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“If Another War Broke Out We‘re Not Likely To Do Anything Better,” Says Chinua Achebe

On January 25, 2008, I had what would be my first and last interview with Professor Chinua Achebe. At that point, he was no longer eager about granting interviews. But I approached him with a matter that was dear to his heart: the memoirs of Professor Chieka Ifemesia.

On January 25, 2008, I had what would be my first and last interview with Professor Chinua Achebe. At that point, he was no longer eager about granting interviews. But I approached him with a matter that was dear to his heart: the memoirs of Professor Chieka Ifemesia.

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At that point, I was conducting a series of interviews with the professor of history as he prepared to write his memoir. Several times the name of Professor Chinua Achebe came up in my conversations with Professor Ifemesia. By the time Ifemesia and I started to talk about the writing of the Ahiara Declaration, we both agreed that I should talk to Chinua Achebe. I was fascinated with the Ahiara document as a blueprint of the Biafran essence. I had questions about the timing of its pronouncement because it did not make sense when viewed in the context of the state of the Biafran struggle and world geopolitical realities at the time. So I was determined to talk to as many of the writers who contributed to the speech as possible.

That was the premise under which I negotiated for an interview with Achebe. The novelist said he would give me 5-10 minutes. But once we started, the interview lasted for almost one hour. It helped that I hail from Nnobi, the town where Achebe was born, and my wife, Edna, from Ogidi, Achebe’s hometown. I quickly noted the author’s sense of humor. He told me that it was his father who introduced rice as a food item to Nnobi people. He also revealed that one of the wives of the legendary Igwe Ezeokoli 1 of Nnobi was his god mother.

Five years after, the content of my interview with Chinua Achebe has not been published anywhere. Not even during the controversy surrounding Achebe’s memoir, There Was A Country, did it occur to me to find the interview and listen to it. Now that I have looked at my notes, I am amazed at how much he revealed in that interview – much of the revelation even absent from his memoir. He gave a fascinating answer about why people like him and Ifemesia ended up questioning Christianity and having a love-hate relationship with the religion, even though they were products of missionary education. He gave a candid criticism of Igbo people, weighed in on Okonkwo, the hero of his classic novel, Things Fall Apart, and spoke about the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. When I asked him, “What is it like to be Chinua Achebe?” he said nobody had ever asked him that before.

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As I thought about how best to say farewell to Chinua Achebe, it occurred to me that there was no better way than to give people the opportunity to hear him in his own words – straight from my notes. So, here goes.

“What happened that brought us (Ifemesia and me) together at Nsukka was the Nigerian crisis and the civil war that followed. At the beginning of the crisis, many Igbo academics at Ibadan left for the East. Now I left my job as the Director of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (External Service) and returned home. After a while it occurred to me that I couldn’t just sit in the village. Even though I was disappointed in Nigeria, what I wanted was to stay at home and wait for the shock to sink in.

“It was clear that the crisis was not going to end anytime soon. So I looked toward Nsukka, the one university we had. So I asked for an opening in African studies. I was eventually invited for an interview at the African Studies department. They very happily appointed me as a resident, like Executive Service

1. It was while I was engaged in one of the committees in Biafra that Ifemesia and I worked [together].

“It was a committee work. I was the chairman. There was Ifemesia, at my insistence. I also had Dr. [Emmanuel] Obiechina. If my memory serves me, Ikenna Nzimiro may have been part of it. The key members, however, were Obiechina, Ifemesia and myself.

“I cannot try and justify what was done in the name of Biafra because we did what we felt at that time we had to do. There were many people scared of anything that sounded like socialism. They were not necessarily right. There were also people who rhetorically talked about socialism who did not understand what it meant. Opinion will continue to be divided. But I tell you, as someone who was basically there and first stayed away – I am not a war-like person. And if it had been possible for the situation to be resolved without [war]… but when the pogrom, the massacre began to happen, there was no way to get the Igbo people to accept to calm down and receive truck loads of dead people. The people were angry. Anybody who talked about peace was called a saboteur. You have to be made of a different kind of human not to be sympathetic to what was happening to us.

“Long after it had ended, you could say maybe you should have made this confession or another. I don’t want to be a defender or supporter. It was clear.

“When you were asking me about the account of the civil war … what you were asking is like someone saying to me how is it that you let Okonkwo to be abandoned by his people. And I said to him, it wasn’t really me who let anything happen. Okonkwo by nature wanted to make his own will paramount over that of his people. He looked down on so many people, his father, women… he looked down on compassion.

“At that point the Igbo people were trying to understand what to do with the white man when Okonkwo came in and killed the [white man’s messenger]. Okonkwo is a hero [as in the] Greek [tradition]. Heroes are never comfortable people to live with. Yet, without them the life of their people would have been less profound. Without heroes, human societies diminish. I was not suggesting, by having Okonkwo as a hero, that he was a typical Igbo. It is difficult to find anyone you can call a typical Igbo. You have to believe in the whole varieties of Igbo man.

“The work is not finished. This is why I still keep talking about our old culture. For that is where you go to attempt to understand the root of Okonkwo’s difference. That is why we cannot stop being Igbo people no matter what is happening in Nigeria.

“If another war broke out we are not likely to do anything better. That is because there is a flaw in our conduct. There is a consuming desire to be successful in whatever we do and whatever we are. And while we are doing that, we are not paying particular attention to what you can call the essence of our history. If you bring together those who were present in Biafra and tell them the story of what happened then, many of them would say, hey, O’kwonu eziokwu – It’s really true!

“It is because we do not want our memory to be active. We are impatient to do well in Nigeria. But you cannot prevent people wanting to succeed. All kinds of successes are not really good. There should be things you cannot compromise on. Our people had that. There were things they considered abomination. There were things we were not allowed to do. Let’s keep attempting to tell our people what our essence is.
“You have to insist on getting that knowledge. There is really no way out. We have to hold the past and present together. Any one that is lost is lost forever. It is not a small matter. It is not one that one should take lightly. One should take it as if it is life or death.”

“(On whether Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is his literary daughter as is being said by some after the publication of Half of A Yellow Sun- an impression that’s partly as a result of the blub Achebe wrote for the book) I wouldn’t be able to say something like that. For someone of her age and background to be able to get hold of the information she used for the crisis that happened before she was born is a good sign. That’s all. I don’t think I need successors. But I was excited. Number one: she is so young. And number two: she’s a woman. She got herself into the story. Others can do the same or better. What do you make of that novel? (I told Achebe that I gave the book two enthusiastic thumbs up) That was all I wanted to say. I hope I didn’t appear too eager, for it is possible to get carried away. Anybody who writes, even the smallest part of our story should, we should find a way to let it be known and that way we slowly try to get back what we almost lost.”
Daalu, Nna Anyi. K'emesia!

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