I am a historian and I
have always believed that if we want to talk history we must be dispassionate,
objective and factual. We must take the emotion out of it and we must always
tell the truth. The worst thing that anyone can do is to try to re-write
history and indulge in historical revisionism. This is especially so when the
person is a revered figure and a literary icon.
Sadly, it is in the
light of such historical revisionism that I view Professor Chinua Achebe’s
assertion (which is reflected in his latest and highly celebrated book titled
”There Was A Country”) that Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late and much loved
Leader of the Yoruba, was responsible for the genocide that the Igbos suffered
during the civil war. This claim is not only false but it is also, frankly
speaking, utterly absurd. Not only is Professor Achebe indulging in perfidy,
not only is he being utterly dishonest and disingenuous but he is also turning
history upside down and indulging in what I would describe as ethnic
chauvinism.
I am one of those that
has always had tremendous sympathy for the Igbo cause during the civil war. I
am also an admirer of Colonel Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu who stood up for his people
when it mattered the most and when they were being slaughtered by rampaging
mobs in the northern part of our country.
At least 100,000 Igbos
were killed in those northern pogroms which took place before the civil war and
which indeed led directly to it. This was not only an outrage but it was also a
tragedy of monumental proportions.Yet we must not allow our emotion or our
sympathy for the suffering of the Igbo at the hands of northern mobs before the
war started to becloud our sense of reasoning, as regards what actually
happened during the prosecution of the war itself.
It is important to set
the record straight and not to be selective in our application and recollection
of the facts when considering what actually led to the starvation of hundreds
of thousands of Igbo women, children and civilians during that war. And, unlike
others, I do not deny the fact that hundreds of thousands were starved to death
as a consequence of the blockade that was imposed on Biafra by the Nigerian
Federal Government.
To deny that this
actually happened would be a lie. It is a historical fact. Again I do not deny
the fact that Awolowo publicly defended the blockade and indeed told the world
that it was perfectly legitimate for any government to impose such a blockade
on the territory of their enemies in times of war. Awolowo said it, this is a
matter of historical record and he was quoted in a number of British newspapers
as having said so at the time.
Yet he spoke nothing but
the truth. And whether anyone likes to hear it or not, he was absolutely
right in what he said. Let me give you an example. During the Second World War
a blockade was imposed on Germany, Japan and Italy by the Allied Forces and
this was very effective. It weakened the Axis powers considerably and this was
one of the reasons why the war ended at the time that it did. If there had been
no blockade, the Second World War would have gone on for considerably longer.
In the case of the
Nigerian civil war though the story did not stop at the fact that a blockade
was imposed by the Federal Government which led to the suffering, starvation,
pain, death and hardship of the civilian Igbo population or that Awolowo
defended it. That is only half the story.
There was a lot more to
it and the fact that Achebe and most of our Igbo brothers and sisters always
conveniently forget to mention the other half of the story is something that
causes some of us from outside Igboland considerable concern and never ceases
to amaze us.
The bitter truth is that
if anyone is to be blamed for the hundreds of thousands of Igbos that died from
starvation during the civil war, it was not Chief Awolowo or even General
Yakubu Gowon but, rather it was Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu himself. I say
this because it is a matter of public record and a historical fact that the
Federal Government of Nigeria made a very generous offer to Ojukwu and the
Biafrans to open a road corridor for food to be ferried to the Igbos and to
lessen the suffering of their civilian population.
This was as a
consequence of a deal that was brokered by the international community who were
concerned about the suffering of the Igbo civilian population and the death and
hardship that the blockade was causing to them.
Unfortunately Ojukwu
turned this down flatly and instead insisted that food should be flown into
Biafra by air in the dead of the night. This was unacceptable to the Federal
Government because it meant that the Biafrans could, and indeed would, have
used such night flights to smuggle badly needed arms and ammunition into their
country for usage by their soldiers. That was where the problem came from and
that was the issue.
Apart from that, Ojukwu
found it expedient and convenient to allow his people to starve to death and to
broadcast it on television screens all over the world in order to attract
sympathy for the Igbo cause and for propaganda purposes. And this worked
beautifully for him.
Ambassador Ralph Uweche,
who was the Special Envoy to France for the Biafran Government during the civil
war and who is the leader of Ohaeneze, the leading igbo political and
socio-cultural organisation today, attested to this in his excellent book
titled ”Reflections On The Nigerian Civil War”. That book was factual and
honest and I would urge people like Achebe to go and read it well.
The self-serving role of
Ojukwu and many of the Biafran intelligentsia and elites and their
insensitivity to the suffering of their own people during the course of the war
was well enunciated in that book. The fact of the matter is that the starvation
and suffering of hundreds of thousands of Igbo men, women and children during
the civil war was seen and used as a convenient tool of propaganda by Ojukwu
and that is precisely why he rejected the offer of a food corridor by the
Nigerian Government.
When those that belong
to the post civil war generation of the Igbo are wondering who was responsible
for the genocide and mass starvation of their forefathers during the war they
must firstly look within themselves and point their fingers at their own past
leaders and certainly not Awolowo or Gowon. The person that was solely
responsible for that suffering, for that starvation and for those slow and
painful deaths was none other than Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the leader of
Biafra, himself.
I have written many good
things about Ojukwu on many occasions in the past and I stand by every word
that I have ever said or written about him. In my view he was a man of courage
and immense fortitude, he stood against the mass murder of his people in the
north and he brought them home and created a safe haven for them in the east.
For him, and indeed the
whole of Biafra, the war was an attempt to exercise their legitimate right of
self-determination and leave Nigeria due to the atrocities that they had been
subjected to in the north. I cannot blame him or his people for that and
frankly I have always admired his stand.
However he was not
infallible and he also made some terrible mistakes, just as all great leaders
do, from time to time. The fact that he rejected the Nigerian Federal
Government’s offer of a food corridor was one of those terrible mistakes and
this cost him and his people dearly. Professor Chinua Achebe surely ought to
have reflected that in his book as well.
When it comes to the
Nigerian civil war there were no villains or angels. During that brutal
conflict no less than two million Nigerians and Biafrans died and the Yoruba
who, unlike others, did not ever discriminate or attack any non-Yoruba that
lived in their territory before the civil war or carry out any coups or
attempted coups, suffered at every point as well. For example prominent Yoruba
sons and daughters were killed on the night of the first Igbo coup of January
1966 and again in the northern ”revenge” coup of July 1966. Many of our people
were also killed in the north before the outbreak of the civil war and again in
the Mid-West and the East during the course and prosecution of the war itself.
It was indeed the predominantly Yoruba Third Marine Commando, under the command
of General Benjamin Adekunle (the ”Black Scorpion”) and later General Olusegun
Obasanjo, that not only liberated the mid-west and drove the Biafrans out of
there but they also marched into Igboland itself, occupied it, defeated the
Biafran Army in battle, captured all their major towns and forced the Igbo to
surrender. Third Marine Commando was made up of Yoruba soldiers, and I can say
without any fear of contradiction that we the Yoruba therefore paid a terrible
and heavy price as well during the war because many of our boys were killed on
the war front by the Biafrans.
The sacrifice of these
proud sons of the South-West that died in battle to keep Nigeria one must not
be belittled, mocked or ignored. Clearly it was not only the Igbo that suffered
during the civil war. Neither does it auger well for the unity of our nation
for Achebe and the Igbo intelligentsia that are hailing his self-serving book
to caste aspersions on the character, role and noble intentions of the late and
revered Leader of the Yoruba, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, during the civil war.
The man may have made
one or two mistakes in the past like every other great leader and of course
there was a deep and bitter political division in Yorubaland itself just before
the civil war started and throughout the early ’60′s. Yet by no stretch of the
imagination can Awolowo be described as an Igbo-hating genocidal maniac and he
most certainly did not delight in the starvation of millions of Igbo men, women
and children as Achebe has tried to suggest.
My advice to this
respected author is that he should leave Chief Awolowo alone and allow him to
continue to rest in peace. This subtle attempt to denigrate the Yoruba and
their past leaders, to place a question mark on their noble and selfless role
in the war and to belittle their efforts and sacrifice to keep Nigeria together
as one will always be vigorously resisted by those of us that have the good
fortune of still being alive and who are aware of the facts. We will not remain
silent and allow anyone, no matter how respected or revered, to re-write
history.
Simply put by writing
this book and making some of these baseless and nonsensical assertions, Achebe
was simply indulging in the greatest mendacity of Nigerian modern history and
his crude distortion of the facts has no basis in reality or rationality. We
must not mistake fiction and story telling for historical fact. The two are
completely different. The truth is that Professor Chinua Achebe owes the
Awolowo family and the Yoruba people a big apology for his tale of pure
fantasy.
