There Was a Country: A Memoir

by Chinua Achebe

  The Federal Military Government cannot claim to be genuinely interested in the progress and welfare of the Nigerian people while at the same time inflicting the bloodiest warfare on the people of Nigeria and employing unscrupulous foreign mercenaries in a total war that really destroys hundreds of our people and the economy of our nation. . . .

  The people of Biafra have a right to fight a Government that has constantly treated its people to the most savage forms of brutality and persists in denying these people its fundamental human rights while claiming to represent other interests. It is my view that the people of Biafra were prepared to remain part of the nation into which they have for so many years invested their resources of manpower and material and with which they had the closest social ties. Provided the people of Biafra could live within such a nation under a Government that truly represents all sections of its people and truly tries to pursue such measures as are designed to promote the welfare of all Nigerians irrespective of tribe or religion [sic] [sentence as broadcast]. It is the remnants of the old Nigerian Army that broke away in July that now threatens the Nigerian nation. This Northern army is now under the power and control of a group of Northern feudalists who have as their aim the total conquest of Nigeria. The Federal Military Government, having been brought to power and control by that army, is playing to that end. Hence policies are inevitably directed toward achieving the objectives of the Northern feudalists who control that army. . . .

  It is my idea that the peaceful settlement of the Nigerian problem will be readily achieved when that fragment of the Nigerian Army now at the disposal of the Northern feudalists has been completely disarmed. Toward this end, the Liberation Army is irrevocably committed. It is not at all an invasion, and it is not intended to promote the domination of any group of the Nigerian people by any other group through the presence of the Liberation Army. I wish to stress once again what I said during the press conference and previously on the radio, that the movement of this Army into the Mid-West is not a conquest. It is also not an invasion. It is to enable the people of the Mid-West to see the Nigerian problem in its proper perspective. I firmly believe that the people of the Mid-West would prefer to be able to declare their stand in the conflict that has arisen in Nigeria free from any [pressure] either from the North or from anywhere. I believe that the people of the Mid-West would like to be given an opportunity to state their case, free from the coercive influences due to the presence of Northern troops. It is my view that the political future of Nigeria rests with all the people of Nigeria. It has become a matter of great concern to me, however, to be informed that certain ethnic groups are jubilating as a result of the presence of the Liberation Army in this Region. As a consequence, I also understand that certain other ethnic groups are feeling depressed and frustrated. I wish to assure all ethnic groups in the Mid-West that the achievement of the Liberation Army does not give any ethnic group an advantage over any other. I wish also to appeal to all ethnic groups to exercise restraint and humility and not to indulge in acts which may result in confusion, bringing distress to a large number of our people. Any misbehavior on the part of any group of persons will give rise to a chain of unpleasant reactions. . . .

  I am informed that since the Liberation Army came into the Mid-West a number of civil servants have become so frightened that they have either refused to come to their places of work or reported only for a few hours and then left before the closing time. I wish to take this opportunity to appeal to all civil servants to return to work not later than 15th August 1967, and to assure them of their safety. Those, however, who fail to report on this day will be in danger of permanently losing their jobs. . . .

  While on the question of cooperation among the various ethnic groups in the Mid-West, I would like to stress that all tribal meetings should stop, as such meetings are not conducive to peace and mutual understanding. In order to foster cooperation among the people of the Mid-West, I propose within the next few days to invite a cross section of the people of the Mid-West to a meeting to explain to them the present situation and objectives of the Liberation Army, and I believe this will go a long way to giving them the true picture of the situation and instill confidence in the future of the Mid-West. I understand that anxiety is being expressed in some quarters about the safety of the Military Governor of the Mid-West, Brig. David Ejoor. I wish to inform you that I have personally held discussions with Brig. Ejoor and to assure you that he is in good health and is not under detention. . . .

  I have, therefore, today promulgated a decree setting up an interim administration in Mid-Western Nigeria. This decree has suspended the operation in Mid-Western Nigeria of the Constitution of the Federation of Nigeria, the Constitution of Mid-Western Nigeria, and other constitutional provisions applicable in Mid-Western Nigeria, except those constitutional provisions absolutely necessary for the efficient functioning of the machinery of State. All legislative and executive powers have been vested in me during the period of interim administration. In order to assist me in the task of administering Mid-Western Nigeria during the interim period I propose to appoint a military administrator and an administrative council. I have also established a Mid-Western Nigerian Army and a Mid-Western Nigerian Police Force, which will for the moment remain independent of the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Police Force, the Biafran Army, or the Biafran Police Force. The Mid-Western Nigerian Army shall, however, during this interim period be part of the Liberation Army. All courts in Mid-Western Nigeria shall continue to function as usual and it may be necessary to establish a court of appeal until it becomes possible to resume [words indistinct] the Supreme Court of Nigeria. As soon as it is practicable I propose to hand over the administration of Mid-Western Nigeria in order to proceed to the war front and to complete the liberation of Nigeria.

  Good Night.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1. Author conversation with Robert Farris Thompson, Yale University, April 2010.

  2. See “Nigeria: Lugard and Indirect Rule” (June 1991); www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-9347.html; also www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Indirect_rule.aspx.

  3. The effects of that imposition are still felt today.

  4. Berth Lindfors, ed., “Interview with Charles H. Rowell,” Conversations with Chinua Achebe (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), p. 181.

  Part 1

  Pioneers of a New Frontier

  1. Henry Venn and his colleagues at the Church Mission Society of England had launched a number of successful expeditions throughout Nigeria. The expeditions were led by an Englishman, Henry Townsend, and a remarkable man of Yoruba descent, from Freetown, Sierra Leone, Samuel Adjai Crowther. Later Crowther would not only be consecrated bishop of the Niger Territories in 1864, but he would have a profound influence on the development of the early Christian church throughout Nigeria. See also: Elizabeth Isichei: A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1995), chapt. 5; Toyin Falola and Mathew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 61–85.

  The Magical Years

  1. The Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria.

  A Primary Exposure

  1. Translation (roughly): “There will be no fooling around in Okongwu’s school.” Information provided by the Okongwu family. Interview with Nmutaka Okongwu, January 2011.

  2. Well-known folklore about Okongwu.

  3. His son Sonny Chu Okongwu would become Nigeria’s finance minister from 1986 to 1990.

  4. Well-known folklore about Okongwu.

  Leaving Home

  1. Chike Momah related this story to me a few years later.

  2. Herbert M. Cole’s Mbari, Art and Life Among the Owerri Igbo is an excellent resource (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1982).

  The Formative Years at Umuahia and Ibadan

  THE UM
UAHIA EXPERIENCE

  1. Achebe Foundation interviews. Number 33: Professor Bede N. Okigbo in conversation with Professor Ossie Enekwe, Uduma Kalu, and Alvan Ewuzie. August 7, 2006.

  2. Master Agambi was the other student who got a major scholarship. Agambi’s alma mater, Government College, Ibadan, has produced a significant number of prominent Nigerians, such as the T. M. Aluko; Dr. T. S. B. Aribisala, Cyprian Ekwensi, Anthony Enahoro, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Kolade, the late Dr. Akinola Aguda, Chief Olu Ibukun, the late ambassador Leslie Harriman, and Victor Olunloyo. Information from Government College, Ibadan, Old Boys Association (GCIOBA).

  THE IBADAN EXPERIENCE

  3. When I returned to Nigeria after five years of self-imposed exile in the United States, following the Nigeria-Biafra War, I was attracted to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in part because Ezeilo was the university president!

  Discovering Things Fall Apart

  1. Notes from discussion with Professor Jerome Brooks at Bard College (a version of which was later published as “The Art of Fiction” in the Paris Review, no. 139 [Winter 1994]).

  2. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua Achebe: A Biography (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 62.

  3. I was told the story by the late Alan Hill.

  4. Katie Bacon, “Atlantic Unbound: An African voice, Chinua Achebe,” The Atlantic, August, 2, 2000.

  The March to Independence

  1. I have written extensively about the influence of Azikiwe on my life (see Zik’s kitchen in The Education of a British-Protected Child) and that of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria.

  2. Eminent sons and daughters such as Dr. Akanu Ibiam, a Hope Waddell Training School and Kings College, Lagos, graduate who went on to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and qualified as a medical doctor in 1935. Another major figure of the time and Azikiwe contemporary was the educator Alvan Ikoku, who was a deeply religious and studious man, and another Hope Waddell alumnus. Ikoku would provide a steady source of advice for Azikiwe during periods of political tumult.

  Azikiwe also worked closely with a number of associates and lifelong friends, one of whom was Adeniran Ogunsanya (Ogunsanya was the son of the Odofin of Ikorodu). Ogunsanya, later the first attorney general and commissioner for justice in Lagos state, was a graduate of Madariola Private School in Ikorodu, one of the earliest preparatory schools in Nigeria. That school boasted among its alumni Yoruba titans such as Professor Bolaji Idowu and the vivacious Theophilus Owolabi Shobowale (T. O. S.) Benson, another early Azikiwe associate. Benson later became the first deputy mayor of the city of Lagos and Nigeria’s first federal minister of information, culture, and broadcasting.

  There were others still, such as Eyo Ita from Calabar, a Columbia University graduate, who would become a deputy national president of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in the 1950s and the leader of the Eastern government in 1951. Mbonu Ojike, who was also educated in the United States, A. A. Nwafor Orizu, who would become Nigeria’s first president of the Senate, Michael Okpara, the premier of Eastern Nigeria, the entertaining and vivacious K. O. Mbadiwe, and the indescribable and stunning Margaret Ekpo were all early Azikiwe associates. Alongside these eminent achievers could be found the stalwarts of the Zikist Movement, a youth branch of the NCNC.

  Sources: Helen Chapin Metz, ed., Nigeria: A Country Study (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office for the Library of Congress, 1991); K. A. B. Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe (London: Penguin African Series, 1965); Nnamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey (London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1971); Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Chudi Uwazurike, Nwagwu, Cletus N., The Man Called Zik of New Africa: Portrait of Nigeria’s Pan-African Statesman (New York: Triatlantic Books, 1996).

  3. It is important to note that Nigeria by the 1940s had an educated class of people in the large urban centers of Lagos, Ibadan, Ogbomosho, Onitsha, Port Harcourt, and Enugu, and in a few places in Northern Nigeria, such as Kano and Kaduna. Some families could boast of two generations of college-educated members. There was to be a certain amount of tension between these competing camps, if you like, as time went on. Azikiwe was a gifted and savvy politician and well aware of this possible friction, and he made great gestures to reach out to many of the prominent individuals of the day. Many of his acquaintances were nonpoliticians.

  Nigeria was particularly fortunate to have a very strong legal system. Some of the legal luminaries included Azikiwe’s contemporary Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, who by the late 1950s had become the chief justice of the federation of Nigeria. Ademola was a Cambridge University law graduate and the son of Sir Ladapo Ademola, the Alake (paramount ruler) of Egbaland, in the Western Region of Nigeria. Other major names of the time included Justice C. D. Onyeama, the first Nigerian justice at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and Sir Louis Mbanefo. Mbanefo would rise to become a Supreme Court justice in 1952 and, after the Nigerian-Biafra War broke out, would serve as the chief justice of Biafra and ambassador plenipotentiary. Sir Louis would also play an important role in peace talks and, with Major General Philip Effiong, make the final decision to end the war in 1970, after General Odumegwu Ojukwu had fled the nation for Ivory Coast.

  Sources: Author’s recollections of the time and Metz, ed., Nigeria; Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe; Azikiwe, My Odyssey; Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Uwazurike and Nwagwu, The Man Called Zik of New Africa.

  4. Chief Anthony Enahoro recalls of this period: “In those days, a nationalist newspaper was a monitor of wrongdoings by the colonial government of the day, and the newspaper was an advocate and promoter of the termination of colonial rule. Our newspapers were advocates of democracy and social advancement.” Interview Number 21 by Pini Jason, January 2006 © Achebe Foundation.

  The Cradle of Nigerian Nationalism

  1. Metz, Nigeria.

  2. Richard L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emerging African Nation (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004); Metz, Nigeria.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid. Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Nigeria Youth League Movement: A Resumé of Programme (Service Press, 1940); Richard L. Sklar and Whitaker Jr., C. S., “Nigeria,” in James S. Coleman and Carl G. Rosberg, eds., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: African Studies Center/University of California Press, 1964), p. 597; Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe; Azikiwe, My Odyssey.

  The NPTA (Nigerian Produce Traders’ Association) was an advocacy group based in Western Nigeria that had been especially effective in protecting and improving the commercial interests of small traders and cocoa farmers in the Western Region.

  5. Metz, Nigeria; Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties; Obafemi Awolowo, Awo: The Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Sklar and Whitaker Jr., “Nigeria,” in Coleman Jr. and Rosberg, Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa.

  6. An honorific title that means “war leader or head of the bodyguards,” depending on the Hausa expert one encounters.

  7. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties; Metz, Nigeria; Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Nigeria Youth League Movement; Sklar and Whitaker Jr., “Nigeria”; Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe; Azikiwe, My Odyssey.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  Post-Independence Nigeria

  1. When Osei Boateng of the New African, in a November 2008 cover story titled “Nigeria: Squalid End to Empire,” meticulously outlined how colonial “Britain rigged Nigeria’s independence elections so that its compliant friends in the North would win power, dominate the country, and serve British interests after independence” (emphasis added) it only confirmed what most of us already suspected:

  “As long as the Federal Government [of Nigeria] remains d
ependent, our strategic requirements are constitutionally secure,” one of the documents says. “In the Westminster model, Parliament is the matrix of the Executive. When this model is exported to dependent territories, we are forced in the transitional stages to modify it in the interests of strong and stable government. This we do by rigging the parliament through official majorities, a restricted franchise and so forth,” another document reveals. “In the last resort, we must make sure that the government of Nigeria is strong, even if possibly undemocratic or unjust,” says yet another document.