THERE WAS, INDEED, A COUNTRY

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PROFESSOR CHINUA ACHEBE

“Anger,” wrote Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the American author and humourist, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, “Is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

I agree.
The Yoruba intelligentsia are angry and up in arms against Albert Chinualumogu Achebe over his memoir, “There was a country: A Personal History of Biafra,” which was published in the United Kingdom last week. Because they are angry, rather than present facts and figures that will contradict the content of the book, they are abusing his person and trying to diminish the accomplishments of a man whose position in history is already secured.

Knowing Achebe, I will be surprised if he didn’t know that the book will elicit very strong response and name-calling. But he is not a man who shies away from the truth simply because his views will be deemed controversial. So, all the anger will most likely hurt the purveyors rather than Achebe.

To be sure, there is nothing in the book which is the author’s account of his personal experiences during the war, excerpts of which were published in the Guardian of London last week, which is not already in the public domain. But I knew that Achebe’s intervention will make all the difference. His huge moral credibility will indubitably lend credence to the story, hence the uproar.

Achebe’s crime, I guess, is his psycho-analysis of the revered Chief Obafemi Awolowo, then Federal Commissioner for Finance and Vice Chairman of the wartime Federal Cabinet, and his attempt to interpret the late sage’s motive in initiating some of the policies of the General Yakubu Gowon regime that decimated the Igbo in the 30-month fratricidal war.

One of such policies was the cruel adoption of starvation as a legitimate instrument of war by the Nigerian government, a policy which led to the slow and painful death of hundreds of thousands of Igbo, particularly children and women.

“It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people,” wrote Achebe. “There is, on the surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbo at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose – Nigeria-Biafra war– his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation – eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.”

This is a weighty allegation against a man held in awe, literally worshipped by a significant number of the Nigerian population. And to expect that it would go without an equally strong rebuttal would be the height of naivety. And the rebuttals have come in torrents.

But in all this brouhaha, no one has said that Awolowo was not the architect of the starvation policy. And the reason is simple. He was. Even the sage in his lifetime acknowledged that the policy was his brainchild. In a town hall interview in Abeokuta prior to the 1983 general election, Awolowo, who was the Presidential candidate of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), explained how he came about the policy.

His words: “I decided to stop sending the food there. In the process the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers will suffer most.” It was a decision which he took after he visited “liberated” Calabar, Enugu and Port Harcourt, a visit which he claimed even Gowon hadn’t the courage to make, and despite the warning from friends that his kinsman, Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle, may kill him if he went there.

In the interview, Awolowo said of kwashiorkor victims. “If you see a kwashiorkor victim, you will never like war to be waged. Terrible sight in Enugu, in Port Harcourt, not many in Calabar, but mainly in Enugu and Port Harcourt.” What did he do after witnessing firsthand the pitiable condition of Igbo children dying of malnutrition? He decided to “stop sending the food there” because he found out the food sent to Biafra by international humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross and CARITAS was used in feeding the soldiers “so that they were able to continue fighting.”

Awolowo said he thought Biarian soldiers eating food “was a very dangerous policy,” because he didn’t “intend the food” delivered by international organizations in spite of, not because of, the Nigerian government, “for soldiers.”

And because no one can “go behind the line to stop the soldiers from ambushing the vehicles that were carrying the food,” Awolowo said he “decided to stop sending the food there.” Despite the heartrending condition of kwashiorkor victims even when food was coming in, which the sage saw, with thousands already dead, he decided to totally blockade food aid, knowing full well the dire consequences on the already beleaguered civilian population, if only to get at the soldiers in the war front.

This was Awolowo’s explanation of what he did during the war. So, what is the whole noise over Achebe’s new book about? Could it then be that Achebe’s crime is having the guts to interpret what he thought was Awolowo’s motive in formulating the scotched earth policies that decimated Ndigbo?

I have heard many people say that all is fair in war and whatever you do to gain asymmetry over your enemy is allowed. But, is it? If starvation is an internationally accepted instrument of war, how come the United Nations has agencies whose sole purpose is to ensure that food aid reaches populations in conflict zones? If all is fair in war, why are people tried for war crimes?

The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) said the book is a call to war. And I ask; Is Nigeria, literally speaking, not in a state of war? Do we really have a country so-called?

And in taking a swipe at Achebe, some have argued that “some things are better left unsaid.”

Perhaps!
But the fact remains that a people that refuse to come to terms with their past, no matter how sordid, are likely to continue plumbing the depths of mediocrity. An example of such country is Nigeria. We need a catharsis, a genuine process of releasing strong feelings, a relief from anger. How else can we have that cathartic experience we need if this country is to make any progress if we refuse to confront our past, pretending that all is well when deep down we harbour age-long animosities?

Achebe should be applauded for the courage to speak out. What he said is the opinion of many Igbo. Agreed, as Twain further observed, “In matters concerning religion and politics, a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s,” but Nigerians must reconcile with each and the way to do that is not to pretend that our actions or inactions individually and as groups have not impacted negatively on others.

Our undoing, in my humble opinion, is our penchant to live in denial. Like the ostrich, we bury our heads in the sand, comforted in the illusion of our selective amnesia.

But, most importantly, by attacking the messenger, we miss the message. The core message in Achebe’s new book is not what Awolowo did against the Igbo. Achebe is far too intelligent to make that the essence of the book.

By saying there was a country, Achebe is only lamenting that we no longer have a country so called. The false image and social injustice that promote the cult of mediocrity, which is Nigeria’s bane is the issue Achebe addressed in his latest book.

As he had done in his previous interventions, this book is a call to action. It is not about Awolowo, it is about Nigeria; about the way forward for a country that has lost its soul.

That is what he means when he says, “What has constantly escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that mediocrity destroys the very fabric of a country as surely as war – ushering in all sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption and debauchery. Nations enshrine mediocrity as their modus operandi, and create the fertile ground for the rise of tyrants and other base elements of the society, by silently dismantling systems of excellence because they do not immediately benefit one specific ethnic , racial, political, or specific interest group. That, in my humble opinion, is precisely where Nigeria finds itself today.”

For a country that claims to be searching for solutions to its myriad of problems, Achebe, as he is wont to do, has come to the rescue. Hauling tones of abuse at him won’t vitiate the potency of his message, which is, to progress, Nigeria must dismantle the culture of mediocrity – the only end the war of attrition against the Igbo served.

Written By Ikechukwu Amaechi
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