Oshisada: Achebe’s shadow-boxing with Awo’s ghost
I ADMIRE the Igbo people. And I have my greatest respect for them. I have many de-tribalised Igbo as friends. In my youth, my affection for the Igbo lady as a life partner fuelled an aborted ambition for an Igbo life partner. The Igbo command my admiration and respect, because of some of their sterling qualities. In line with the opinion or thinking of a veteran journalist, the late Pa. J.V. Clinton, editor-publisher of Nigerian Eastern Mail (a weekly in 1930s) and later a columnist in the now rested Sunday Times, I am not anglicising Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa by pluralising them. Therefore, being indigenous word, the plural of Igbo is Igbo and not Igbos as others write. That is just by the way.
Igbo people must be observed from two perspectives. As individuals, Igbo are hardworking and resilient. An average Igbo is ingenious. I use the word ingenious and not ingenuous. The reader must not be confused. He has tenacity of purpose, which sometimes translates into obstinacy. As a race, Igbo are industrious. For being industrious, they delight in claiming to be an extraction of the Jews. There is no doubt about their industriousness. But there is a question mark on being of Jewish origin. That was part of Civil War time propaganda to win the sympathy of Israel. Further, as a race, Igbo are exceedingly loyal to their leaders to the level of being misguided.
There are two types of loyalty to leadership-absolute and limited loyalties. The Igbo race has the problem of being absolutely loyal to their leader whether the leader is right or wrong. They often believe that a leader is infallible. It is this absolute loyalty or the notion of infallibility of a leader that usually blindfolds Igbo to the edge of the precipice; with falsehood from their leaders, they are blind to truth and reality. Confronted with crises, Igbo men are unable to discern what is the truth and what is falsehood.
Yoruba people are not without their negative sides, -bad sides-, but are never obsessed with the notion that their leaders are infallible. This is not sentiment, but it is the reality. An average Yoruba man criticises his leader like the former President Olusegun Obasanjo was frequently badgered with criticisms from his kinsmen during his tenure. Yoruba man can look at his leader in the face and ask: “Oga, do you think that such decision is sensible? Why not wait for the direction of the wind or the turn of event?” That is why in Yoruba land an Oba can be dethroned or made to flee his kingdom. It happened in history and it is still happening. It is this sort of “limited loyalty” that is interpreted to mean “betrayal”. So, a Yoruba leader is usually circumspect. He does not just act on impulse. His followers shall defect and leave him alone, if he acts on the whims of the moment.
This is not so with an average Igbo leader. How could a young and impetuous military leader plunge his defenceless people to war without consulting widely? To shift blame on the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo is sinful. Igbo leadership at the time did not consult widely, not even outside Owerri in Imo State. The secession was the exclusive decision of a coterie. By blaming the late Awolowo for any omission or commission is by extension, blaming the Yoruba race who were not consulted.
Prof. Chinua Achebe’s indictment on Awolowo several decades after the Civil War has major implications for the Igbo. First, it engenders the ill-feeling of other southern Nigerians - not only the South-Westerners, but also other minority South-Easterners whose men and resources were devastated during the Civil War. Second, the minds of the youth and generations yet-unborn are poisoned against non-Igbo, particularly the Yoruba race. The third implication of Achebe’s remarks on the late Chief Awo is that it may jeopardise Igbo ambition to rule the country as it may antagonise and polarise the two races. The fourth implication is about the sale of the book itself.
Future generation of Igbo who read Achebe’s “There was a country - A personal history of Biafra ,”may look up to the Yoruba people as their enemies, forgetting that Yoruba are hosts to many Igbo in the South-West. When shall pent-up ill-feeling end between Igbo and Yoruba? Indefinite. Mark you, there were, and still, are Igbo men who have Yoruba as their wives - inter-racial parents with offsprings of mixed Yoruba and Igbo blood. Can Achebe imagine the enormity of the damages to the offsprings’ relationships to either side -Yoruba or Igbo? I know of many such mixed marriages that I cannot mention on the pages of a newspaper. You see, senior citizens must be wary of despicable utterances, writings and actions, lest they sow the seeds of discord among the youth.
The late Chief Awolowo’s remark: “You do not feed your enemies at war times” was devoid of hatred for the Igbo. The enemies that he was referring to were the Biafran military officers who were commandeering the food items for themselves, thus depriving the civilians of the same. So, he concluded: “Star action is a veritable weapon to fight enemies at war-time”. Is Achebe aware that Russians volunteered to supply Nigeria with deadly weapons to exterminate the Igbo? It was the duo of Chiefs Awo and Anthony Enahoro who turned down the offer, arguing: “The Igbo are our brothers and sisters. We do not need such weapons of extermination. If the starvation of the Biafran soldiers was not applied, the Civil War could not end at the time that it did and the blood of innocent youths would continually be used as cannon fodder. Rather than commend the late Chief Awolowo for saving the Igbo, Achebe is pilloring the spirit of the dead. Shadow-boxing with the ghost of an imaginary enemy. I believe that Achebe is a Christian versed in the injunction: “Do not speak evil of the dead; the dead is not in a position to say its own side of a matter”. Again, a legal maxim teaches: “Audi alteram partem”- hear the other side of an issue. Where is the late chief today to say his own side? This is why I said earlier that Achebe’s accusations were sinful. There is another dimension to this debate.
Naturally, Igbo leaders are envious of the Yoruba race. Hence, the phobia for Awo and the Yoruba. I do not want to mention names so as not to destroy the authorship and the book. There was an Igbo author whose book was the thesis for his PhD Degree. In it, he wrote: “Samuel Ajayi Crowther was born in Sierra Leone, and taken into slavery in Nigeria”. Coincidentally, the book in question was inside Awolowo’s Shopolu Library, Ikenne, Ogun State. Immediately I read this distortion of facts (1984), I dropped it and returned to Daily Times Office, Lagos. I was a primary school teacher for 13 years. Every senior pupil (Standard Three to Six) of my time was aware that Samuel Ajayi Crowther was the first African Bishop born in Iseyin, near Oyo, Oyo State of Nigeria, but was freed as a slave-boy in Freetown, Sierra Leone. That Igbo author deliberately distorted facts of History so as not to give the credit to Yoruba race as having produced the first African Bishop, like we produced the first Nigerian lawyer and medical doctor.
Another example of the phobia for the Yoruba race is the distortion that Ijebu-Igbo people were from Igbo land to settle in Yoruba land. It is the suffix “Igbo” that is cashed in upon to delude the ignoramus into believing that Ijebu-Igbo indigenes originated from Igboland. Adolf Hitler’s war-time (1939 to 1945) coinage: “Tell a lie in the morning. Repeat it in the afternoon. In the evening it becomes the truth”. This is how other authors shall claim that Ijebu are from Igbo land.
Distortion is falsehood, it breeds animosity. Elder statesmen must endeavour to emphasise points of unity and not of disunity for the survival of the nation.
• Oshisada, a veteran journalist, lives in Ikorodu, Lagos.
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