This review was first published in the December, 2012 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine
.
There Was A Country A
Personal History Of Biafra
By Chinua Achebe
The Penguin Press, 2012
Hardcover, 258 pages
ISBN 978-1-59420-482-1
List: $27.95 Amazon: $16.63
In the late 1960s, for a very short
span, there was an episode that gripped much of the world’s conscience. A small bit of land holding millions of
people was surrounded. The
populace was being starved to death.
By early 1970 the war that precipitated the catastrophe was all
over. Without any orders from an
Orwellian ministry, for most of the world the struggle was consigned to the
“Memory Hole.”
If one should ask today who
remembers Biafra, it is doubtful one in ten living during the period could
answer affirmatively. Probably no
one born after 1970 has ever heard of it.
I am part of the first TV
generation and yield to no one in shortness of attention span. Yet the war between the secessionist
state of Biafra and Nigeria is etched in my mind. How is it that an average American thinks often about what
is now an obscure moment in time?
When the events in question were
happening, I was a college student.
Well, in truth, not much of one.
I did my best not to over exert myself, but had a weakness for a good
lecturer. Justin Vojtek, professor
of history, was an artist and in spite of the required effort I would be in his
class.
The course would be a departure
from the regular curriculum.
Colleges were beginning to take up African history. The assigned reading included four
novels by a man from the eastern region of Nigeria, Chinua Achebe. He would be intimately involved in the
events of the war.
Achebe was an Igbo. Of all the various ethnic groups the
British met as they patched together Nigeria, the Igbo were the most
enthusiastic about taking up what the colonial regime offered. This does not mean they forgot who and
what they were, but they were changed by the experience. The assigned novels reflected that
change and its impact on his people.
Two of the novels, Things Fall
Apart and Arrow of God concern themselves with how two important men are done
in by geopolitical forces they do not understand. Ezeulu is a priest in the traditional religion, an
arrow of god. He is steadfast in
his service to his deity. His
interaction with the colonial administration upsets the schedule that will
signal the harvest. Despite his
faithfulness, the people turn to Christianity, as it will offer a dispensation.
Things Fall Apart is the story of a
strong man also done in by the arrival of the English. Okonkwo is a man of status among his
people. He wishes to face the
colonialists fairly and with honor.
The cold machine that is the new regime does not understand him and his
people. His dignity taken, he ends
his life.
The third novel is the story of a
young man of promise, Obi, who has obtained a smart university education and
yet that does not prepare him for all the perils of the greater world. Nor is he able to escape the problems
of the old as he falls in love with an Osu or outcaste women.
The last book of the assigned
quartet, A Man of the People, may be his most known work. This is because of his famous
“prediction” of the first coup d’état.
The book chronicles the corruption that led to the military
takeover. It did not foresee the
breakup of the country.
There Was A Country is not only the
story of Biafra, as one cannot tell that tale without consideration of all that
preceded it. He describes the
colonial regime and the Igbo’s enthusiasm for learning and achievement. Also, the independence struggle and his
people’s part in it are chronicled.
The leadership of the men of his ethnic group was integral, if not the
sine qua non.
Unfortunately, the Igbo success in
the independence movement as well as business, education and the arts bred resentment. The envy of the other ethnic groups led
to pogroms and an exodus of his people from non–Igbo regions. Achebe documents the resulting decline
in relations leading to the declaration of a Biafran republic,
“And the war came,” as Lincoln put
it in his second inaugural.
Whether or not he intended it, Achebe’s account has the flavor of
horrible inevitability. With
international collusion, Nigeria had overwhelming force. They surrounded Biafra and squeezed it
to the end. Yet, despite
bombardment and blockade and starvation, the Igbo built a republic that
functioned as complete state until the surrender.
Poignant is Achebe’s account of the
life and death of Christopher Okigbo.
An accomplished poet, among other qualities, he set up a publishing house
with Achebe. When the war started,
he enlisted and yet continued to work with the publishing business when time
and duty permitted. Made a major,
Okigbo was always in the thick of battle.
Though not a callow youth when killed, neither was he an old man. Still, Yeat’s line about the death of a
young friend comes to mind, “What made us dream he could comb grey hair?”
The war ended, but the suffering
continued for a time. Eventually,
the author rejoined the political process to no great success. The final part of the book outlines the
situation as it is.
As a reader, the conclusion I draw
is my own. The suppression of
Biafra was one of the great crimes of the last century and that is saying
something. Nigeria and Africa are
mired in corruption and the plethora of resources makes it worse. Maybe the Igbo would not have made Port
Harcourt a banking center or another Singapore. Certainly, they would have managed the oil wealth more
efficiently and with less corruption than the Nigerian state does now, to the
benefit of the whole continent.
Achebe is a fine stylist and his
treatment of the subject matter is valuable, yet I suspect this book will be
soon forgotten by an incurious public.
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