ACHEBE RETURNS

ACHEBE RETURNS WITH LONG-AWAITED ‘BIAFRA’ MEMOIR

 Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe, often called the Father of Modern African Literature, released his first major work in years with a long awaited memoir centered on the war that nearly destroyed his nation.

“There Was A Country”: A Personal History of Biafra” chronicles Achebe’s experiences during the Nigeria’s 1967-1970 Civil War, which saw his native eastern region, dominated by the Igbo ethnic group, secede as the Republic of Biafra.

The split came largely in response to massacre of Igbos in Nigeria’s north and saw Achebe, author of the revered novel “Things Fall Apart” speak out forcefully in support of the move. His memoir was first released in Great Britain around September and in the United States on October 11^th.

The tensions that ignited the Biafran conflict which left around one million people dead, including many from starvation are largely unsettled. Today, sporadic calls for greater Igbo autonomy have limited impact in Nigerian politics. Experts however believe a Biafra memoir from the 81 year old Achebe is urgently needed in a country that remains deeply fractured on other levels, despite the books focus on events that happened more than four decades ago. “Achebe is sustaining the debate on Integration and Unity and on Oneness” said Dapo Thomas, a history professor at Lagos State University. “Until there is sovereign agreement from the peasants to the elite that we want to remain as one, we must continue that debate. A nation cannot remain comatose while these issues are unresolved.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with over 160 million people, around 250 ethnic groups and is roughly divided between a mainly Muslim North and predominantly Christian South. Though speculations persist over whether the country will eventually break up, many say such prediction are over blown.

Yet faulty lines remain, notably between the North and South, a division that has had immeasurable impact on Nigeria since Independence in 1960. Religiously and ethnically divided communities in the so called “Middle Belt” in the country’s centre have seen waves of clashes that have killed thousands in recent years.

Failure of Leadership

Beyond that, Islamist group Boko Haram is blamed for killing more than 2,400 since 2010 in an insurgency which it says is aimed at restoring an Islamic state in the North and stripping power from the secular government.

During the Biafra war, “what we are finding is a new nation going through the pangs of nationhood” said the writer and literature professor “The truth is, in Nigeria here we are still going through the trauma of trying to forge a nation.

Achebe strongly backed his native Biafra in the Civil War and even toured to speak on its behalf. Echoes of the conflict emerge in his writing, including his collection “Christmas in Biafra” and other Poems.

The octogenarian remains a towering figure in Nigerian and African literature, though he has been based in the United States in recent years where he has been a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island. He travels infrequently due to a 1990 car accident that left him in a wheel chair.

Achebe’s novel “Things Fall Apart”, about the collision between British colonial rule and Igbo society remains a Landmark work 54 years after its release “just as we read Shakespeare, its not possible for any student in this department to graduate without reading the works of Chinua Achebe” said the head of English department at the University of Lagos, Adeyemi Daramola.

Earlier in his career, Achebe fiercely criticized Nigerian Leaders notably in his widely read 1983 essay “The Trouble with Nigeria” whose first sentence is still often cited here “The Trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership” it reads.

Achebe has limited such commentary in recent years, unlike his great Nigerian literary rival Wole Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel prize for literature, who has stayed on the political front line throughout his career.

However, during January protests over a fuel price hike, Achebe issued “A statement of solidarity with the Nigerian People” that gained attention back home. His legacy is secure in Nigeria but his absence has been felt by most Nigerians both the ordinary and the elite but can we say the same about the ruling class?