topics: |  history | nigeria | lit | |

This is a history of the Biafra conflict, pitting the Igbo community against traditional Norther Nigerian (Hausa/Fulani) domination.

Achebe was at one point an ambassador for the Biafran nation.

The book opens with his childhood, spent in a large family unit, where his mother is praised for her gentle will.

Interestingly, a few months before the coup of January 1967 that started these events, Achebe had published The Man of the People, a novel depicting vividly a military coup in a west african nation.

This coup is widely perceived as an Igbo coup, since the leading officers were mostly Igbo But Achebe underlines some dichotimies:

Superficially it was understandable to conclude that this was indeed “an Igbo coup.” However, scratch a little deeper and complicating factors are discovered: One of the majors was Yoruba, and Nzeogwu himself was Igbo in name only. Not only was he born in Kaduna, the capital of the Muslim North, he was widely known as someone who saw himself as a Northerner, spoke fluent Hausa and little Igbo, and wore the Northern traditional dress when not in uniform. In the end the Nzeogwu coup was crushed by the man who was the highest-ranking Igbo officer in the Nigerian army, Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi.5

Ironsi went on to form a military government. However, he was killed in July that year, and a counter coup by Northerners, resulted in mass killings of Igbos, and the eventual secession of Biafra.

Excerpts

Death of Okigbo, August, 1967

I was driving from Enugu to Ogidi one afternoon, where I lived following the
bombing, with my car radio tuned to Lagos. Like all people caught in a modern
war, we had soon become radio addicts. We wanted to hear the latest from the
fronts...  Radio Kaduna was notorious as the mouthpiece of the Nigerian
federal government; it only reported Nigerian military victories and
successes...

The Biafran forces had just suffered a major setback in the northern sector
of the war with the loss of the university town of Nsukka. ...

I was only half listening to the radio now when suddenly Christopher Okigbo’s
name stabbed my slack consciousness into panic life. “Rebel troops wiped out
by gallant Federal forces,” the announcement proclaimed. Among the rebel
officers killed: Major Christopher Okigbo.

It’s rather different when a soldier is killed in battle — they get the
body. I don’t know what happens, but if they can identify him, and if they
think they can make capital out of it, they immediately announce it. The
killing of officers is something of which they are very proud. Christopher
was a major.

I pulled up at the roadside.  The open parkland around Nachi stretched away
in all directions. Other cars came and passed. Had no one else heard the
terrible news?

When I finally got myself home and told my family, my three-year-old son,
Ike, screamed: ‘Daddy don’t let him die!’ Ike and Christopher had been
special pals. When Christopher came to the house the boy would climb on his
knees, seize hold of his fingers and strive with all his power to break them
while Christopher would moan in pretended agony. ‘Children are wicked little
devils,’ he would say to us over the little fellow’s head, and let out more
cries of feigned pain.


---

The Nigerian pilots approaching their chosen targets would often switch off
the engines of the planes, then fly very low—treetop level—before they would
begin the bombing onslaught. One could see that the plane crew was pushing
out these bombs with their hands, tossing them out from an open aircraft door
or shaft!

from Review by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

		London Review of Books

Nigeria, at independence from British rule in 1960, was called the Giant of
Africa. With a large population, an educated elite and many natural
resources, especially oil, Nigeria was supposed to fly the flag of democratic
success. It did not, and it is clear now, in retrospect, that it could not
possibly have done so. Colonial rule, as a government model, was closer to a
dictatorship than a democracy.

[One wonders how India managed to avoid the despotism inherent in colonial
rule.  As a nation, I think we need to be more grateful to Nehru, who held
strong on the democratic promise (though he did promote his daughter). ]

Nigeria was a young nation, created in 1914, as Nigerian
children would learn in history class in the endlessly repeated
sentence: ‘Lord Frederick Lugard amalgamated the northern and
southern protectorates to form one country and his wife gave it the
name Nigeria.’

It is debatable whether, at independence, Nigeria was a nation at
all. The amalgamation was an economic policy; the British colonial
government needed to subsidise the poorer North with income from the
resource-rich South. With its feudal system of emirs, beautiful
walled cities, and centralised power systems, the North was familiar
to Lord Lugard – not unlike the Sudan, where he had previously
worked. In the South, the religions were more diverse, the power
systems more diffuse. 	 

[...]

In the years since the war, Okigbo has become an icon to writers throughout
the continent: venerated, enmeshed in myth, his death a striking example of
the great tragedy of the war. Achebe almost died too. Before the war started,
when Igbo people were under siege in Lagos, soldiers raided his house and
only just missed him. Later, his home and his office were bombed, and later
still the Biafran army set up an armoury in his porch overnight; his family
woke to the sound of shelling and knew it was time to flee.

Achebe is the most widely read African author in the world...  This is a book
for Achebe’s admirers, or for those not unfamiliar with his work. 

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