If you read the Nigerian centred listserves, you will see the civil war is a running topic, year after year, and conflict between Yorubas and Igbos and between these two and the Hausa Fulani is a distinct feature of these groups.
If you follow the Northern Nigerian centred groups, you will also observe the sense of the 'South-as different from us-the North'. Members of the Northern centred groups of Yanarewa and Raariga at times even make a point of conducting debates in Hausa, even when the debate involves non-Hausa speakers from the South. They would discuss you in Hausa and in terms of attitudes they dont want you to know about, without realizing that with some effort, one can get a reasonably good online free Hausa translator.
Some groups would expel you if they see you as too disturbing to their ethnically inspired or related sensitivities. An Igbo dominated group could do that partly on discomfort with your challenging their beloved pro-Biafra dogmas. A Northern centred group could ban you for your critiques of Islam. A Bini centred group could exclude you for persistent challenges to Bini struggles for self assertion.
So, the debate on the Achebe essay and book are a continuation of a long running tradition. As the various ethnicities struggle to define themselves in relation to each other, these debates most take place.
A book can be written about debates on the civil war between last year and this year alone on Nigerian centred online communities, including the very rich Nairaland forum.I pray I am able to do so. Oluwatoyin Ade Odutola has brought out his book based on his PhD, which does something similar over a broader spectrum of issues and covering a much longer period of time : Diaspora and Imagined Nationality: USA-Africa Dialogue and Cyberframing Nigerian Nationhood.
There is so much to learn from these debates and the various actors in them.
They include the intellectual but rough and ready Bolaji Aluko who seems to have become sobered and absorbed by his VCship appointment at Otueke; Chukwuma 'Vicious Animal' Agwunobi and the ' Wharf Snake of Idioro', that being his user name, and their long running fight with the Ngbati Ngbatis, the Yorubas; Afis Odidere and his perpetual struggles with those he calls Iyanmiris, the Igbos; the lofty postulations of Obi Nwakanma;Leye Ige's perpetual advocation for Nigeria restructuring; Valentine Ojo's violently acerbic but at times insightful attacks;Ozodi Osuji's eternal critique of his fellow Igbos and learned reflections on a broad range of issues, from sociology to psychology and scientific cosmology;etc etc
Its actually one big happy family whose members cannot do without each other.
toyin
On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 12:41 AM, Felicia Oyekanmi <profoyekanmi@yahoo.com> wrote:
Prof Felicia A. D. Oyekanmi
Department of Sociology
University of Lagos
Akoka, Yaba,
Lagos Nigeria
Tel: {234} 1 7941757
Cell: {234}8056560970
--- On Mon, 8/10/12, Tade Aina <tadeakinaina@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Tade Aina <tadeakinaina@yahoo.com>To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Femi Fani-Kayode on Achebe's thoughts...
Date: Monday, 8 October, 2012, 17:08
--Thanks Toyin.We are never going to have a sober and restrained discussion of Biafra. Forty years on the wounds have not healed. Some of the protagonists are still alive and we all have different reactions to the Biafran question. My own experiencse and knowledge were shaped by seeing the war from Lagos as a school boy receiving classmates back to the boarding house after the war and serving my NYSC in the old South Eastern state of Nigeria(now Cross River and Akwa Ibom). As you can imagine it is a complex amalgam of pain, anger and confusion when you remember the stories of killing, rape, looting and humiliation. That story in the old Eastern Nigeria has many variants!I have also spent time supporting transitional justice issues and work around truth and reconciliation for many years in Eastern Africa particularly the Arusha Tribunal, the lessons to be learned from the South African TRC and the various economic and other crimes debates as they affected some African dictators in that region.All of these are not things we can pronounce on lightly. We often do. The definitions are at times legally clear and we know that there are differences in what happened in wars around the world(Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Darfur, Bosniaetc . But as I said,Biafra is still too close and too near for ,many of us. The stories have many sides and multiple narrators. My position is : let whoever wants to, tell their story. I have my profound and unalloyed respect for Professor Achebe and I donot want to come to any judgement on his interpretation of this sad part of our national history. There are so many aspects to this history- the riots in Kano in the 1950s, the Western Nigerian crisis, the imprisonment of the Action Group leaders on treasonable felony , the first and second 1966 coups and the Civil war and its aftermath.We can judge facts but have no competence or capacity to judge the quality and depth of individual and collective pain and suffering. This is what civil wars and all other acts of hatred and animosity do to peoples who are kins, neighbors and co-citizens. Nigeria is a traumatized country. If it had been an indidual it would be requiring therapy and clinical attention! Alas, it is a nation and nations scarcely get a chance to be checked into care!But the same Nigeria, in spite of all its problems is a special country. It is one of the few places in history where the history of a civil war is most aggresively being written and inscribed by those who were not the formal victors!Those who thought they won that war have oftentimes been discredited or shamed into silence not by Biafra but by their own unfortunate political and personal circumstances. So, we hear a more insistent and consistent side or part of this sad story!It really makes us special and this is why the struggles now should be how to overcome the collective and individual traumas and pains of our national history. The struggle should be how to rebuild, to heal, to forgive but not forget all that we have done to ourselves. This is where we lack national leadership of any worth.That , more than the intellectual and historical worth of what has happened and continue to happen to us as a people is perhaps the bigger question.From: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <toyinvincentadepoju@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, October 8, 2012 3:30 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Femi Fani-Kayode on Achebe's thoughts...
Thanks, Tade.
I think, though, that there is a need to distinguish between the book preview by Achebe and the book proper.
Reading a book being a more or less demanding task, Achebe has done the world the favour of abstracting aspects of it in an essay. As a writer and scholar, I expect he would realize that such an excerpt needs to give a window into what he considers most significant about what he has to say about these issues 40 years after the war ended. Thus, the essay stands on its own as an example of social intervention by means of a carefully chosen and politically explosive text, an effect it demonstrates abundantly.
Even after reading the book, the politics of Achebe's essay preview remains germane as a point of discourse in strategies of self positioning and publicity for one's ideas.
Biafran leaders were very good at selling a story of victimization, but I get the impression they were poor at the practical realities of overall political and military strategy.
Along similar lines, I suspect Achebe has scored another own goal, like the Biafran leaders did in strategic contexts, and I will explain why later.
Having stated that, we need to engage with the essay, where Achebe does not simply provide bullet points but clearly states and justifies his views.
After we have read the book, then we can also critique it.
Meanwhile, I am finding it enriching reading the rich debates on Nigerian centred listerves on the essay and partly on the book.
If people's thinking is ethnically shaped, and so? How will they transcend their ethnic conditioning without articulating those perspectives flowing from it and have those perspectives challenged?
Kingsley Nnaguaba, not sure of the correct spelling, beat his chest to argue that Biafrans/Igbos committed no war crimes. I provided a brief list. He then concluded that we all need to acknowledge crimes on both sides and achieve redress. I have just read Obi Nwakanma making the same boast and I have asked him to confirm he is serious so I can assist him with the information. We can then move beyond this culture of making Biafra into a holy enterprise devoid of the contradictions of human enterprises.
A contributor on this list once responded to my argument that the claim of anti-Igbo genocide in the name of plans to kill all Igbos is difficult to sustain by providing other conceptions of genocide which he is convinced are relevant to the Biafran story. Other contributors debated various ways of interpreting genocide as different from war crimes. With such information, one is better positioned to examine the issues.
There might never be a time when, beceause we know enough, we shall all agree on the war in its totality. So waiting till all the information is in is a self defeating enterprise.
thanks
toyin
toyin
On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 5:38 AM, Tade Akin Aina <tadeakinaina@yahoo.com> wrote:
Toyin,The problem is not with this listserve and how it is discussing the questions and issues raised by Professor Achebe's book. It is with a narrow ethnic perspective around the Nigerian civil war and the Biafran question. Biafra lost the civil war so we have one formal united Nigeria. But what happened during that war? Are there issues of transitional justice? Actions that would have been considered war crimes or crimes against humanity? What attempts were made at reconciliation, justice and healing? Should we not get as many pictures of these moments in our history without the questioning of the literary credentials or integrity of Chinua Achebe ? These are my concerns. This book by Chinua Achebe is a serious effort and intervention and cannot be dismissed by reading just the introduction or the introductory essay. It requires a sustained engagement around facts and evidence by researchers and witnesses like Prof. Achebe. My worry is all the noise and heat by the array of politicians and commentators who do not have either the stamina or concentration to engage a ten page document and have now ascribed to themselves the role of critiquing what I know is the product of sustained and engaged effort by Prof Achebe. Yes, it is high time we debate and confront Biafra in Nigerian history, conscience and consciousness. It is time that we review the damage and hurt to our collective psyche and bring the experience and questions back to the open before all the key players pass away. We need their stories, accounts, rationalizations , interpretations and explanations. They are not the ones responding. Prof Achebe is one eye witness. He has told his story. Unfortunately Chief Awolowo is gone but there are others who know what is not yet in the public domain. Chinua Achebe has told his own side of the story. Let them speak, write or say their piece whichever way. Let us use this opportunity to further understand and interpret ourselves as a people. This is my point. It is a sensitive point, but it goes beyond Gowon's "no victor, no vanquished". It also can help us know how to address the Niger Delta question and the unfolding North Eastern and Far North (Boko Haram) question. It is good to discuss and debate but with a clear understanding of the goals of why we are doing it and what we want to achieve.
Sent from my iPadCan we please be told what is immature in the discussion on this subject so far?
Why all this speaking in codes?
If you think anyone's approach is inadequate, explain why you think so.
There has been so little discussion of this subject on this group of scholars while the general Nigerian groups are chewing the issue to pieces.
Anybody who has anything to say should please say it and fearlessly.
toyin
On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 12:52 AM, Tade Akin Aina <tadeakinaina@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ibrahim my brother, I join Funmi in thanking you. We need a lot of light in this steamy moment where it is all heat and no light!This is Chinua Achebe's interpretation of a particularly important historical moment in Nigeria's history. It is his accountancy history and his contribution and intervention and I am glad it is generating so much debate and questioning but academics and intellectuals need to grow up and face this as an important intervention.
Sent from my iPad
You guys are really and truly shameless, I mean really shameless. Chinua
wrote a book-- I doubt if there is anything new in that book--on the war
and the crisis of the Nigerian state 1966-1970 and all you guys could do is
defend your ethnic godfather/turf.Why should Chinua's take on the crisis split the exchange between so-called
yorubas ans socalled igbos?This is graceful......quo vadis nigeria?????Mr. Abdullah, all heat!Thank you for your perspective on the matter.Funmi Tofowomo--The art of living and impermanence.
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