Written by Femi Fani Koyade
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 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-Yorubas that lived in their 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
