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Writing my final year thesis on The Nigerian Civil War Literature, focusing on Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and
Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty exposed
me to some elements of the Biafran war I did not know. My father and my
grandmother always told me stories about the conflict, which saw over 2,000,000
people dead. However, I was not fortunate to hear my grandfather’s side of the
story – he was long dead before I was born.
Now Achebe is back with an extremely important document. I
was captivated by the subtitle of the book; a personal history of Biafra.
Fortunately, a good friend of mine sent me a copy and I read the book while I
was convalescing after an accident.
Achebe starts the book with an introduction of a time before
his time, because according to an Igbo proverb, “a man who does not know where
the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.” He talks
briefly about the discovery of Africa by Europe four to five hundred years ago,
then the transatlantic slave trade, to the Berlin Conference of 1885, which
began colonialism in Africa.
Achebe begins the story with his coming of age “in an earlier
and, in some respects, a more innocent time.” He says; “I do this both to bring
readers unfamiliar with this landscape into it at a human level and be open
about some of the sources of my own perspective.”
The book is divided into four parts. Part One talks about
Achebe’s birth and coming into a world at “cultural crossroads”, where the
clash between African and Western civilization had generated deep struggles
between languages, cultures and religion. He talks about his orphaned father, a
clergyman, and his mother, whom he says is “the strong, silent type.” Brought
up in an environment where Christianity was trying to get its foothold and
African religion was striving to survive despite the new religion, Achebe
becomes a little skeptic about his parents embracing customs and beliefs of strangers
from thousands of miles away, the same strangers who “delivered us to the
transatlantic slave trade and unleashed darkness in our world.” These struggles
between the old and the new would come to be the themes inherent in some of his
early novels. He goes on to talk about his school days and the publication of
his first book, Things Fall Apart, a novel
which has sold 12,000,000 copies worldwide and translated into more than 50
different languages. The call for independence began, and years later a new
republic Nigeria is formed, run by Nigerians themselves. That independence was
literally the beginning of troubles even though there was optimism in the air then
in the new country. Within six years of independence, corruption and misrule
was at its peak, as public servants and government officials helped themselves
with money for the nation. In 1966, there was a coup, one that many labeled an
Igbo coup. The coup resulted to an organized massacre of the Igbos, mainly in
the Northern part of the country. The Nigerian Government did nothing about the
massacres. Even in Lagos, the country’s capital, things were not different, as
many Igbos were returning to the East. Achebe has this to say; “As many of us
packed our belongings to return east, some of the people we had lived with for
years, some for decades, jeered and said, ‘Let them go…’ I realized suddenly
that I had not been living in my home; I had been living in a strange place.”
July 29, 1966 came a counter coup, led by General Murtala Mohammed which ousted
Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi from power and saw him killed. This coup had other
Igbo officers and civilians killed in large numbers. By this time, there were
calls for independence by the Igbos, and so the republic of Biafra was
established, precipitating the start of the Nigeria/Biafra War.
Part Two and Three deals with the war. Achebe talks about the
allies of both nations, the neutrals, the United Kingdom and the role they all played.
He also talks about his travelling as an ambassador on behalf of Biafra, his
nation. One particular account I found very interesting was his meeting and
discussion with Senegalese President, Leopold Sedar Senghor, who was a poet
too. His narrative about his family moving from place to place due to air raids
and the invading Nigerian forces, though distant, is very touching. There were
many instances of near-misses. He talks about starting the Citadel Press with
his close friend, Christopher Okigbo. Later Okigbo disappears and joins the
army. While driving from Enugu to Ogidi one afternoon, Achebe hears the death
of his friend death on the radio. By this time, Biafra was suffering a setback because
of the economic starvation and blockade. Here, the Nigerian government uses starvation
as a weapon of war, going against the Geneva Convention of 1949. The blockade
resulted in the death of over 2,000,000 people, especially women and children.
In the last part of the book, Achebe laments Nigeria’s
present situation: corruption, indiscipline, greediness of leaders, debauchery,
social injustice, etc. He also points that “Nigeria’s Federal Government’s has
always tolerated terrorism. For over half a century the federal government has
turned a blind eye to waves of ferocious and savage massacres of its citizens –
mainly Christian Southerners; mostly Igbos or indigenes of the Middle Belt; and
others – with impunity.’ In this last part, Achebe does not just lament his
country’s predicaments but also provides a solution. In his own words;
First we have to nurture and strengthen our democratic institutions – and
strive for the freest and fairest elections possible… Under the rubric of democracy,
a free press can strive and a strong justice system can flourish… A new
patriotic consciousness has to be developed, not one based simply on the
well-worn notion of unity of Nigeria or faith in Nigeria often touted by our
corrupt leaders, but one based on an awareness of the responsibility of the
leaders to the led – on the sacredness of their anointment to lead – and
disseminated by civil society, schools, and intellectuals.
Achebe also talks also about the artist as the eye through which
the society sees. This reminds me of Wole Soyinka’s book, The Man Died, and the famous quotation; “the man dies in him who
keeps silent in the face of tyranny.’ Growing up, I read many books by first
and second generation Nigerian writers. Most of these books laments and talks
about the Nigerian state, in good ways that do not bore in reader. Corruption,
poverty, and social injustice are mostly the themes inherent in these books. In
a country where businesspersons, politicians, generals, and other
officials hoard the country's wealth and power at the expense of the working
class, a country where free press doesn’t thrive, these writers can only
protest by their books. As Achebe already states, he is a
protest writer. Festus Iyayi is another good protest writer. His three
novels, Violence, The Contract, and Heroes, as well as his
collection of short stories, Awaiting Court Martial, expose the abject
penury and disenfranchisement that constitutes the social reality of most
Nigerians. Achebe goes on to say that “...If the society is ill the writer has a responsibility to
point it out. If the society is healthier, the writer’s job is different.”
Overall, the book was an interesting read. I enjoyed it, but
I longed for more of Achebe experiences during the war. Most of the stories in
Part 2 and 3 seemed like stories I have heard repeatedly. I wanted to hear more
of Achebe’s story, and not the war story. Although a satisfactory narrative, I
was hungry for more, which made me read the book in a slow pace as if I was
eating a hot meal. Somehow, I did not want the book to finish.
The chapters are brilliantly written in Achebe’s
conversational prose style, and interspersed with poems, which, although I have
read before, provided much of the emotional connection that held me to the
book. These poems, in my opinion were put in the right place or the right time,
and if the narrative did not hook me well, the poems did.
I recommend this book to all, and anyone interested in the
history of not only Biafra, but also Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Everybody
who has read Professor Achebe’s other books ought to read this one too.
Kaykay Obi
Hi, guys. Been a long time. I was involved in an crash, fractured my right leg. I'm recuperating at the moment, but I believe I'm back to normal blogging. I miss blogging here; miss you guys most. Posting my accident story next.
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