There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (26 page)

NOTES

Introduction

1.
Author conversation with Robert Farris Thompson, Yale University, April 2010.

2.
See “Nigeria: Lugard and Indirect Rule” (June 1991); www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-9347.html;
also www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Indirect_rule.aspx.

3.
The effects of that imposition are still felt today.

4.
Berth Lindfors, ed.
,
“Interview with Charles H. Rowell,”
Conversations with Chinua Achebe
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), p. 181.

Part 1

Pioneers of a New Frontier

1.
Henry Venn and his colleagues at the Church Mission Society of England had launched
a number of successful expeditions throughout Nigeria. The expeditions were led by
an Englishman, Henry Townsend, and a remarkable man of Yoruba descent, from Freetown,
Sierra Leone, Samuel Adjai Crowther. Later Crowther would not only be consecrated
bishop of the Niger Territories in 1864, but he would have a profound influence on
the development of the early Christian church throughout Nigeria. See also: Elizabeth
Isichei:
A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity
(London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1995), chapt. 5; Toyin Falola
and Mathew M. Heaton,
A History of Nigeria
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 61–85.

The Magical Years

1.
The Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria.

A Primary Exposure

1.
Translation (roughly): “There will be no fooling around in Okongwu’s school.” Information
provided by the Okongwu family. Interview with Nmutaka Okongwu, January 2011.

2.
Well-known folklore about Okongwu.

3.
His son Sonny Chu Okongwu would become Nigeria’s finance minister from 1986 to 1990.

4.
Well-known folklore about Okongwu.

Leaving Home

1.
Chike Momah related this story to me a few years later.

2.
Herbert M. Cole’s
Mbari, Art and Life Among the Owerri Igbo
is an excellent resource (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1982).

The Formative Years at Umuahia and Ibadan

T
HE
U
MUAHIA
E
XPERIENCE

1.
Achebe Foundation interviews. Number 33:
Professor Bede N. Okigbo in conversation with Professor Ossie Enekwe, Uduma Kalu,
and Alvan Ewuzie. August 7, 2006.

2.
Master Agambi was the other student who got a major scholarship. Agambi’s alma mater,
Government College, Ibadan, has produced a significant number of prominent Nigerians,
such as the T. M. Aluko; Dr. T. S. B. Aribisala, Cyprian Ekwensi, Anthony Enahoro,
Wole Soyinka, Christopher Kolade, the late Dr. Akinola Aguda, Chief Olu Ibukun, the
late ambassador Leslie Harriman, and Victor Olunloyo. Information from Government
College, Ibadan, Old Boys Association (GCIOBA).

T
HE
I
BADAN
E
XPERIENCE

3.
When I returned to Nigeria after five years of self-imposed exile in the United States,
following the Nigeria-Biafra War, I was attracted to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka,
in part because Ezeilo was the university president!

Discovering
Things Fall Apart

1.
Notes from discussion with Professor Jerome Brooks at Bard College (a version of
which was later published as “The Art of Fiction” in the
Paris Review
, no. 139 [Winter 1994]).

2.
Ezenwa-Ohaeto,
Chinua Achebe: A Biography
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 62.

3.
I was told the story by the late Alan Hill.

4.
Katie Bacon, “Atlantic Unbound: An African voice, Chinua Achebe,”
The Atlantic
, August, 2, 2000.

The March to Independence

1.
I have written extensively about the influence of Azikiwe on my life (see Zik’s kitchen
in
The Education of a British-Protected Child
) and that of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria.

2.
Eminent sons and daughters such as Dr. Akanu Ibiam, a Hope Waddell Training School
and Kings College, Lagos, graduate who went on to the University of St. Andrews in
Scotland and qualified as a medical doctor in 1935. Another major figure of the time
and Azikiwe contemporary was the educator Alvan Ikoku, who was a deeply religious
and studious man, and another Hope Waddell alumnus. Ikoku would provide a steady source
of advice for Azikiwe during periods of political tumult.

Azikiwe also worked closely with a number of associates and lifelong friends, one
of whom was Adeniran Ogunsanya (Ogunsanya was the son of the Odofin of Ikorodu). Ogunsanya,
later the first attorney general and commissioner for justice in Lagos state, was
a graduate of Madariola Private School in Ikorodu, one of the earliest preparatory
schools in Nigeria. That school boasted among its alumni Yoruba titans such as Professor
Bolaji Idowu and the vivacious Theophilus Owolabi Shobowale (T. O. S.) Benson, another
early Azikiwe associate. Benson later became the first deputy mayor of the city of
Lagos and Nigeria’s first federal minister of information, culture, and broadcasting.

There were others still, such as Eyo Ita from Calabar, a Columbia University graduate,
who would become a deputy national president of the National Council of Nigeria and
the Cameroons (NCNC) in the 1950s and the leader of the Eastern government in 1951.
Mbonu Ojike, who was also educated in the United States, A. A. Nwafor Orizu, who would
become Nigeria’s first president of the Senate, Michael Okpara, the premier of Eastern
Nigeria, the entertaining and vivacious K. O. Mbadiwe, and the indescribable and stunning
Margaret Ekpo were all early Azikiwe associates. Alongside these eminent achievers
could be found the stalwarts of the Zikist Movement, a youth branch of the NCNC.

Sources
: Helen Chapin Metz, ed.,
Nigeria: A Country Study
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office for the Library of Congress, 1991); K.
A. B. Jones-Quartey,
A Life of Azikiwe
(London: Penguin African Series, 1965); Nnamdi Azikiwe,
My Odyssey
(London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1971); Falola and Heaton
, A History of Nigeria
; Chudi Uwazurike, Nwagwu, Cletus N.,
The
Man Called Zik of New Africa: Portrait of Nigeria’s Pan-African Statesman
(New York: Triatlantic Books, 1996).

3.
It is important to note that Nigeria by the 1940s had an educated class of people
in the large urban centers of Lagos, Ibadan, Ogbomosho, Onitsha, Port Harcourt, and
Enugu, and in a few places in Northern Nigeria, such as Kano and Kaduna. Some families
could boast of two generations of college-educated members. There was to be a certain
amount of tension between these competing camps, if you like, as time went on. Azikiwe
was a gifted and savvy politician and well aware of this possible friction, and he
made great gestures to reach out to many of the prominent individuals of the day.
Many of his acquaintances were nonpoliticians.

Nigeria was particularly fortunate to have a very strong legal system. Some of the
legal luminaries included Azikiwe’s contemporary Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, who by the
late 1950s had become the chief justice of the federation of Nigeria. Ademola was
a Cambridge University law graduate and the son of Sir Ladapo Ademola, the Alake (paramount
ruler) of Egbaland, in the Western Region of Nigeria. Other major names of the time
included Justice C. D. Onyeama, the first Nigerian justice at the International Court
of Justice at The Hague, and Sir Louis Mbanefo. Mbanefo would rise to become a Supreme
Court justice in 1952 and, after the Nigerian-Biafra War broke out, would serve as
the chief justice of Biafra and ambassador plenipotentiary. Sir Louis would also play
an important role in peace talks and, with Major General Philip Effiong, make the
final decision to end the war in 1970, after General Odumegwu Ojukwu had fled the
nation for Ivory Coast.

Sources
: Author’s recollections of the time and Metz, ed.,
Nigeria;
Jones-Quartey,
A Life of Azikiwe
; Azikiwe,
My Odyssey;
Falola and Heaton
, A History of Nigeria
; Uwazurike and Nwagwu,
The Man Called Zik of New Africa
.

4.
Chief Anthony Enahoro recalls of this period: “In those days, a nationalist newspaper
was a monitor of wrongdoings by the colonial government of the day, and the newspaper
was an advocate and promoter of the termination of colonial rule. Our newspapers were
advocates of democracy and social advancement.” Interview Number 21 by Pini Jason,
January 2006 © Achebe Foundation.

The Cradle of Nigerian Nationalism

1.
Metz,
Nigeria
.

2.
Richard L. Sklar,
Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emerging African Nation
(Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004); Metz,
Nigeria
.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Ibid. Falola and Heaton
, A History of Nigeria
;
Nigeria Youth League Movement: A Resumé of Programme
(Service Press, 1940); Richard L. Sklar and Whitaker Jr., C. S., “Nigeria,” in James
S. Coleman and Carl G. Rosberg, eds.,
Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa
(Berkeley: African Studies Center/University of California Press, 1964), p. 597;
Jones-Quartey,
A Life of Azikiwe
; Azikiwe,
My Odyssey
.

The NPTA (Nigerian Produce Traders’ Association) was an advocacy group based in Western
Nigeria that had been especially effective in protecting and improving the commercial
interests of small traders and cocoa farmers in the Western Region.

5.
Metz,
Nigeria
; Sklar
, Nigerian Political Partie
s; Obafemi Awolowo,
Awo: The Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Falola and Heaton
, A History of Nigeria
; Sklar and Whitaker Jr., “Nigeria,” in Coleman Jr. and Rosberg,
Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa
.

6.
An honorific title that means “war leader or head of the bodyguards,” depending on
the Hausa expert one encounters.

7.
Sklar,
Nigerian Political Parties
; Metz,
Nigeria
; Falola and Heaton,
A History of Nigeria
;
Nigeria Youth League Movement
; Sklar and Whitaker Jr., “Nigeria”; Jones-Quartey,
A Life of Azikiwe
; Azikiwe,
My Odyssey
.

8.
Ibid.

9.
Ibid.

10.
Ibid.

Post-Independence Nigeria

1.
When Osei Boateng of the
New African
, in a November 2008 cover story titled “Nigeria: Squalid End to Empire,” meticulously
outlined how colonial “Britain rigged Nigeria’s independence elections
so that its compliant friends in the North would win power, dominate the country,
and serve British interests after independence
” (emphasis added) it only confirmed what most of us already suspected:

“As long as the Federal Government [of Nigeria] remains dependent, our strategic requirements
are constitutionally secure,” one of the documents says. “In the Westminster model,
Parliament is the matrix of the Executive. When this model is exported to dependent
territories, we are forced in the transitional stages to modify it in the interests
of strong and stable government. This we do by
rigging the parliament through official majorities, a restricted franchise and so
forth
,” another document reveals. “In the last resort, we must make sure that the government
of Nigeria is strong, even if possibly undemocratic or unjust,” says yet another document.

It is to the credit of British intellectuals and institutions that the documents showcasing
this electoral swindle are now available. Series A, Volume 4 of the British Documents
on the End of Empire Project (BDEEP), published by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
University of London, provides a bounty of startling revelations.

Sources
: Robin Ramsay,
Politics & Paranoia
(Geat Britain: Picnic Publishing, 2008), p. 258; Johannes Harnischfeger,
Democratization and Islamic Law: The Sharia Conflict in Nigeria
(Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2008), p. 63, fn. 90.

The Decline

1.
Chinua Achebe, “The Duty and Involvement of the African Writer.” Excerpted from Wilfred
Cartey and Kilson, Martin,
The Africa Reader
(New York: Random House, 1970).

The Role of the Writer in Africa

1.
“The Beginnings of African Literature,” http://www.unc.edu/~hhalpin/ThingsFallApart/literature.html.

2.
Bacon, “Atlantic Unbound”; Achebe, “The Duty and Involvement of the African Writer”;
Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,”
Transition
, no. 36 (1968), pp. 31–38. Published by Indiana University Press on behalf of the
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, www.jstor.org/stable/2934672; Lindfors,
Conversations with Chinua Achebe.
Achebe Foundation Archives © 2004–2011.

3.
Ode Ogede,
Achebe and the Politics of Representation
(Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 2001).

4.
Bacon, “Atlantic unbound”; Achebe,
“
The Duty and Involvement of the African Writer”; Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,”
Transition
; Lindfors,
Conversations with Chinua Achebe.
Achebe Foundation Archives © 2004–2011.

5.
Ali Mazrui,
The Trial of Christopher Okigbo
, African Writers Series (London: Heinemann, 1971). Achebe Foundation Archives © 2004–2011.

6.
Ibid.

7.
Bacon, “Atlantic Unbound”; Achebe, “The Duty and Involvement of the African Writer”;
Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,”
Transition
; Lindfors,
Conversations with Chinua Achebe.
Achebe Foundation Archives © 2004–2011.