For forty-odd years, Chinua Achebe’s 2012 book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, remained in the works. She took so long to write because the story is too personal and too painful to write. The Biafran genocide took place from 1966 against the Igbo and other inhabitants of the southeast (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 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 trickery. 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 much detail. 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 incidents and equally important details crowd 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 finally the story is written and the world is richer as a result. And a grateful world salutes Achebe’s courage.
The story of Biafra is one of the most painful of all the stories in history and writing from within 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 in households all over the world and Biafra became the first TV war and what people saw was just too heartbreaking and scary and gave the world a gross prediction of what is to come if you don’t do anything to change it. Skeleton-like children and others with distended stomachs and inquisitive eyes met the gaze, uncomfortably, of a watching world in the comfort of their dwellings. Children and their parents were dying in Biafra of Harold Wilson’s disease, or kwashiorkor.
There Was a Country of Achebe is one of those much-needed stories that have been written. Achebe and the rest of his brave countrymen worked tirelessly to establish their country of Biafra. He played a critical role in that country and those of us who directly benefited from those sacrifices are eternally grateful. Thanks to great minds, men and women of great character whose nerves seemed to be made of steel, Achebe’s country of Biafra worked through enormous challenges and pain. But then the combined forces of Nigeria, Britain, Russia (former USSR), Egypt and the Arab League put a temporary wedge in the way of Achebe’s country’s march to true greatness. The wedge serves to delay and prolong the melancholy of citizen Achebe but ultimately the country of him that was, and will continue to be.
In part, Achebe waited so long to write his memoir 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 final deadly nail was driven into the heart of the Nigerian country. On that day, Achebe finally fulfilled the last wishes of his friend and fellow Biafran, 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 fragments and aspects of the unjust wounds inflicted on him and his fellow Biafrans by Nigeria’s hatred and intolerance are told and recounted. unite so that collectively, the beautiful and impregnable poem of Biafra would be finished. With the public display of Achebe’s personal narrative of Biafran history, the stars have aligned and the last rituals begin for Okigbo and the other heroes of the final step to Biafran glory.
On a few occasions, Achebe stated that the problem with Nigeria is primarily poor leadership. Achebe is one of the greatest minds and greatest thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Achebe lived in Nigeria, Biafra and then Nigeria and he knows the truth. Achebe is bold and tough as a nail, but on those occasions Achebe, the infallible god, inadvertently massaged the ego of the Nigerian country by trying to be politically correct as 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 generally 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 the real problem with Nigeria is that it is a poorly structured country. The problem with Nigeria is the terribly incongruous cultural mix of peoples with no common interests or aspirations. Achebe knows that his country of Biafra triumphed not because of the kind of leadership for Nigeria that he spoke of on those occasions. Achebe’s Biafra was successful 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 gives way, 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 is needed 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 excluding their neighbor. Therefore, Achebe’s Biafra remains the only alternative that will remain.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe on his blog, Rethinking Africa calls the Obafemi Awolowo buildings “a rapidly crumbling building” in his response to the irrational Awoist critics of Achebe’s recent memoir. Obafemi Awolowo left behind a huge and tremendous building. Awolowo was a great Nigerian who gave the country the best he had. Thanks to the valiant 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 rapidly collapsing in a very short time, why? Many critical analysts of Awolowo and Nigeria have concluded that this is so because the buildings of Awolowo and Nigeria were built on falsehood and genocide 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 Nigeria a free and independent country was made 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 head of state of Biafra, is never synonymous with Biafra. Biafra was the entire people of the Eastern Region and Ojukwu was just one individual who worthily played his own role. The people running Biafra were the best minds and Achebe is pre-eminent 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. Deep in his heart, Achebe knows that Nigeria would have worked if…
Yes, there was a country and it will continue to be the country of Biafra. As always, Achebe wrote with honesty and sincerity and only wrote facts and truth. But wouldn’t there be detractors just because Achebe belongs to the category of great men and women of character and integrity of all time? That will be unrealistic to contemplate. Detractors abound who passionately envy and attack Achebe viciously for his audacity in choosing freedom and independence over slavery, human indignity and the crime against humanity that befell him and his people. There are many who attack without countering the facts of Achebe’s testaments on the genocidal devastations of Biafra by Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro, Yakubu Gowon and the British Harold Wilson. Like court jesters, attackers risk ridicule in the face of incontestable facts. But what difference does that make, anyway? Achebe was in Biafra in the 1960s and sacrificially dodged bullets and endured a 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 children and those who succeeded them. For the Biafrans of Achebe’s time, no sacrifice was too much.
Some of Achebe’s Nigerian critics have called him a Biafra in a Nigerian cape. How accurate 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, as of 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 been through very hot crucibles defending and working for his country of Biafra. Even if they were throwing flames, Achebe won’t bother with the puny egg throwers present in their desperate attempt to tarnish the glowing image of him. Achebe’s position as the eagle atop the tallest iroko is assured and the Lilliputians at the foot of the tree get to try all the shenanigans 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 clearly and emphatically stated that, in part, because there was a genocide, his people were forced to work to establish their own country starting in 1967.
Now, to the dismay of Achebe’s critics, the world finally accepts, from the testimony of one most reliable witness, that there was genocide in Biafra and that there was a country of Biafra. 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.
