by INC Aniebo

…And nobody can deny this is the situation now. I am glad Achebe wrote his memoir. To me it is more relevant than Things Fall Apart. While that book is for educating foreigners; There Was A Country is for us. The circle is complete.

“Why are Igbo governors unable to work and/or plan together?”

The trouble with Chinua Achebe’s memoir is the style in which it was written. Normally, a memoir flows like a story, exposing things and situations one had an inkling of, fleshing out skeletons, if any, after bringing them out of the cupboard, and if it is about a life filled with controversies, generally straightening them out, so that in the end one understands and appreciates that life more. Not so There Was A Country; the book reads like part memoir, part doctoral dissertation.

No consensus

I started these comments about the book long before Achebe died. Buoyed by the usual human ‘knowledge’ that his demise was not imminent, I kept reading many people’s comments on this book so as to avoid repeating them, and more importantly, learn something new that will enrich my comments and make them apposite. I was just about to get to the point of realizing that I should stop reading and write, when the inevitable transition occurred, and changed the thrust of my discourse – I would now be addressing a legend, not a man, an old boy (although most senior ‘please’) a fellow ‘pioneer of modern African literature’, a countryman, a brother.

On second thoughts I do not regret having taken such a long time to write these comments, for I have gained a perspective that will last me the rest of my life – the truth can only be said in jest, otherwise it becomes a dangerous weapon to be used against the teller.

The varied reactions to Chinua Achebe’s memoir run the gamut of what to expect from people whose identity is still ‘in progress’. From the effusions of Odia Ofeimun to the bombast of Wole Soyinka, from the wistfulness of Chimamanda Adichie to the ranting of Femi Fani-Kayode, from the ‘reasoned’ condemnations of Mohammad Jameel Yusha’u to the reverence of Sola Balogun. Achebe had become a truly Nigerian institution, exciting no consensus in anything, any action, yet existing like a pre-ordained entity.

Chimamanda’s comments in her poorly-titled review of the book sums it all up beautifully… “Many are blindingly ethnic, lacking in empathy and most disturbing of all, lacking in knowledge.”

The force that binds

Will we ever be able to change the real nature of the force that binds Nigerians to Nigeria, Igbos to each other and Nigeria, Yorubas to each other… and so on? In a way, Achebe answered this question, even though one commentator in far away New York, USA, found it “excessive” and “more the products of a writer’s jaundiced backward glances than a coming to grips with the reality of what was and what is”.

Pray what is ‘excessive’ or ‘jaundiced’ in requesting that people be held responsible for misconduct, and if found guilty, punished? Or the assertion that “Nigeria’s story has not been, entirely, one long, unrelieved history of despair.

Fifty years after independence, Nigerians have begun to ask themselves the hard questions: How can the state of anarchy be reversed? What do we need to do to bring an end to organized ethnic bigotry?” p.252.

Unfortunately, source profiling has clouded the message contained in Chinua Achebe’s There Was A Country. The main beneficiary of this is the force that will keep us the way we are, longer than it should. By dismissing all Achebe said because he is an Igbo, a Biafran, a liar, accused Awolowo “falsely”, accused the Federal Government “wrongly” and so on, we are guilty of hunting rats while the house is burning. We all know Achebe is not a frivolous writer, yet we cast our hearts in bronze so as not to be affected by his words.

It is our loss. A generation will definitely arise that will unearth his words and make use of them.

Yes, there was a country, but it was unsustainable and collapsed. Even the people who created the country, handed it over ‘on a platter of gold’, preferring to play puppeteer from the safety of their country as their creation went up in flames. Now we are trying to rebuild, after the necessary shedding of blood consecrate the country, but like obdurate children who refuse to learn, who hate history, who profile sources of information, who prefer left-over wine to be kept in their stomachs, rather than in jars, to prevent others from drawing a cupful, we make more mistakes.

Some think more states will solve the problem forgetting we have gone from three, to four, to twelve, to nineteen and now thirty-six, yet the problems increase exponentially; more crime, poverty, violence, ignorance and death.

Things fall apart

The Igbos fought and died for a place of their own. Now they have five states but none works. The people who ran back to their villages where they had no place to stay, now leave in droves for other states, countries, even continents despite the mansions they have built in their villages. Why? The fear that drove them home is now driving them out. Did they not learn any lesson from the civil war? If they did, have they forgotten that Ebe onye bi, ka ona awachi (You develop/maintain where you live)?

Why are Igbo governors unable to work and/or plan together? Why can they not make their contiguous states one seamless “Biafra”? Because the communal ethic Adichie mentioned in her review, is a myth that existed outside Igbo land. Her cousin whom she quoted, was right in saying “Igbo people don’t even send each other”’, or as an Owerri man would haughtily ask,“Do I feed in your house?” (erim ngagi?)

Achebe also confirmed this when he said “the Igbo have no compelling traditional loyalty beyond town or village”’ (p.75). Or as the real Igbo man in Things Fall Apart, Obierika, said to the white man, ‘We have sent for strangers from another village to do it for us…’ (p.149, my emphasis). But non-Igbo Nigerians find this hard to believe because they see only the myth in action not the reality.

Two Igbo men, who would behave like siblings outside Igbo land, would deride, and scorn each other once they are back in Igbo land. For example my town, Umunze in Orumba LGA, Anambra State, had to fight the British in 1914 to prevent being transferred from Okigwe to Awka District all in Igbo land. They lost of course. They have been affiliated with Awka ever since, instead of those they regard as their kith and kin in Imo State.

The Awka indigenes saw them as uncouth fools, and they saw Awka people as selfish, rapacious crooks. Will these people ever be able to work together? The point, and a very relevant one, Achebe made discussing the individualistic nature of the Igbos was “that whenever merit is set aside by prejudice of whatever origin, individual citizens as well as the nation itself are victimized”. (p.78)

The ‘Okonkwo’ in the State House

Achebe confesses that “Christopher Okigbo had begun to talk more and more about Nzeogwu before his enlistment, but I had not listened very closely; the military did not fascinate me as it did him”, and then in his usual classic understatement that said it all, “In hindsight, I wish I had listened – listened for all our sakes”. (p.184)

How indeed I wish he had listened for all our sakes! He would have been a greater force for good in his attempts to help the Biafran situation; he would have ‘perhaps’ exerted some influence on the ‘Okonkwo’ occupying the State House, the man he called “the aristocrat” (There Was A Country p.118).

Adichie was very generous when she said “In Biafra, he (Ojukwu) was a flawed leader, his paranoia and inability to trust those close to him clouded his judgments about the execution of the war, but he was also a man of principle who spoke up forcefully…”

Personally I think Ojukwu was not a leader at all. In fact he was a disaster, and left ndi igbo in a worse position than he met them. He was a puppet-master intent on having complete control of those around him. Even his army commander, Madiebo, whom he selected because of the man’s pliability, complained of being humiliated several times.

Despite Achebe being totally taken by the man who executed the Nigeria/Biafra war, his reservations about some of Ojukwu’s actions shine through. What I regard as the classic example of this was when Ojukwu set up a new group he called The National Guidance Committee that was to “write a kind of constitution for Biafra – a promulgation of the fundamental principles upon which the government and people of Biafra would operate Ojukwu then told me he wanted the new committee to report directly to him, outside the control of the cabinet. I became immediately apprehensive… who would be reporting to whom? And it seemed to me that Ojukwu wanted a hold on the organs of government – these two organs, plus the military – not so much separated but working at a pace and manner of his design”. (p.144)

In spite of this insight, Achebe still went ahead to choose a much larger committee of experts for the task at hand. Their product, “Ahiara Declaration”, sang appropriately the ‘nunc dimittis’ for Biafra. How and why would anyone go about designing furniture for a house (a family house) he had not yet built?

Unfortunately the person who would have answered this question went to his grave without telling us anything.

A complete circle

Another very important point Achebe made and which no one has commented on is the fact that “In many respects Nigeria’s Federal Government 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…. – with impunity”. (p.251)

I have been witness to these massacres from the age of eight. My father was a Nigerian Railway Running Shed Foreman and I lived in whatever town my father was posted – Enugu, Minna, Zaria, Kafanchan, Bukuru, Port-Harcourt and so on.

Joining the army did not protect me from these massacres. I am alive today because I seemed to be one jump ahead of disaster. But this is not right. Nigeria should be getting progressively safer not more dangerous. And nobody can deny this is the situation now. I am glad Achebe wrote his memoir. To me it is more relevant than Things Fall Apart. While that book is for educating foreigners; There Was A Country is for us. The circle is complete.

 

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