I fully intend to judge Professor Chinua Achebe's latest book by its cover: It is a beautiful book. Let me begin with a fundamental caveat — I have read the book. The fact that many of those who condemn or support the book have not read it is an insignia of the times. Commentaries on Achebe's book have degenerated into demonstration of ethnic chauvinism on both sides. Someone has called for a ban on Achebe's signature work — Things fall Apart — from Nigerian schools because of alleged ethnically charged comments against late Pa Obafemi Awolowo. No one should desire to live in a country where a globally acclaimed book is banned over 50 years after publication because of the standpoint of the author on a national issue.
I fully intend to judge Professor Chinua Achebe's latest book by its cover: It is a beautiful book. Let me begin with a fundamental caveat — I have read the book. The fact that many of those who condemn or support the book have not read it is an insignia of the times. Commentaries on Achebe's book have degenerated into demonstration of ethnic chauvinism on both sides. Someone has called for a ban on Achebe's signature work — Things fall Apart — from Nigerian schools because of alleged ethnically charged comments against late Pa Obafemi Awolowo. No one should desire to live in a country where a globally acclaimed book is banned over 50 years after publication because of the standpoint of the author on a national issue.
Achebe requires no prolegomenon. His place in African and world literatures is forever guaranteed. Achebe is one of the incandescent stars in the galaxy of literature that continue to bestraddle a global stratosphere generations after emergence. No claim to literacy on African literature is probable without reading Achebe. He is not one of the contributors to African literature; he has helped — with a small number of other scholars — to define its very ontological and epistemological basis. Our lifeworld as people of African origins is better understood because of the likes of Achebe.
Awolowo's accomplishments as a leader and administrator remain unsurpassed in Nigeria. The level of vision and sense of dedication to duty that he possessed continue to be applauded even by his political opponents. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu's tribute as the best President Nigeria never had epitomizes the reverence that Awo continues to enjoy. I was one of the many children who saw Awolowo in the moon when he died in 1987. As eight year olds, my playmates and I were certain that his apparition was in the moon. Childhood fantasies aside, it will take more than one book to challenge the legacy of Awolowo. Those who purport to defend Awolowo need to be a bit more secure about the position of the late Sage in our country's history.
However, it is a profound mistake to believe that Awo was infallible. Awolowo's presence in Yakubu Gowon's war cabinet was problematic. This might have been the most traumatizing error that Awo ever made. Any fair-minded analyst would admit that mistakes were made in the attempt to win the war against the Republic of Biafra. The sounds of that war continue to reverberate in the collective memory of the Igbos, who bore the most significant brunt of the war. The fact that there were negligible systematic attempts to deal with the consequences of the war has meant that the country proceeded in a manner that suggested that nothing happened. Elaborate truth and reconciliation committees and coordinated actions on a national scale would have ensued elsewhere to deal with the issues raised by the former Eastern Region.
Achebe's book is a sober reminder that the civil war happened and its concomitant issues remain essentially unaddressed in a tectonic scale. We do Achebe violence by presupposing that his book was written to denigrate Awolowo and the Yoruba. The comments that have generated the greatest controversy concern the war and post-war policies of the Yakubu Gowon regime. Awolowo was the de facto Deputy of Gowon at the time and was ostensibly the intellectual head. Legitimate questions can be asked about the policies adopted by the Gowon administration. Nonetheless, as Okey Ndibe brilliantly asserts, Achebe opens up avenues for charges of 'speculative overreach' by imputing a personal and ethnic motive to Awolowo's actions during the war. The idea that Awolowo wanted to 'reduce the numbers of his enemies (i.e the Igbos) significantly through starvation' to achieve political objectives is arguably a reckless claim. Very few authors could have got away with that contentious paragraph during manuscript review.
However, Nigerians must avoid the temptation of ignoring Achebe's book. The comments about Awo on page 233 are in fact a distraction to the important issues raised in this work. These include the non-integration of Igbos into the body politick, state failure and its symptoms, such as the pervasiveness of official corruption, insecurity, ethnic bigotry, and collapsed physical and ideational infrastructure, among others.
Achebe's 'lucky generation' has over-performed collectively and as individuals. However, their generation has failed to transform individual world-historical successes into concrete social advancement in terms of the Nigerian collective. Achebe has the right to be unhappy about what Nigeria has become since the civil war. Nevertheless, if a towering member of the lucky generation has grievances against the Nigerian state, what should people who came of age in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s do? Achebe could have tried to lift the mood of the country the way only few like him can in a time of tremendous socio-economic and political upheaval. It appears that in his humility, Achebe perhaps underestimated the level of his significance as a symbol of the very best our continent has ever offered the world. Younger generations of Nigerians (and indeed Africans) needed Achebe's soothing words in the age of chaos.
Ethnic division stands out in the myriad of issues raised by Achebe. This issue also concerns the survival of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I was privileged to speak on this issue at an event organized by the Nigerian Students Association of the University of Alberta, Canada in February 2012. Excerpts of that speech constitute the remaining part of this piece. As it is now unpopular to have any confidence about the prospects of Nigeria, I hasten to add by way of a proactive disclosure that I am neither a government contractor nor a member of a political family.
Towards a dénouement
Francis Bacon warns of four obstacles to human reasoning in his philosophical work called Novum Organum. He calls these inhibitions idola or the idols. Bacon delineates four types of idols. These are Idola theatri (idols of the theatre), Idola specus (the idols of the cave), Idola fori (the idols of the market) and lastly, Idola tribus or idols of the tribe. My focus is on the idols of the tribe, which Bacon uses to underscore the limitations imposed on reasoning by human nature and the facticity of tribe or race. The Baconian concept of idola tribus has glaring implications for the future we seek as Nigerians.
Too often, Nigeria is an orphan; ethnic sentiments, loyalties and allegiances have stunted the growth of national consciousness and development of informed citizenry. Generations of episodic riots in Kano and Jos have had troubling ethno-religious dimensions. The recent targeting of churches and police stations in the North by Boko Haram is another tragic reminder of how political manipulation and ethno-religious zealotry constitute a lethal recipe for national destabilization. Boko Haram is the product of our collective failure to evolve an effective state. An army of unemployed youths and young adults created by the system have mastered the art of violence.
Interestingly, a Boko Haram leader who was recently arrested informed the State Security Service how the group chooses potential suicide bombers. He alleges that there is a division within the hierarchy of Boko Haram because their leader predominantly handpicks non-Kanuri members to go and die. Refusal often means being executed in front of their family. Even Boko Haram has an ethnic problem. A more frightening dimension to this is what Eghosa Osaghae calls the “supertribalization” of young people in Nigeria. The Nigerian project may be impossible if young people think exclusively in ethnic terms. We cannot afford to lose young people like you to the alluring but primordial fragrance of the idols of the tribe.
However, the recent series of protest over removal of fuel subsidy indicates that Nigerians can in fact rise beyond the shackles of idols of the tribe. Perhaps because of ethnically charged conflicts, some presuppose that tribalism is the biggest challenge to Nigeria. I respectfully disagree. If tribalism were the problem with Nigeria, how would we explain the Ife-Modakeke crisis or the Umuleri-Aguleri conflict?
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Sanusi Lamido has been in the news for various reasons in recent times. However, he was probably at his best in a speech he delivered in 2009 at the launch of a book Nigeria, Africa 's failed asset? by Sir Olaniwun Ajayi. Sanusi titled his speech 'I am a Nigerian'. Lamido's analysis was particularly poignant:
"Let me start by saying that I am Fulani (laughter). My grandfather was an Emir and therefore I represent all that has been talked about this afternoon. Sir Ajayi has written a book. And like all Nigerians of his generation, he has written in the language of his generation...My grandfather was a Northerner, I am a Nigerian. The problem with this country is that in 2009, we speak in the language of 1953. Sir Olaniwun can be forgiven for the way he spoke, but I cannot forgive people of my generation speaking in that language... We talk ethnicity when it pleases us. It is hypocrisy... There are good Yoruba people, good Igbo people, good Fulani people, good Nigerians and there are bad people everywhere.
At the risk of over flogging a relatively benign point, France, for instance, is not in fact 'French'. Rather it comprises Celtic and Latin with Teutonic, Slavic, North African, Indochinese, and Basque minorities, among others. Germany is actually German, Turkish, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish. The United Kingdom is English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, black, Indian, Pakistani, and several others of mixed origins. The British Royal Family has several origins including, French ancestry following the Norman conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, who defeated King Harold II of England in 1066. The UK manages to function.
Of course, occasionally, tensions occur. In 2009, a BBC presenter Jeremy Clarkson had to apologise to Prime Minister Gordon Brown for calling him a "one-eyed Scottish idiot". Gordon Brown lost one eye in a rugby accident in his teenage years. Many Scots read the Englishman's statement as a collective insult. It was also perceived as cruel insensitivity to the blind or partially sighted. At a macro level, a government-sponsored enquiry into the death of a young black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, who was killed by teenage supremacists on the streets of London, concluded that the Metropolitan Police Service was 'institutionally racist'. Clearly, major problems remain; the idea is to keep working at making things better.
For all intents and purposes, manufactured countries; fabricated nation-states; invented national identities; or what Benedict Anderson calls imagined communities are routine and very unspectacular around the world. We may choose to continue to discuss the amalgamation done by the British in 1914 or work out modalities to guide how to live together should we choose to. We need to construct a Nigerian identity from the disparate elements as many other countries have done and continue to do...
A critic, sceptic, perhaps a pessimist asks you, in what does the future of your country consist? Tell them that the future of Nigeria lies in the endless peripateticism and resilience of the young people at home and in the Diaspora: From China to Australia; the United States to the United Kingdom; and Qatar to South Africa. The protester of Ilorin, who was cut down in his prime while demonstrating against fuel price hike defines Nigeria. We owe him a better Nigeria, so we can turn his grave to another Mecca and tell the world that he did not die in vain. That police officer who refuses to accept bribes in a corruption-ridden establishment defines Nigeria. That student literally burning the midnight candles as the Power Holding Company of Nigeria continues to withhold electricity defines Nigeria.
What defines Nigeria is not pipeline vandalism, car bombing or kidnapping; what defines Nigeria is the undeniable smartness and diligence of our people. The peasant farmer in Gusau, the market woman in Oloibiri; the teacher in Aba; the courteous bus conductor in Idumota; and the soldier who refuses to shoot at protesters are those who define the Nigeria. Those senior citizens who for decades served Nigeria with dignity yet wait in long queues for their pensions define Nigeria.
The future of Nigeria is in this room. You are the future of Nigeria. Nigeria's future is secure because you have a future: You who work hard so that the story of our homeland may be retold. Together we shall re-write the history of our country, if we come together. Call me an idealist but it is too early to give up on Nigeria. The night is almost over; the dawn is near. Thank you; may God bless you and may Nigeria fulfill its creed.
'Tope Oriola is assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston United States.
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