cannot lie. So, in his usually clear and engaging language, as he told his personal story in his book There Was a Country, he redeemed himself. Achebe knows the truth, which is that Nigeria’s real problem is that it is a poorly structured country. The problem with Nigeria is the terrible incongruous cultural mix of peoples with no common interests or aspirations. Achebe knows that his country of Biafra succeeded not because of the kind of leadership for Nigeria that he spoke of on those occasions. Achebe’s Biafra succeeded because of the structural makeup 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 fortunately not subject to the difficult dilemma of trying to prove whether the egg came before the chicken or the chicken before the egg. In a successful country, a good structure leads, most of the time, to good leadership. A bad structure or system has always produced bad leadership. This is the problem with Nigeria.
Achebe’s Biafra did not need five hundred years to succeed as many Nigerians have always argued that what it takes to make Nigeria work is time. A year was enough for Achebe and the rest of his people to make Biafra work. There was no need or luxury of time for them to wait. Achebe’s Biafra either worked or it didn’t work in the space of a year. In Achebe’s Biafra they had a common aspiration and dreamed together. But in Nigeria there are too many dreams and everyone dreams of the exclusion of their neighbor. Therefore, Achebe’s Biafra remains the only alternative that will remain.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe in his blog, Rethinking Africa calls Obafemi Awolowo’s buildings “a rapidly crumbling building” in his response to the irrational Awoist critics of Achebe’s recent memoirs. Obafemi Awolowo passed a huge and formidable building. Awolowo was a great Nigerian who gave the country the best he had. Thanks to the courageous efforts of Awolowo and others like Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria survived Biafra’s first threat to divide it. Thanks in part to Awolowo, Nigeria remains a united country today. In general, Awolowo built huge personal and national buildings, but Ekwe-Ekwe describes those intimidating buildings as quickly collapsing in a very short time, why? Many commentators critical of Awolowo and Nigeria have concluded that this is so because the buildings of Awolowo and Nigeria were built on falsehood and genocides and as a result cannot stand. Nigeria is already a collapsed house of cards and the rubble will need to be cleared to allow it to be Achebe’s new country.
Biafra was a republic; a democratic country. Decisions were made collectively. Even the decision to declare the free and independent country of Nigeria was taken after so many consultations and the unanimous agreement of all the provinces that were in the former Eastern Region. That is why Emeka Ojukwu, the then Biafra head of state, is never synonymous with Biafra. Biafra was the entire people of the Eastern Region and Ojukwu was just one individual who played his own role worthily. The people running 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. That’s why Nigeria’s failure hurts Achebe especially. In his heart of hearts, Achebe knows that Nigeria would have worked if…
Yes, there was a country and it will remain the country of Biafra. As always, Achebe wrote honestly and sincerely and only wrote facts and truth. But wouldn’t there be detractors just because Achebe falls into the category of all-time great men and women of character and integrity? That will be unrealistic to contemplate. Detractors abound who envy and viciously attack Achebe for his audacity to choose freedom and independence over slavery, human indignity, and the crime against humanity that befell him and his people. Too many attack without countering the facts of Achebe’s testaments to the genocidal devastations of Biafra by Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro, Yakubu Gowon and Britain’s Harold Wilson. Like court jesters, the attackers risk ridicule in the face of indisputable facts. But what difference does that make, anyway? Achebe was in Biafra in the 1960s and sacrificially dodged bullets and endured the hunger for a better tomorrow for the next generation of his people. Achebe watched in horror and endured the pain of losing two Achebes, friends like Okigbo and many others, to Nigeria’s extreme hatred, intolerance and genocide.
Although very painful, Achebe and others never regretted those sacrifices; they gave their lives for the generation of Achebe’s sons and those who succeeded them. For the Biafrans of Achebe’s day, no sacrifice was too much.
Some of Achebe’s Nigerian critics have called him a Biafra in a Nigerian cape. How right and true. No one who experienced Achebe’s Biafra, even for a day, renounced their citizenship of that country. In fact, all Achebe residents ceased to be Nigerians and renounced their Nigerian citizenship forever, effective May 30, 1967. The late poet and playwright Esiaba Irobi said it even better when he described himself as a citizen of Biafra exiled in Nigeria.
Achebe has gone through very hot crucibles defending and working his country from Biafra. Even if they were throwing flames, Achebe won’t bother with the puny egg-throwers present in their desperate attempt to tarnish his shiny image. Achebe’s position as the eagle atop the tallest iroko is secured and the Lilliputians at the foot of the tree can try all the mischief in his bag of tricks.
The bottom line is: for Achebe and the rest of his people, they know that there was genocide and that there was a country of Biafra. Achebe is the most credible narrator and has said clearly and emphatically that, in part, because there was a genocide, his people were forced to work to establish their own country beginning in 1967.
Now, to the dismay of Achebe’s critics, the world finally accepts, from the testimony of a most reliable witness, that there was genocide in Biafra and that there was a Biafra country. That is the first step. The next is to call the perpetrators of the murderers of the Achebe people to court so that the world, our world, can be made safer through the execution of restorative justice and the process of collective global responsibility. That has been done before.
