The Igbo of Nigeria have often been called the ‘Jews of Africa’, mostly for their business ethic, single mindedness and controversially, stinginess with money. Other Nigerians, for these supposed qualities, have often vilified the Igbos. The modern Facebook and Twitter worlds are awash with stories of ‘greedy’ Igbo boys and girls who will ‘do anything for money’. It’s not uncommon – the opposite actually – to see social media personalities who label themselves ‘progressive’ or ‘activist’ join in such denigrating stereotypes. It’s equally common to see other Igbo – especially Igbo youth – join in such generalizations or refuse to correct such misconceptions.
The Igbo of Nigeria have often been called the ‘Jews of Africa’, mostly for their business ethic, single mindedness and controversially, stinginess with money. Other Nigerians, for these supposed qualities, have often vilified the Igbos. The modern Facebook and Twitter worlds are awash with stories of ‘greedy’ Igbo boys and girls who will ‘do anything for money’. It’s not uncommon – the opposite actually – to see social media personalities who label themselves ‘progressive’ or ‘activist’ join in such denigrating stereotypes. It’s equally common to see other Igbo – especially Igbo youth – join in such generalizations or refuse to correct such misconceptions.
Most people are familiar with the Shakespearean play, The Merchant of Venice. I read this play as a young secondary school student and enjoyed its comedy and supposed ‘happy ending’, while mentally wishing all manner of ill-luck to the ‘bad guy’ of the play, Shylock the Jew. However, this play took on a new meaning for me when I watched a modern production at the Shakespeare festival in Vancouver two summers ago. Blessed with ten to fifteen more years of education and an awareness of global issues, the statement of the Duke of Venice rang alarm bells in my head. Shylock was to be pardoned if – and only if – he gave his possessions to the state and more importantly, converted to Christianity. Conveniently forgotten by the Duke’s audience was the fact that Antonio had signed an agreement which Shylock was abiding by, if too harshly. Nor was the fact that the judge in the case happened to be the wife of the Antonio’s best friend.
Chinua Achebe’s newly released personal recollection of the Nigerian Civil War, There Was A Country, has generated quite a furor among Nigerians. On the one hand, it opens up debate on an issue that has been festering just below the surface of the proverbial murky waters for the last forty-odd years. On the other hand, it also risks threatening the fragile ‘unity’ and ‘trust’ that some argue has been rebuilt between the Igbos and other Nigerian tribes. According to these – largely Igbo – commentators, Achebe is a tribalist whose memory is faulty. Let’s examine history to see if these accusations have some basis.
At the start of Nigerian independence and in the years leading to the first coup, Igbos were seen to be in the ascendancy in the military, civil service and educational spheres. Igbos held the bulk of field grade officer ranks in the army, dominated the civil service in two regions (East and Mid-West), had a larger than proportional representation in the federal civil service (and had significant representation even in the Western and Northern region’s civil service) and ‘controlled’ 3 of the 4 universities in the country. Declassified cables released from UK and US intelligence sources – as well as the biographies of Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, David Ejoor and Theophilus Danjuma, all of which this writer has read, show that the Igbo were primed to dominate the economic and intellectual landscape of the country due to their ‘progressiveness’. Note that most present-day analysts question whether this was reality or borne out of tribal fears. This is irrelevant – as long as it was perceived, was believed, especially in Northern Nigeria. This also spawned a ‘competition’ between Eastern and Western Nigeria vis-à-vis development, appointments and economic opportunities.
The incidents surrounding the mostly Igbo-led first coup warrant their own missive. However, it’s worth pointing out that any coup which sought to put a Yoruba man – Obafemi Awolowo – in power could not have any overriding tribal tones. In addition, the intellectual epicenter of the coup was Major Adewale Ademoyega, a Yoruba man. This is not to say that one or two individual plotters did not execute personal vendettas against their military superiors, some of which may have had tribal undertones; the fact is, we just don’t know. Max Siollun’s book, Nigeria: Oil, Politics and Violence; is an excellent historical work which dispels most of the myths surrounding that period in Nigerian history and should be read for a broad-minded, impartial analysis.
So how did the coup lead to ‘Biafra’?
Southern (primarily Western intellectual and Eastern in general) jubilation at the deaths of the Sardauna of Sokoto – and Premier of the Northern Region - Ahmadu Bello and the Premier of the Western Region, Ladoke Akintola (who was anti-Awolowo and seen as a stooge of the Sardauna); coupled with subversive and incendiary prodding from British-sponsored elements at the Zaria University (as it was then known) led to the first riots. This in turn spread to other northern cities, and has been the case in Nigeria before then and since, whenever Northern citizens riot against Southerners, Easterners – being the most visible and populous ‘outsiders’ – end up bearing the brunt of such attacks. The Head of State, General Aguiyi-Ironsi, despite his crushing of the January 15 coup, was seen as a symbol of the much-feared Igbo domination. His unitary decree – which among others (and crucially) meant that all Nigerians would be able to compete for civil service positions in all parts of the country irrespective of their region of origin – was seen as proof of this intent. Of course, in the rest of the world, this is called merit, but I digress.
These riots eventually culminated in the counter-coup of July 1966 when northern officers, fed up with the taunts and prodding of northern elders and masses, decided to carry out a revenge coup, killing over 250 officers, most of Igbo extraction. This revenge coup spawned an even larger wave – two more, in fact – of what became known as the ‘pogrom’, in which northern mobs backed by their elders and leaders, dragged Igbos out of their homes, vehicles and places of business; and massacred them. In all 30,000 people were killed and the survivors fled back to the East for their safety. Northerners in the East also left for the north in fear of reprisal killings. This ugly period of the nation’s history has been dissected to death but it must be accepted as fact before this festering wound – exposed again by Achebe’s book – can properly heal. Several northern leaders – civilian and military – of that era have publicly apologized for the actions of their citizens but the Federal Government has to issue an official apology so that those who try to distort history for their own ends or to maintain a false illusion can hold their peace. True unity embraces truth.
In that light, and after failed attempts to renegotiate the basis for existence, during which the north attempted to secede from Nigeria until they were warned in dire terms against that action (by the British, who else?), Easterners began to feel that they were not welcome in Nigeria. Again, it is irrelevant whether or not this feeling was genuine. There were enough facts to support either viewpoint. Emeka Ojukwu, as governor of the Eastern Region, made a valiant – if selfish – attempt to hold a sovereign conference in Ghana but the terms agreed to, were reneged upon by the Nigerian government when they returned to Lagos. This is what triggered the declaration of Biafra and the Civil War.
Before the war began, Obafemi Awolowo visited the East. His primary purpose was to thank the people of the region for their support while he was incarcerated. He also made his famous speech, ending with a promise that “if the Igbo were to leave Nigeria, the Yoruba would go along with them”. No one knows whether Awo was equivocating or whether when he returned to Lagos (and saw the vast opportunity left by the fleeing Igbos), he changed his mind. The same Awo would later defend starvation as a “necessary element of war” while overseeing the economic blockade of the East and the takeover of Igbo interests in Lagos and the West by ‘sons of the soil’. Was Awo inherently evil? I don’t think so, but how do we expect the likes of Achebe, Madiebo and other Igbo commentators to view his actions when they were directly affected?
As a friend recently told me, while skeptically dismissing Achebe’s work, truth is the first casualty in war. In light of this very poignant truth, I will not attempt to dissect the war. Needless to say, both sides could have avoided it by diplomacy and a desire to communicate, problems that still beset the country. It is on record, however, that there was widespread bombing of villages and townships; an economic embargo which prevented much needed food and supplies from reaching many of the million-plus people who died of starvation/malnutrition; and that there was at least one documented case of crimes against humanity in a town outside Asaba. In this event, several (up to 200) men, women and children were killed for their passive support of Biafra’s cause. Emma Okocha was a young boy when his entire family was killed and he wrote a book, ‘Blood on the Niger’, where this is captured in gory detail. That’s as much as I will say about the war.
Post-war, Igbos were given twenty pounds per head (regardless of their account holdings at the start of the war); property belonging to the Igbo in Port Harcourt was seized and given to military officers and their progeny. The army and security forces were closed to them as ‘secessionists’. Until recently, there has been a distinct lack of Igbo in security positions, a factor that is proportional to trust. Godwin Kanu was the first to sit on the Supreme Military Council five years after the war ended; Ike Nwachukwu was the first to lead an army division nearly twenty years after the war (note that he fought on the side of Nigeria during the war) and only recently have we seen Igbo-speaking heads of the army, police and defense.
Progress, yes. But does this mean that Igbos were (and are) not marginalized or misunderstood? No.
There was an article written several years ago by Sanusi Lamido, now the CBN Governor entitled “Igbo, Yoruba and History”, in which he used a lot of stereotypical comments to describe Igbos including his belief that the Igbo had to prove their loyalty and accept the crumbs handed out by Nigeria. He’s not the only prominent Nigerian to express such views. Abdulsalami Abubakar recently admitted to coercing PDP delegates to choose Obasanjo over Alex Ekwueme as their presidential candidate in 1998/1999 because he was afraid Ekwueme wanted “to form Biafra again”. The same Ekwueme who had served as Vice-President to a Northern President in the 2nd Republic nine years after the civil war! These are singular incidents, but they involve public figures and demonstrate the level of distrust that defines the relationship between the Igbo and other Nigerians. A casualty of war, perhaps, but distrust all the same.
Several intellectual Igbo youth – and I use the term loosely – have risen up in arms to accuse Achebe and other Igbos of dredging up history and of wanting to bring back the dark days. They swear that Igbo disunity is the major issue (no arguments from this corner on that point) and they insist that they are fully integrated into society. Some of them are the same people who chuckle quietly when ethnic jokes and sketches are made by their intellectual allies on social media; others have business interests to protect; others still are in political alliances that depend in great part on being beholden to a benefactor who is typically non-Igbo. Most of them speak Hausa and Yoruba (admirable), but not their own language. Some of them vigorously insist on social media that the Igbo have never had a unified identity (ergo, why should they?). In other words, for an Igbo man or woman to be successful in Nigeria, they cannot be seen as being ‘too Igbo’.
Other Igbo, like this writer, are saying “we are Nigerians, but the country must admit that a wrong was done”. Nothing will speed up the healing process faster. If Gowon, the Nigerian Head of State at that time, could issue an apology thirty years later for “atrocities”, surely that is proof that they were carried out. Even Murtala Mohammed expressed “regret”, if not an outright apology, about some of his methods during the war. Continued denials and revisions by analysts and politically misguided youth won’t change any of those facts. Continued “conversions” of Igbo youth to the denial/soft-pedaling camp will do no more than hasten the decline of one of the great tribes of Africa. It is not a coincidence that shame is the first step in the path toward cultural abandonment.
That era and its aftermath are not the only times this has happened in history. Prior to the Second World War, ‘Western Jews’ (from Austria, Germany and France in particular) were dismissive of ‘Eastern Jews’ who were flooding into those countries from Eastern Europe. The Western Jews thought their Eastern cousins were dirty, too traditional and an embarrassment. Decades later, a man named Adolf Hitler showed that he didn’t care where they were from – Jews were ‘a cancer’ and needed to be eliminated. At that time, it was the Eastern Jews in the West, with their acutely honed survival skills, who helped many Western Jews outlast a period that was alien to them. They were also the ones – mostly – who carried on the legacy of survival and history to the modern Israel State.
History is important because it teaches us lessons, not because we want to go back in time. The Igbo have a proud heritage and history. It is important that this is not sacrificed at the altar of appeasement and a misdirected desire for what passes as Nigerian integration.
Nnaziri Ihejirika, a Professional Engineer, writes from Canada.
Follow him on twitter @nnaziri
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