Literary giant Prof. Chinua Achebe has stirred the hornets’ nest,
with his claim that war-time Head of State General Yakubu Gowon and the
late Chief Obafemi Awolowo formulated policies that promoted genocide
against the Igbo.
In his newly released civil war memoirs, There was a country, Achebe
said: “Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million
people-mothers, children, babies, civilians-lost their lives as a
result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the
leaders of the federal government of Nigeria.”
Quoting the Oxford Dictionary, the celebrated writer said genocide is
“the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national
group …The UN General Assembly defined it in 1946 as …a denial of the
right of existence of entire human groups.”
He said: “Throughout the conflict, the Biafrans consistently charged
that the Nigerians had a design to exterminate the Igbo people from the
face of the earth. This calculation, the Biafrans insisted, was
predicated on a holy jihad proclaimed by mainly Islamic extremists in
the Nigerian Army and supported by the policies of economic blockade
that prevented shipments of humanitarian aid, food and supplies to the
needy in Biafra .”
On Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was the Vice Chairman of the Federal
Executive Council and Minister of Defence, Achebe said: “The wartime
cabinet of General Gowon, the military ruler, it should also be
remembered, was full of intellectuals, like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, among
others, who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable
policies. A statement credited to Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is
the most callous and unfortunate: all is fair in war, and starvation is
one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies
fat in order for them to fight harder’.
“It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding
ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on
the surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However,
Awolowo saw the dominant Igbo at the time as the obstacles to that goal,
and when the opportunity arose with the Nigeria-Biafra war, his
ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his
dreams. In the Biafran case, it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to
reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation
eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future
generations.”
Achebe’s views provoked anger yesterday.
Reacting yesterday, Mr. Ayo Opadokun who was Assistant Director of
Organisation of the late Chief Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN)
and later Secretary of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO),
described the Achebe assertion as “typical”.
“It is a reharsh of the perverted intellectual laziness which he had
exhibited in the past in matters related to Chief Obafemi Awolowo. When
Achebe described Awo as a Yoruba irredentist, what he expected was that
Awo should fold his arms to allow the Igbo race led by Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe, to preside over the affairs of the Yoruba nation,” Opadokun
said.
Opadokun pointed out that some of his colleagues who played prominent
roles in liberating Nigeria from the clutches of military rule, such as
Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (rtd), Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe (rtd), Dr.
Arthur Nwankwo, Alhaji Abulaziz Ude and others who he described as “men
of honour and integrity”, are Igbo. But he found it difficult to believe
that a scholar of Achebe’s stature could be so unforgiving.
He said, “Let our Igbo brothers be reminded that about three-quarters
of their assets not in the eastern Region are in Lagos and we have been
very liberal and accommodating. We have allowed them to live
undisturbed.”
Senator Biyi Durojaiye shares Opadokun’s view. He said: “My view is
that you don’t expect somebody on the receiving end of a war to say
something pleasant about the winners.
“I don’t share Achebe’s view that Awolowo did all he did for personal
political aggarandisement. It was all in the process of keeping Nigeria
one. What he and General Gowon did was in the process of preserving the
integrity of Nigeria .”
He urged the Igbo to be more charitable, seeing that both sides of
the war are now benefiting from its outcome. He enjoined all to join
hands in facing the challenges of the moment, insisting that the way to
go is for all Nigerians to support a Sovereign National Conference and
restructuring of the polity.
Mr. Jacob Omosanya who participated actively in Action Group politics
as a member of the Action Group Youth Association AGYA), said Achebe
and many of his kinsmen in public life are tribalistic and “that is what
he has exhibited in this new book.”
“It is not new. He canvassed similar views in The trouble with
Nigeria. Dr. Azikiwe and his people should be grateful to the Yoruba who
have always been liberal. When Zik was on his way back home from the
United States, he ran into trouble in the Gold Coast. It was a team of
lawyers led by the late H. O. Davies that saved him. This is a fact of
history that should not be lost on the Igbo.”
Mr. Omosanya said he had expected that people intellectuals such as
Achebe, would be bridge builders and avoid inflaming passions.
NATION NEWSPAPER
