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.
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.
Femi Fani-Kayode was a
former Minister of Culture & Tourism and Also, Aviation.
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