The heat over Achebe’s war memoir

Please allow me to write this rejoinder to your article in The Sun of 24 October 2012. Professor Achebe is no mean man. He is Africa’s leading novelist, its foremost writer, a nationalist of great stature; he has made his name; he is a genius, a legend and a very, very, rare bird, a leader of men. He is by all criteria an accomplished man who has left an indelible mark on the sand of time. I respect him, I would normally be proud of him as a Nigerian, an African, and an intellectual. He deserves more. There was a country is his history of Nigerian Civil War that I have ever read; I have read only a few books on the War. My brother Robert, I have read a lot of comments and commentaries written in reaction to the excerpt of the book as released by The Guardian of London; Only a few, very few of these reactions were comforting; I am worried that if the residual animosities between the two dominant southern Nigerian races are as acerbic as betrayed in the reactions, then we have problem as a nation. Whether anybody likes it or not, these two groups provide between them the critical fabric of what remains as the Nigerian project. But, let us be honest with ourselves, the animosity is not mutual, you know what I mean. In my field, we say that facts are facts, facts are sacrosanct, facts are sacred, but comments are free, i.e. interpretations of data, of facts are far from sacred; interpretations area function of many factors not the least the interpreter, his beliefs, his prejudices, his experiences, his involvement, his environment and on which side of the facts he finds himself. Interpretations are not necessarily the truth; it can be the truth if the facts are given whole and not in part or out of context and if the interpreter succeeds in divesting himself of all influences that could bear adversely on his objectivity, that could challenge the yardstick and premise of his argument and irretrievably injure or detract from the quality of his interpretation of the facts. Again in my subject, an event or an action may have more than one meaning or interpretation; only one of such interpretations may be the truth while the others are no more than approximations to the truth; then which is the truth becomes probabilistic; your view may have 99.9% chance of being the truth, but your view is still a chance. Indeed, some of the interpretation may be quite a farce, it is all probabilistic. Prof. Achebe’s volunteered facts of the War but he went beyond telling only the truth and nothing but the truth. He gave the truth, only a part of the truth that fitted his thesis and would help to sustain his prejudices and assist his bias. Fact: there was pogrom in the North, an ethnic cleansing of a sort, a very bestial, horrific, savage mass killing that could not be justified by any level of grievance; but it was a fact that the victims of the first coup on January 15, 1966 were virtually of Northern and Yoruba origins; fact also that Gen. Ironsi wasted a rare opportunity to pacify the wronged and build a new Nigeria and write his name into history; instead, he seized the opportunity to act an Igbo supremacy script through the unification decree, he refused to release Chief Awolowo an act that would have won Yoruba heart and which expectation was one reason why the Yoruba welcomed the January coup in the first place until it dawned on the race that Ironsi would rather keep Awo in Calabar prison, to lend credibility to the charge that the coup was an Igbo affair that spared Igbo political and military leaders except the quartermaster general killed because he refused to hand over key to the armoury; so the story went. The pogrom in the North was most terrible and cannot be excused for any reason. Hence, the declaration of Biafra for self- protection could not be faulted. Revered Achebe talked of the pogrom but did not blame the antecedence of the pogrom. Prof. Achebe quoted Awo as to the declaration that if Biafra for any reason had to go, the Yoruba would also. This is a truth. But the writer glossed over other facts that the Yoruba wanted to go but there were no Yoruba in the military to prosecute a secession agenda; secession would no doubt have caused a debilitating diversion for the occupation northern military force in Yoruba land but it would also have meant a war Yoruba could not win. Indeed, the typical Yoruba was sympathetic to the Biafran cause to the extent that some Yoruba communities e.g. Ilesha were contributing money to be donated to the Biafran cause; I knew this because I was then a young graduate teacher at Ilesha. So the charge of a treacherous Yoruba would not hold under any well reasoned test. I left Ilesha at the early stages of hostility. I was in Lagos, I know that the weight of Yoruba opinion was to wait on events, play some neutrality in the hope that soon the Igbo would soon have their way. That opinion changed when Ore was invaded and the view was sold and bought that the Igbo military was about taking over Yoruba land that was virtually being ‘defended’ by alien northern force. Prof. Achebe argued the pro-Igbo thesis turning blind eyes to the Yoruba argument. Fact: the war turned out to be genocide of a kind; a very highly regrettable human act of inhumanity to man. The charge is that Awo engineered stoppage of supplies to the war victims. Awo engineered supplying food and materials to the opponent military not to the civilians; indirectly the Biafran leader would not accept supply through a land corridor on the reason that it would allow the enemy to mass poison Biafrans and hasten Igbo ethnic cleansing; the federal authority also rejected flying supplies by air for fear of flying war rather than food materials to the enemy. Both sides had their reason and their suspicions; but Biafra was the victim and a more reasonable course of action should have conceded the federal authority’s option even on basis of a trial; that was the most realistic, pragmatic option; Achebe told the whole story but faulted the federal side and implicitly exonerated Biafra from blame. During the war months, there was nowhere in Yoruba land where any Igbo were molested unless by the occupying, invading Northern military men. Rather, the Igbo and his property were protected; I earlier said that some Yoruba communities were indeed contemplating sending financial assistance to Biafra. It is a sin, an act of ingratitude and big wrong to accuse the Yoruba of wanting to obliterate the Igbo race or weaken the Igbo race in order to wrest command of the economy from the Igbo, who they have perceived as an inveterate enemy. No, it is most an unfair charge. It is sending the serpent to harm a benefactor who earlier was sending the rat to you for your consumption. The thing is that the rat from the benefactor is a good meat for the snake who then returns to its sender for the next meal; woe to the sender if he finds no meat to meet the new need of the serpent. Prof. Achebe seems the typical Igbo in his attitude to the Yoruba. The typical Yoruba could be lazy, less industrious than the Igbo colleague, less resourceful but definitely less belligerent, more care free and typically inward looking and, until recently very worried at the sight of blood. Prof. Achebe painted the picture of the Igbo as the race, leading in all areas of human endeavour. Of course, the Igbo is a great race, typically brilliant, bright, full of ideas, adventurous, impatient and zero-tolerant of fools or the sluggard; but they do not have a monopoly of brilliance and developed mind. Prof. Achebe impressed me from his book as an Igbo supremacist always dictating the way Nigeria should go and always being the first in all that is good about Nigeria. It smacks of arrogance to claim monopolies even for your race. Yes, there were and there are eminent Igbo in politics, industries, commerce, sports, education, etc. But there were in Nigeria, nationalists before Igbo nationalists, lawyers before Igbo lawyers, doctors before Igbo doctors, bishops before Igbo bishops, Nobel laureate before Igbo laureate; they were the first, supreme in many areas of human endeavour but they were not the first in all. Let us acknowledge each other, let us respect each other, let us understand each other, let us love each other let us accommodate each other. Even if we go our separate ways, mutual recognition of each other will be necessary for our common good. Prof. Bayo Bamiduro