...Will it motivate Nigerian scientists to perform socially relevant science as occurred in Biafra, but impossible to replicate in Nigeria?...
Ukaegbu
I expect Biafra succeeded at that level because its people were united by what Ikhide on this group describes as a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership may be further understood as reinforced by an intense sense of persecution. These factors i expect were further forged in a sense of practically desperate necessity to seek a self determination within a political context in which they were largely convinced they had no place.
Nigeria, on the hand, has been plagued by leadership, which unlike the Biafran leadership and social context, is not able to inspire a similar sense of ownership, so it has remained stuck within a neo-colonial context that stultifies indigenous scientific and technological production.
Have the South Eastern states been able to replicate the Biafran achievement? I cant say and that would suggest that the circumstances that made Biafran achievement possible no longer exist, although it seems Innoson Motors-not sure of the name- is described as making admirable progress.
Might an understanding that may be derived from what Achebe has told us so far about his book t be the idea that it would have helped Nigeria if the Biafran technological team were integrated into Nigeria to develop Nigerian technology as the US did with German scientists who developed the German V2 rocket, an initiative understood to have been central to US space exploration?
Gordian Ezekwe, described as the leader of the Biafran engineering team, was later appointed Minister of Science and Technology, I think, amidst high hopes that he would make a significant difference. In an interview at the time, he stated that technological development requires a certain degree of awareness of technology in the populace. I wonder if such awareness existed in Biafra, though.
A difficulty with Achebe's style of presenting very relevant issues in his preview essay is that he colours them with an ethnic strain that makes it difficult to see through to the valid points that may be deduced from his case.
Yes, we must read his book.
But can his book ever escape the cloak he has thrown over it with his introductory essay?
On the Biafran scientists' integration into Nigeria, this is part of Ukaegbu's observation in his essay on science in and post Biafra. Apologies for its being rough:
At the end of the war in 1970, RAP [the Biafran technology unit] was somewhat reconstitutedas a federal research instituteknown as the ProjectDevelopmentAgency(PRODA).It was laterrenamedthe ProjectDevelopmentInstitutebut retainedthe initialacronym. PRODAwasexpectedtobeareplicaofRAP.G.O.Ezekwe(mentionedabove),a renownedengineerwho hadsufferedseriousinjuriesfromaccidentalexplosions in his RAPworkshopduringthe war,was the firstdirectorof PRODA,and a significantproportion of PRODA'spioneer technical and clerical staff was likewise drawn from RAP.Some breakthroughshave since been creditedtoPRODA,includingthe establishmentof a scientificequipmentfactory.But it is no exaggerationto statethatin morethanthreedecadesof existencesincethe end of the war PRODAhas neverachievedthe degreeof societalrelevanceand visibilityrecordedby RAPin the threeshortyearsof secessionistBiafra.'
I have attached Ukaegbu's article. I have also attached some other work from him on industrialization in Nigeria.Below is an the abstract and the beginning of the essay to give one its flavour and here is an insightful list of other works of his on industrialization and business in Nigeria. Some of these works are attached to this mail.
I have also added his 'Area Studies and the Disciplines' because it addresses the questions of theory in as used by African scholars beceause it can be related to issues of interpretive scope in scholarship and the relationship of that with the kind of originality represented by technological growth, as Paulin Hountondji's work indicates.
The essay on Biafra sums up the current situation in Nigeria, as far as I understand it. The one point he does not address is the possiblity of private sector entrepreneurship in terms of an alliance between technological creativity and business as is so marked in the US, as a means of galvanizing technological development.
"Lessons from Biafra: The Structuration of Socially Relevant Science in the Research and Production Directorate*
+ Author Affiliations
- Direct correspondence to Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu, Department of Sociology, 406 Ross Hall, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. E-mail: chris@uwyo.edu.
-
↵* Presented at the First International Conference on Igbo Studies: A Tribute to Simon Ottenberg, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, April 4–6, 2003.
Abstract
Africa's dismal economic performance is directly attributable to its weakness in the production and use of modern technology. Even Nigeria, a country with immense human and material resources, coupled with significant scientific infrastructure, has not yet been able to manage the all-important technological leap forward. The situation was different in Biafra (1967–70), when indigenous scientists and engineers performed socially relevant science without the preconditions conventionally perceived as necessary for technological development. Anchored in structuration theory, this article explores the sociology of scientific and technological practice in Biafra, outlines the achievements of Biafran scientists and engineers, and offers explanations of why the Biafran technological success has not been replicable in post-civil war Nigeria. Discussion concludes with a suggestion for development-driven geopolitical restructuring.
The literature on development, especially from the 1960s through the 1980s, has emphasized several perceived obstacles to technological development in developing countries, including a weak base of indigenous science and technology, scarcity of research and development institutions and activities, low public investment in research and development, poor training facilities, low manpower in science and technology, brain drain, and the absence of a capital goods sector that would motivate engineering designs and fabrications (Fabayo, Odejide, and Made 1995). Another assumed constraining factor is that because industries arrive in the Third World as turnkey operations, Third World scientists and engineers will likely be employed in such industries to perform only routine tasks. This type of work environment, it is argued, does not provide local scientists and engineers the opportunity to learn by doing. It has also been argued that the content of scientific and technological education that Third World scientists and engineers receive abroad is so far removed from the problems of their native countries that they are unable to do socially relevant science at home.
The Biafran experience challenges these assumptions. All these perceived handicaps existed in Biafra, yet through the wartime organization known as Research and Production (RAP) Biafran scientists, engineers, and technicians managed to perform socially relevant science, sustain their efforts through the three-year Nigerian-Biafran war, and put Biafra on the path to technological development, had the young nation survived. Thus I suggest that technological development is driven more by the effective harnessing of human agency, nurtured by appropriate sociopolitical conditions, than by the presence of glamorous technological preconditions. That proposition is examined here in the context of scientific and technological practice in prewar Nigeria, wartime Biafra, and postwar Nigeria. I conclude with lessons and suggestions for socially relevant science in Nigeria. By socially relevant science I mean the use of educational skills and knowledge in science and technology to solve problems of society while continuing to advance that knowledge to improve and perfect technological devices. Where scientists, engineers, and technicians cannot rise to that challenge in this age of science-based production, their work degenerates into social irrelevance.
Science and technology comprise an important source of new knowledge that, when injected into the economy, fuels development in social organizations such as education, health care, communication, and manufacturing enterprises (Geisler 2001). Teece and Pisano (1998) use the term dynamic capabilities (of science and technology) to define a firm's ability to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge toward facilitating prescription. When extended to society in general, dynamic capabilities denotes a society's ability to utilize all its skill, knowledge, and resources to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Consequently, the knowledge produced by firms, universities, research institutes, and other organizations becomes diffused into the economy to the extent that it will be absorbed by relevant organizations, contribute to their success, and thus propel socioeconomic progress (Geisler 2001).
Science and technology are human, not superhuman, activities. Their success depends on the circumstances in which the potential or actual actors in scientific/technological and political spheres of society find themselves, their recognition that their roles can advance the cause of societal development, and their determination to enact those roles for that cause. Four action parameters inform much of the enterprise of scientific and technological advancement: basic research, applied research, development, and technology.
The United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) (as cited in Geisler 2001) defines basic research as an activity that has as its objective a fuller knowledge or understanding of the subject under study, rather than a practical application thereof. It is research that advances scientific knowledge but does not have specific, immediate commercial objectives. By contrast, applied research is aimed at gaining knowledge or understanding in order to determine the means by which a specific, recognized need may be met. Development is the systematic use of the knowledge or understanding gained from research toward the production of useful materials, devices, systems, or methods, including the design and development of prototypes and processes. While science produces new knowledge, technology applies knowledge to new ways of doing things (NSF in Geisler 2001). Although Biafran scientists performed both basic and applied research, they placed more emphasis on the development component in response to the circumstances of the war, which demanded immediate solutions to the urgent problem of national survival. In fact, these scientists mostly invoked and recalled existing knowledge from basic and applied research and used that knowledge to tackle the business of producing devices, materials, and systems for the society.
The series of events that led to the onset, prosecution, and end of the Nigerian-Biafran war (1967-70) has been documented in an impressively voluminous literature on that episode of Nigerian history (e.g., de St. Jorre 1972; Forsyth 1969; Jacobs 1987; Madiebo 1980; Nwankwo 1972; Stremlau 1977). For now, suffice it to say that the war was the final stage of a conflict that had started with the military coup of January 15, 1966. Igbo military officers were the primary actors in that coup, which took the lives of some leading political and military figures of non-Igbo origin. The people of Northern Nigeria, in response to the loss of their prominent personalities, carried out several massacres of Igbos in some cities of the region. The crisis forced thousands of Igbos and other citizens of Eastern Nigeria out of the North and back to the East, making them refugees in their homeland. The situation culminated in an intense national tension.
Fluctuating agreements and disagreements, conflict and consensus, promies and disappointments, and trust and distrust between the leaders of then Eastern Nigeria (led by Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu) and the Federal Nigerian Government (led by Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon) eventuated in the blockade of Eastern Nigeria. According to Jacobs (1987), instead of implementing agreements reached by the two parties in Aburi, Ghana, in early January 1967, the federal government enacted a series of measures that led the people of Eastern Nigeria to believe that they were being expelled from the Nigerian federation.
Jacobs recounts the measures as follows. The federal government, which held the revenues of Nigeria (especially those flowing from oil exports), would not help the Eastern Region with its large burden of refugees. Regular remittances to which the East was entitled were withheld. Government employees in the East were denied their wages. Federal supplies of equipment and material to agencies in the East were cut off. Nigeria Airways flights were suspended. All airports in the Eastern Region were closed to outside traffic. Eastern assets in Nigeria were frozen, as were those owned jointly with Nigeria abroad. Foreign currency exchange was cut off. Eastern seaports were closed to shipping, and export of Eastern produce was banned except through Lagos. The blockade of Biafra had begun, three months before there was a Biafra (Jacobs 1987).
Furthermore, sensing the possibility of secession by Eastern Nigeria, Lt. Col. Gowon issued a decree on May 27, 1967 dividing Nigeria into twelve states. The minority ethnic groups in Biafra may have favored that measure. But breaking the Eastern Region into three states removed the major oil deposits and installations from Igbo control (Jacobs 1987). On May 30, the Eastern legislature, under Lt. Col. Ojukwu, seceded from Nigeria by declaring the region an independent and sovereign state known as the Republic of Biafra. On July 6, the Nigerian army attacked Biafra from the latter's northern borders. Thus began the Nigerian-Biafran war.
Such was the historicostructural context in which Biafran scientists, engineers, and technicians (henceforth termed Biafran scientists) operated. Blockaded from sea, land, and air, Biafrans were isolated from other parts of Nigeria and the outside world. Most accounts of the war make passing mention of the ingenuity of Biafran scientists during that conflict. Ogbudinkpa (1985) is one of the very few who has thoroughly examined scientific practice in Biafra and the prospects of its transferability to national development in postwar Nigeria. A lucid, authoritative, and firsthand descriptive account of the role played by Biafran scientists during the war has more recently been published by E.O. Arene, a professor of chemistry who was a founding member of the Biafran Science Group. Through a series of events that group became an organization known as the Research and Production Directorate, popularly and fondly known as RAP.
Arene's book The Biafran Scientists: The Development of an African Indigenous Technology (1997) was a courageous undertaking. After the war, in which Biafra was defeated, many key leaders and personnel of RAP could not reveal their roles for fear of possible reprisal from the federal military government of Nigeria (Ogbudinkpa 1985). That fear is understandable, because although RAP was comprised of people from different ethnic groups in Biafra, the Igbo were predominant. Their very conspicuous presence in RAP was not deliberate but rather the direct result of demographic realities. Igbos formed the majority population in Biafra, as they had when it was Eastern Nigeria. It was common knowledge that the educated population was higher in Igboland than in other parts of Biafra. Also, several non-Igbo ethnic groups in coastal and riverine areas fell to the Nigerian army early in the war, stranding a large body of non-Igbos behind enemy lines until after the war ended on January 15, 1970 (Madiebo 1980). Moreover, the conflict that eventuated in the Nigerian-Biafran war was essentially a confrontation between the Igbo and the people of Northern Nigeria, owing to the conspicuous role of Igbo army officers in the plan and execution of the coup of January 15, 1966, in which key leaders of Northern and Southwestern Nigeria had died. It is therefore not surprising that Igbo scientists would prefer anonymity after losing a war that had been sustained through the maximum application of their professional skills and moral support. Arene's book was in fact first produced in 1987 as a restricted document. Clearance to publish it for public reading came a decade later.
Arene's magnificent account of RAP is richly descriptive. My intention here is to place RAP in an analytical and explanatory context, bringing sociological theory to bear on the dynamics of an organization that rallied the best of human ingenuity in a society that lacked all the so-called preconditions of technological development. Putting Biafra's RAP in the context of sociological theory helps to achieve two objectives. First, it suggests some reasons why scientific practice in postwar Nigeria has not enjoyed the same degree of dynamism and social relevance that its counterpart in wartime Biafra exhibited. Second, by anchoring RAP and its story in structuration theory in particular, we can see that Western sociological theory can be used to explain events in non-Western societies.
Scientific and Technological Practice in Biafra: A Conceptual Framework
Any number of sociological viewpoints could be claimed as the appropriate tool for explaining the social relevance of RAP. At first thought, plain structuralism, which sees structure as the singular determinant of action, appears a strong candidate. Upon critical reflection, however, plain structuralism offers only an incomplete understanding of the phenomenon. A fuller explanation can be gained from structuration theory, which (according to Giddens 2001) defines structure as both a medium and an outcome of social action. By this definition, structure and agency are interactive rather than separate from each other, and equal emphasis may be placed on both the subjective and objective dimensions of action.
Some early observers of the Nigerian-Biafran war even indirectly interpreted the role of Biafran scientists from a psychological perspective. Psychologism, according to Wallace (1969), seeks to explain social behavior …
Biafra in three short years created a transformative, developmental, scientific and technological human capital which Nigeria has been incapable of reproducing more than 40 years after the war...a sense of collective consciousness that unites a nation...
...Will it motivate Nigerian scientists to perform socially relevant science as occurred in Biafra, but impossible to replicate in Nigeria?...
Ukaegbu
I expect Biafra succeeded at that level because its people were united by what Ikhide on this group describes as a sense of ownership. This sense of ownership may be further understood as reinforced by an intense sense of persecution. These factors i expect were further forged in a sense of practically desperate necessity to seek a self determination within a political context in which they were largely convinced they had no place.
Nigeria, on the hand, has been plagued by leadership, which unlike the Biafran leadership and social context, is not able to inspire a similar sense of ownership, so it has remained stuck within a neo-colonial context that stultifies indigenous scientific and technological production.
Have the South Eastern states been able to replicate the Biafran achievement? I cant say and that would suggest that the circumstances that made Biafran achievement possible no longer exist, although it seems Innoson Motors-not sure of the name- is described as making admirable progress.
Might an understanding that may be derived from what Achebe has told us so far about his book t be the idea that it would have helped Nigeria if the Biafran technological team were integrated into Nigeria to develop Nigerian technology as the US did with German scientists who developed the German V2 rocket, an initiative understood to have been central to US space exploration?
Gordian Ezekwe, described as the leader of the Biafran engineering team, was later appointed Minister of Science and Technology, I think, amidst high hopes that he would make a significant difference. In an interview at the time, he stated that technological development requires a certain degree of awareness of technology in the populace. I wonder if such awareness existed in Biafra, though.
A difficulty with Achebe's style of presenting very relevant issues in his preview essay is that he colours them with an ethnic strain that makes it difficult to see through to the valid points that may be deduced from his case.
Yes, we must read his book.
But can his book ever escape the cloak he has thrown over it with his introductory essay?
On the Biafran scientists' integration into Nigeria, this is part of Ukaegbu's observation in his essay on science in and post Biafra. Apologies for its being rough:
At the end of the war in 1970, RAP [the Biafran technology unit] was somewhat reconstitutedas a federal research instituteknown as the ProjectDevelopmentAgency(PRODA).It was laterrenamedthe ProjectDevelopmentInstitutebut retainedthe initialacronym. PRODAwasexpectedtobeareplicaofRAP.G.O.Ezekwe(mentionedabove),a renownedengineerwho hadsufferedseriousinjuriesfromaccidentalexplosions in his RAPworkshopduringthe war,was the firstdirectorof PRODA,and a significantproportion of PRODA'spioneer technical and clerical staff was likewise drawn from RAP.Some breakthroughshave since been creditedtoPRODA,includingthe establishmentof a scientificequipmentfactory.But it is no exaggerationto statethatin morethanthreedecadesof existencesincethe end of the war PRODAhas neverachievedthe degreeof societalrelevanceand visibilityrecordedby RAPin the threeshortyearsof secessionistBiafra.'
I have attached Ukaegbu's article. I have also attached some other work from him on industrialization in Nigeria.
Below is an the abstract and the beginning of the essay to give one its flavour and here is an insightful list of other works of his on industrialization and business in Nigeria. Some of these works are attached to this mail.
I have also added his 'Area Studies and the Disciplines' because it addresses the questions of theory in as used by African scholars beceause it can be related to issues of interpretive scope in scholarship and the relationship of that with the kind of originality represented by technological growth, as Paulin Hountondji's work indicates.
The essay on Biafra sums up the current situation in Nigeria, as far as I understand it. The one point he does not address is the possiblity of private sector entrepreneurship in terms of an alliance between technological creativity and business as is so marked in the US, as a means of galvanizing technological development.
"Lessons from Biafra: The Structuration of Socially Relevant Science in the Research and Production Directorate*+ Author Affiliations
- Direct correspondence to Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu, Department of Sociology, 406 Ross Hall, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. E-mail: chris@uwyo.edu.
↵* Presented at the First International Conference on Igbo Studies: A Tribute to Simon Ottenberg, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, April 4–6, 2003.
Abstract
Essay extract from High Beam ResearchAfrica's dismal economic performance is directly attributable to its weakness in the production and use of modern technology. Even Nigeria, a country with immense human and material resources, coupled with significant scientific infrastructure, has not yet been able to manage the all-important technological leap forward. The situation was different in Biafra (1967–70), when indigenous scientists and engineers performed socially relevant science without the preconditions conventionally perceived as necessary for technological development. Anchored in structuration theory, this article explores the sociology of scientific and technological practice in Biafra, outlines the achievements of Biafran scientists and engineers, and offers explanations of why the Biafran technological success has not been replicable in post-civil war Nigeria. Discussion concludes with a suggestion for development-driven geopolitical restructuring.
The literature on development, especially from the 1960s through the 1980s, has emphasized several perceived obstacles to technological development in developing countries, including a weak base of indigenous science and technology, scarcity of research and development institutions and activities, low public investment in research and development, poor training facilities, low manpower in science and technology, brain drain, and the absence of a capital goods sector that would motivate engineering designs and fabrications (Fabayo, Odejide, and Made 1995). Another assumed constraining factor is that because industries arrive in the Third World as turnkey operations, Third World scientists and engineers will likely be employed in such industries to perform only routine tasks. This type of work environment, it is argued, does not provide local scientists and engineers the opportunity to learn by doing. It has also been argued that the content of scientific and technological education that Third World scientists and engineers receive abroad is so far removed from the problems of their native countries that they are unable to do socially relevant science at home.
The Biafran experience challenges these assumptions. All these perceived handicaps existed in Biafra, yet through the wartime organization known as Research and Production (RAP) Biafran scientists, engineers, and technicians managed to perform socially relevant science, sustain their efforts through the three-year Nigerian-Biafran war, and put Biafra on the path to technological development, had the young nation survived. Thus I suggest that technological development is driven more by the effective harnessing of human agency, nurtured by appropriate sociopolitical conditions, than by the presence of glamorous technological preconditions. That proposition is examined here in the context of scientific and technological practice in prewar Nigeria, wartime Biafra, and postwar Nigeria. I conclude with lessons and suggestions for socially relevant science in Nigeria. By socially relevant science I mean the use of educational skills and knowledge in science and technology to solve problems of society while continuing to advance that knowledge to improve and perfect technological devices. Where scientists, engineers, and technicians cannot rise to that challenge in this age of science-based production, their work degenerates into social irrelevance.
Science and technology comprise an important source of new knowledge that, when injected into the economy, fuels development in social organizations such as education, health care, communication, and manufacturing enterprises (Geisler 2001). Teece and Pisano (1998) use the term dynamic capabilities (of science and technology) to define a firm's ability to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge toward facilitating prescription. When extended to society in general, dynamic capabilities denotes a society's ability to utilize all its skill, knowledge, and resources to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Consequently, the knowledge produced by firms, universities, research institutes, and other organizations becomes diffused into the economy to the extent that it will be absorbed by relevant organizations, contribute to their success, and thus propel socioeconomic progress (Geisler 2001).
Science and technology are human, not superhuman, activities. Their success depends on the circumstances in which the potential or actual actors in scientific/technological and political spheres of society find themselves, their recognition that their roles can advance the cause of societal development, and their determination to enact those roles for that cause. Four action parameters inform much of the enterprise of scientific and technological advancement: basic research, applied research, development, and technology.
The United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) (as cited in Geisler 2001) defines basic research as an activity that has as its objective a fuller knowledge or understanding of the subject under study, rather than a practical application thereof. It is research that advances scientific knowledge but does not have specific, immediate commercial objectives. By contrast, applied research is aimed at gaining knowledge or understanding in order to determine the means by which a specific, recognized need may be met. Development is the systematic use of the knowledge or understanding gained from research toward the production of useful materials, devices, systems, or methods, including the design and development of prototypes and processes. While science produces new knowledge, technology applies knowledge to new ways of doing things (NSF in Geisler 2001). Although Biafran scientists performed both basic and applied research, they placed more emphasis on the development component in response to the circumstances of the war, which demanded immediate solutions to the urgent problem of national survival. In fact, these scientists mostly invoked and recalled existing knowledge from basic and applied research and used that knowledge to tackle the business of producing devices, materials, and systems for the society.
The series of events that led to the onset, prosecution, and end of the Nigerian-Biafran war (1967-70) has been documented in an impressively voluminous literature on that episode of Nigerian history (e.g., de St. Jorre 1972; Forsyth 1969; Jacobs 1987; Madiebo 1980; Nwankwo 1972; Stremlau 1977). For now, suffice it to say that the war was the final stage of a conflict that had started with the military coup of January 15, 1966. Igbo military officers were the primary actors in that coup, which took the lives of some leading political and military figures of non-Igbo origin. The people of Northern Nigeria, in response to the loss of their prominent personalities, carried out several massacres of Igbos in some cities of the region. The crisis forced thousands of Igbos and other citizens of Eastern Nigeria out of the North and back to the East, making them refugees in their homeland. The situation culminated in an intense national tension.
Fluctuating agreements and disagreements, conflict and consensus, promies and disappointments, and trust and distrust between the leaders of then Eastern Nigeria (led by Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu) and the Federal Nigerian Government (led by Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon) eventuated in the blockade of Eastern Nigeria. According to Jacobs (1987), instead of implementing agreements reached by the two parties in Aburi, Ghana, in early January 1967, the federal government enacted a series of measures that led the people of Eastern Nigeria to believe that they were being expelled from the Nigerian federation.
Jacobs recounts the measures as follows. The federal government, which held the revenues of Nigeria (especially those flowing from oil exports), would not help the Eastern Region with its large burden of refugees. Regular remittances to which the East was entitled were withheld. Government employees in the East were denied their wages. Federal supplies of equipment and material to agencies in the East were cut off. Nigeria Airways flights were suspended. All airports in the Eastern Region were closed to outside traffic. Eastern assets in Nigeria were frozen, as were those owned jointly with Nigeria abroad. Foreign currency exchange was cut off. Eastern seaports were closed to shipping, and export of Eastern produce was banned except through Lagos. The blockade of Biafra had begun, three months before there was a Biafra (Jacobs 1987).
Furthermore, sensing the possibility of secession by Eastern Nigeria, Lt. Col. Gowon issued a decree on May 27, 1967 dividing Nigeria into twelve states. The minority ethnic groups in Biafra may have favored that measure. But breaking the Eastern Region into three states removed the major oil deposits and installations from Igbo control (Jacobs 1987). On May 30, the Eastern legislature, under Lt. Col. Ojukwu, seceded from Nigeria by declaring the region an independent and sovereign state known as the Republic of Biafra. On July 6, the Nigerian army attacked Biafra from the latter's northern borders. Thus began the Nigerian-Biafran war.
Such was the historicostructural context in which Biafran scientists, engineers, and technicians (henceforth termed Biafran scientists) operated. Blockaded from sea, land, and air, Biafrans were isolated from other parts of Nigeria and the outside world. Most accounts of the war make passing mention of the ingenuity of Biafran scientists during that conflict. Ogbudinkpa (1985) is one of the very few who has thoroughly examined scientific practice in Biafra and the prospects of its transferability to national development in postwar Nigeria. A lucid, authoritative, and firsthand descriptive account of the role played by Biafran scientists during the war has more recently been published by E.O. Arene, a professor of chemistry who was a founding member of the Biafran Science Group. Through a series of events that group became an organization known as the Research and Production Directorate, popularly and fondly known as RAP.
Arene's book The Biafran Scientists: The Development of an African Indigenous Technology (1997) was a courageous undertaking. After the war, in which Biafra was defeated, many key leaders and personnel of RAP could not reveal their roles for fear of possible reprisal from the federal military government of Nigeria (Ogbudinkpa 1985). That fear is understandable, because although RAP was comprised of people from different ethnic groups in Biafra, the Igbo were predominant. Their very conspicuous presence in RAP was not deliberate but rather the direct result of demographic realities. Igbos formed the majority population in Biafra, as they had when it was Eastern Nigeria. It was common knowledge that the educated population was higher in Igboland than in other parts of Biafra. Also, several non-Igbo ethnic groups in coastal and riverine areas fell to the Nigerian army early in the war, stranding a large body of non-Igbos behind enemy lines until after the war ended on January 15, 1970 (Madiebo 1980). Moreover, the conflict that eventuated in the Nigerian-Biafran war was essentially a confrontation between the Igbo and the people of Northern Nigeria, owing to the conspicuous role of Igbo army officers in the plan and execution of the coup of January 15, 1966, in which key leaders of Northern and Southwestern Nigeria had died. It is therefore not surprising that Igbo scientists would prefer anonymity after losing a war that had been sustained through the maximum application of their professional skills and moral support. Arene's book was in fact first produced in 1987 as a restricted document. Clearance to publish it for public reading came a decade later.
Arene's magnificent account of RAP is richly descriptive. My intention here is to place RAP in an analytical and explanatory context, bringing sociological theory to bear on the dynamics of an organization that rallied the best of human ingenuity in a society that lacked all the so-called preconditions of technological development. Putting Biafra's RAP in the context of sociological theory helps to achieve two objectives. First, it suggests some reasons why scientific practice in postwar Nigeria has not enjoyed the same degree of dynamism and social relevance that its counterpart in wartime Biafra exhibited. Second, by anchoring RAP and its story in structuration theory in particular, we can see that Western sociological theory can be used to explain events in non-Western societies.
Scientific and Technological Practice in Biafra: A Conceptual Framework
Any number of sociological viewpoints could be claimed as the appropriate tool for explaining the social relevance of RAP. At first thought, plain structuralism, which sees structure as the singular determinant of action, appears a strong candidate. Upon critical reflection, however, plain structuralism offers only an incomplete understanding of the phenomenon. A fuller explanation can be gained from structuration theory, which (according to Giddens 2001) defines structure as both a medium and an outcome of social action. By this definition, structure and agency are interactive rather than separate from each other, and equal emphasis may be placed on both the subjective and objective dimensions of action.
Some early observers of the Nigerian-Biafran war even indirectly interpreted the role of Biafran scientists from a psychological perspective. Psychologism, according to Wallace (1969), seeks to explain social behavior …
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu <c-ukaegbu@northwestern.edu> wrote:
Cheers Obioma! The history and legacy of Biafra are bigger than any one individual. Biafra in three short years created a transformative, developmental, scientific and technological human capital which Nigeria has been incapable of reproducing more than 40 years after the war, and people are here talking about an inconsequential matter. That's an equivalent of the owner of a burning house who rather than persevere to put off the fire, prefers, instead, to purse rats in his burning house (Igbo proverb). I haven't read Achebe's new book. But the reviews I've seen indicate that it contains many issues strategic to understanding Nigeria's past, present and future, including the ingenuity and creativity of Biafran scientists, as well as the incompetence and cluelessness of Nigerian leaders mentioned by Obioma. What if debaters in this forum eventually conclude that Awolowo was a friend or foe of Igbos? Will that put food on the table for the majority of Nigerians who live under $2.00 a day? Will it repair the lost glories of the educational system, an educational system that created Achebe and many in this forum but has been disfigured beyond recognition in present day Nigeria? Will it accelerate industrialization and reduce the destructive rate of unemployment that has wasted generations of Nigerians? Will it reduce the humongous rate of corruption? Will it bring about a sense of collective consciousness that unites a nation and prevents emergence, escalation and consolidation of militant groups? Will it change all the broken promises about modernizing Nigeria's infrastructure? Will it engender interethnic trust and the resultant national social capital that have been found to facilitate national development? Will it motivate Nigerian scientists to perform socially relevant science as occurred in Biafra, but impossible to replicate in Nigeria? The list of substantive interrogatories go and on. If the answer to these questions is "NO' which to my mind is the correct answer, then keep on chasing rats while the house burns.
Speaking from the vantage point of one who has done some work on Biafra, see Ukaegbu, C.C. "Lessons from Biafra: The Structuration of Socially Relevant Science in the Research & Production Directorate" Social Forces, 2005. You will see that debating whether Awolowo was a friend or foe of Igbos is an inconsequential debate relative to the legacy of Biafra and therefore a distraction from the continuing nagging issue of the Nigerian question. Can we therefore examine Achebe's book holistically bearing in mind his social diagnosis and social prognosis for Nigeria? Of course, in a milieu of academic freedom, people are free to choose to put off the fire and save the house or choose to chase rats while the house burns.
Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu (Professor, Sociology of Development)
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nnaemeka, Obioma G
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 9:45 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awolowo
Frankly, I am outraged by the "discussion" of Professor Achebe's recent work that is going on here. It is clear to me that some contributors have not read There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. The book is NOT about Chief Awolowo. Some contributors have gone off on their polemicist high horse sabre rattling and twirling in frenzy because Professor Achebe dared to mention Chief Awolowo's name. P-L-E-A-S-E. Achebe has written an important work that invites serious engagement with issues that range from the despair and commitment of intellectuals in national crises to the Western provocation of and interventions in African conflicts. The myopic, reductionist reading ('non reading') that is going on here is a disservice to Professor Achebe's illuminating and artful work. The work offers an opportunity for us to engage in a robust debate about the tragedy of a Nigeria that is currently veering off the cliff under an incompetent, clueless leadership.
Obioma Nnaemeka, PhD
Chancellor's Distinguished ProfessorPresident, Association of African Women Scholars (AAWS)
Dept. of World Languages & Cultures Phone: (317) 278-2038
Cavanaugh Hall 543A 317-274-7611/0062 (messages)
Indiana University Fax: (317) 278-7375
425 University Boulevard E-mail: nnaemeka@iupui.edu
Indianapolis, IN 46202 USA
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Segun
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 6:35 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awolowo
My position is that there was no genocide committed against the Ibos during the civil war. It was an unnecessary war triggered by egoistic Ibo leaders in the army. Wars are fought in order to have peace. We can use any means to win the war insofar as it is just and morally defensible. In the case of Biafra it was a just war because to keep Nigeria one was a task that must be done.
Anyone can hold on to any unfounded truth of what was said or was not said by Pa Awolowo. If an interviewed that was conducted in 1983 which anyone who cares can go to any of our older university achieves to find the records fails to do so only to sit down to write and deny an authentic record and spread falsehood which Achebe did in his book, There was a country is nothing but sensational without any historical fact in it.
Awo was committed to the unity and oneness of this country and he left behind the legacy of quality of leadership that is unparalleled in the history of this country. His education and welfare policies remained indelible in our psyche and today he remains the only leader of a reference point.
The Ibos who are busy bodies who have been reeling under the psychological defeat of the civil war are bad losers. They are blaming someone who saved them rather than accept blame for the cause of the death of about 2 million Ibos. They should also accept the blame for killing over 300,000 Nigerian soldiers. Their parents and the loved ones cannot explain the pain and agony of the losses.
We must put the Biafra war behind us and move on because it was a dark spot on our collective history.
Prof. Segun Ogungbemi.
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 8, 2012, at 9:06 PM, Biko Agozino <bikozino@yahoo.com> wrote:
Brother Kole,
Thanks for asking. Awo does not bear the sole responsibility for what happened before the war (the killing of Yoruba by Yoruba during operation wetie and the jailing of Awo for treason), the coup by young majors who adored him who planned to impose him as president, the genocidal war over which he presided as the finance minister, or the aftermath that saw the economic liquidation of Igbo assets under his direction.
The responsibility is for all Nigerians, including you and I. We must strive to learn the correct lessons or we will continue to see such barbaric acts as the massacre of students over who knows what, the endless bombing of churches and public places as deliberate acts of terror, the lynching of university students over cell phones, kidnapping for ransom and the reckless looting of the economy by politicians who lack any sense of patriotism.
I expressed doubts as to whether Awo actually said what he was reported to have said at a Townhall meeting in Abeokuta in 1983 during the election of that year that ended with operation Owoboriomo in which the supporters of Akin Omoboriowo were attacked and killed by his Yoruba brothers for not supporting Awo.
Even if Awo said all that in his old age, the younger generation should still see the folly in the policy of 'starvation as a legitimate weapon of war' and condemn it as a war crime. Genocide is never justifiable under any circumstances and so all Nigerians should condemn the Igbo genocide in order to avoid another fratricidal war in which friends will kill friends and brothers will kill brothers again. We must unreservedly condemn genocide even if those killed were not our friends or family for we are all part of the human family and any wrongs to some will inevitably rub off on others.
The important question you are asking may be answered by Achebe's book. However, you should send similar questions to all the intellectuals who kept quiet all along despite their roles cheering the genocidal army along. Ask them what they did during the war.
Biko
--- On Mon, 8/10/12, Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola <kole2@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola <kole2@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awolowo
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Monday, 8 October, 2012, 14:58
Hello all,
Please can I ask a question about the civil war I know very little about BUT I feel the full impact of the war on my life and that of my friends. I have lived in fear that should there be another war, the deepest pain I would feel on my way out of the world is to be shot (and killed) by one of my friends.
In any case, my question is: Was the war about Awolowo, what he said or did not say? Can a war narrative still stand without Awo's contribution to it?
Who else made mistakes before the war, during the war and after the war
Did I hear Awo's name before the war? Awo's name during the war, and Awo's name after the war.
I ask these questions from a TOTALLY ignorant position. Be gentle on my lack of knowledge. I want to be better educated
Kole
--- On Mon, 10/8/12, Biko Agozino <bikozino@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Biko Agozino <bikozino@yahoo.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Awolowo Was No 'Friend of Ours'
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Monday, October 8, 2012, 2:17 PM
Awolowo Was No 'Friend' of Ours
By Biko Agozino
I eagerly await the arrival of my copy of Achebe's personal historiography of Biafra with my mouth salivating in anticipation, given the spoilers already raising storms of debates. The charged debate over Achebe's book gives Nigeria enough reason to reverse the dumb policy of Obasanjo who banned the teaching of history in Nigerian schools under the excuse that history is a yeye subject that does not lead to employment. Dalu (thank you), Nna anyi (our father) Achebe, you will live life until the endless time! I will wait until I have read every word and reflected on it before I comment on your magnum opus.
Meanwhile ... In response to this welcome addition to the cleansing of the historical conscience of Nigeria by Chinua Achebe, some misguided and misinformed miscreants have dredged up what looks like a fabrication, claiming that Awolowo regarded himself as a friend of the Igbo. The strange document lacks any of the clarity of the sage and digresses from a serious discussion of the haunting responsibility for genocide to the trivial mythology of fish as an astrological sign. That apparent forgery smell foul like a dead fish all right for the following reasons (follow link to read on):
http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2012/10/awolowo-was-no-friend-of-ours.html--
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