Most of these spontaneous reactions and responses to a book
that is yet to reach the Nigerian market were unfortunately championed by even
some deceitful characters who were recently exposed by Major Hamza Al-Mustapha
as traitors who allegedly collected huge sums of hard currency from the then
maximum military ruler late General Sani Abacha to betray Chief Moshood
Kashimawo Olawale Abiola in the battle to retrieve his stolen mandate which the
late politician won in the ill-fated presidential election of June 12th 1993
staged by the then outgoing benevolent military dictator General Ibrahim
Badamosi Babangida (rtd).
Other so-called critics of Professor Achebe’s latest
intellectual work are also some persons undergoing prosecution in the competent
courts of law for alleged sundry anti-graft allegations. Clearly, some of these
persons are engaging in these meaningless over-heating of the polity with
ethnically-charged chorus of misplaced hatred of the beautiful work done by the
globally recognized scholar just to seek for relevance and none of them has
successfully faulted the historical body of evidence encompassed in the
forthcoming Professor Achebe’s “There was a country,” regarding some obnoxious
policies imposed by the then military dictator General Yakubu Gowon (rtd) and his then Finance federal commissioner- the
late Sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
The most trenchant and unrepentant rumour mongers among those
who have so far enjoyed generous news media space to market their half-baked
and cheap lies against the most notorious facts contained in the book under review,
have sadly branded Achebe falsely as a “hater of the Yoruba race”.
This is far from the truth because what is at play here is
not any intellectual war-fare between the Igbo race and their good friends-the
members of the Yoruba ethnic bloc but rather it is a straight fight between
apostles of darkness/ professional anarchists and those who love the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding the Biafran story as espoused
by a great mind in the person of Professor Chinua Achebe.
Achebe is aware that in documenting alleged human rights
violations, experts are of the opinion that the basic principle is to create an
accurate, reliable and concise record of sequence of events, and this he has
done in this latest work.
But what did they accuse Achebe of doing?
These fortune/fame seekers who are nothing but media
generated and created tigers and ethnic war-lords disputed the version of
Professor Achebe’s war memoir in which he criticized the harsh policies of the
then Gowon’s brutal dictatorship which foisted mass hunger, disease and
untimely death of mostly women, children and the elderly among the men because
of the diabolical imposition of Air, sea and land blockade against the then
Biafra which inevitably denied members of the international community including
International Red Cross the safe passages to deliver the much needed relief
materials and food aids to the war ravaged civilian population in the areas
known then as Biafra including some areas now known a South-South geopolitical
Zone.
This evil air, sea and land blockade inflicted ‘kwashiorkor’
or malnourishment in genocidal proportions leading to the unfortunate death of
hundreds-of-thousands of children and women in the then Biafra including one of
my beloved Cousins.
Those who wish that the rest of us remain in total denial of
the truth about the 30-months old [un]civil war between what was then known as
Biafra and the rest of Nigeria at that ungodly period, are saying that the imposition
of blockade which inflicted massive deaths was proper in war.
But I ask, are these irrational and loud-mouthed critics of
Professor Achebe’s latest work aware of the existence of the Geneva Convention
which spells out how a war should be fought without inflicting deaths of
genocidal dimension on the civil populace?
Again, are these rumour mongers and anti-intellectuals
criticizing Professor Achebe know why a war is called “Civil” and not genocidal
mass killings?
What will these noise makers achieve by seeking to demonize
the globally reputable Novelist Professor Achebe just because he exercised his constitutionally
allowed freedom to author a book detailing the truth he knows about the Biafra/Nigeria
war which these anarchists want some of us to forget?
If these persons believe they can generate civil unrest
between the Igbos and their friends the Yoruba, then they are simply living in fool’s
paradise because majority of the people from these two ethnic groups are too
sophisticated to be carried along and deceived by these half-truths and
illogical fallacies that these ‘Achebephobics’ are busy dishing out through
their friendly Channels in the Lagos/Ibadan media axis.
Few days back, Punch newspaper extensively published what it
credited to the late sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo as his defense for imposing
these regimes of obnoxious policies including sudden change of the Nigerian
currency soon after the war and the air, sea and land blockade which inflicted
mortal injuries on hundreds –of- thousands of civilians in the then Biafra.
The late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was reported to have told
journalists shortly before the 1983 presidential election that the blockade was
imposed on Biafra because the then Biafran soldiers were “stealing” and
diverting the food and other relief materials to themselves and cronies and
thereby the then military government took the harsh decision which caused the
death of hundreds of thousands of civilians because the then Nigerian military
rulers and their civilian associates including pa. Awolowo- the then finance minister
believed that it was wrong to feed their enemies (that is the Biafran
Soldiers).
Going by this explanation, it therefore follows that even Papa
Awo during his life time admitted that such draconian and evil policy was
enforced.
Why then are these holier-than-thou critics of Professor
Achebe disturbing Nigerians with their lazy and irrational postulations?
I will quote. Pa. Awo as published by punch of Monday October
9th 2012 on his reasons for imposing food blockade on the then Biafran Republic
even as readers could clearly see that even the late sage acknowledged the
existence of kwashiorkor in the then Biafra even though he cleverly blamed
Biafran soldiers for allegedly eating up food meant for the civilians.
Papa Awo stated thus; “But when I went what did I see? I saw
the kwashiorkor victims. If you see a kwashiorkor victim you’ll never like war
to be waged. Terrible sight, in Enugu, in Port Harcourt, not many in Calabar,
but mainly in Enugu and Port Harcourt”.
Awo continued thus “…And I said that was a very dangerous
policy, we didn’t intend the food for soldiers. But who will go behind the line
to stop the soldiers from ambushing the vehicles that were carrying the food?
And as long as soldiers were fed, the war will continue, and who’ll continue to
suffer? And those who didn’t go to the place to see things as I did, you
remember that all the big guns, all the soldiers in the Biafran army looked all
well fed after the war, its only the mass of the people that suffered
kwashiorkor… so I decided to stop sending the food there. In the process
the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers will suffer most.”
Now what Professor Achebe did in his latest work is to
recount his own account of how mass deaths were harvested by
hundred-of-thousands of families in the then Biafra as a result of the food
blockade which as we have read above from Chief Awo was done to punish the then
Biafran soldiers.
Professor Achebe in the book “There was a country” simply
wrote thus; “It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding
ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on the
surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw
the dominant Igbo at the time as the obstacles to that goals, and when the
opportunity arose with the Nigeria-Biafra war, his ambition drove him into a frenzy
to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case it meant
hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the number of his enemies significantly
though starvation eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future
generations.”
But I ask, does anyone know any politician in the World who
is not ambitious for power? Certainly what is reprehensible is the imposition
of food blockade that inflicted mass death of civilians on the untenable excuse
that Biafran soldiers were stealing the food.
What these evil critics of Professor Achebe’s book on the
Biafran story as seen by him reminds me of is the account reduced into a book
by the philosopher Mr. Albert Camus who wrote under theme of “Nihilism
and history” in his internationally acclaimed book “The Rebel.”
Albert Camus, the Algerian born philosopher had written thus;
“One hundred and fifty years of metaphysical revolt and of nihilism have
witnessed the persistent reappearance, under different guises, of the same
ravaged countenance: the face of human protest. All of them, decrying the human
condition and its creator, have affirmed the solitude of man and the
non-existence of any kind of morality”.
Albert Camus wrote further; “But at the same time they have
all tried to construct a purely terrestrial kingdom where their chosen
principles will hold sway. As rivals of the Creator, they have inescapably been
led to the point of reconstructing creation according to their own concepts.
Those who rejected, for the world they had just created, all other principles
but desire and power, have been driven to suicide or madness and have predicted
the apocalypse…”
The sacred truth is that no matter how hard these anarchists
and haters of truth try to murder the truth; it (the truth) must prevail in the
long run.
To underscore the severity of the effects of the blockade
imposed by the then Gowon’s military junta on the now defunct Biafra, the New
York Times of June 27, 1968 reproduced in the book titled “The untold Story of the Nigerian
Biafra war” written by a United States based physician, Attorney Mr.
Nnaemeka Luke Aneke, reported that those badly affected by the air, land and
sea blockade of even relief and food materials were mostly women, children and
the elderly.
The New York Times had reported as follows; “Hundreds of
thousands of Biafran civilians will face death from starvation within the next
several months. Leslie Kirkley, the Director of the Oxford Committee for Famine
Relief, or Oxfam, a well-known non-governmental and non sectarian British
relief organization, assessed the situation this way: “Unless we pull out all
the stops in Britain and other countries, we will have a terrifying disaster in
Biafra before the end of August; by then, two million may have died.”
I will sincerely call on
those ethnic champions and war-mongers who seek for relevance using the latest Professor
Achebe’s book as a platform to have a change of heart and find meaningful,
creative and responsible jobs to do to contribute to ongoing debate on how to
make Nigeria great.
Professor Achebe loves Nigeria; he loves the Yoruba people
and the great Nigerian must not be associated with any phantom plot to generate
tension among the various ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria.
To now speak as if some persons are the sole owners and land
lords of certain places who dishes out favours to others based on their whims
and caprices, is to say the least irrational, illogical and arrogant.
10/10/2012
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