Ikhide's opinion on Chief Awolowo's war time policy is laughable. While striving to appear objective, it takes only a casual observer to peel off his veneer of subjectivity, outright bias and ethnic primordialism. He is, however, entitled to his opinion. The only thing he is not entitled to is his attempt to hoodwink the undiscerning that he is commenting as a disinterested scholar.
Ikhide does not waste time to belittle Chief Awolowo. He is quick to hoist the Biafran flag. Yet, some of our "objective" men of the book pretend as if they cannot see Ikhide's irredentism! To them, we must not "pollute" the discourse by pointing out the obvious fact that Ikhide represents the Biafran intellectual arm.
If Professor Jeyifo is an "ethnic jingoist," pray tell me what is little known Ikhide?
Kola/
Sent from my iPad
--Professor Biodun Jeyifo should go and spend his considerable intellectual capital on productive and worthy pursuits. Professor Chinua Achebe is the least of Oduduwa's problems. Chief Awolowo made a horrific mistake in using starvation to eliminate people whose only desire was to ask for a different term of engagement from Nigeria, a most abusive dispensation, if you ask me. However, despite Pa Awolowo's past poor judgment, no contemporary Yoruba leader can light a candle to his honesty, integrity and vision, none. We do not need Jeyifo to situate Awolowo properly in history. Jeyifo should ignore ethnic jingoists telling him to use his personal prestige to defend an injustice. Awolowo has already assured the world that he bears responsibility for Nigeria's genocide. That is enough for us.For 42 years, it did not occur to you to write about Biafra. An 80 year old man writes a few things and suddenly there are all these patronizing and condescending "analyses." Give us a break.- IkhideStalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/Follow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2012 7:38 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Jeyifo: First There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't
--
Toyin,
Go back and read my review commentary on 'Achebe's Ten Teachable Lessons'.You will agree that the teachable lessons from number 4 to number 9, if not all ten teachable lessons, focused in detail on Achebe's class analysis of the dynamics within Biafra and without:
http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2012/10/achebes-top-ten-teachable-lessons.html
Happy Kwanzaa
Biko
--- On Sun, 23/12/12, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:
From: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Jeyifo: First There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Sunday, 23 December, 2012, 16:06Jeyifo asks clearly- did class not play any role in Biafra?What are the implications of class in Biafra?What are the implications of Achebe's denunciation of class in Nigeria and ignoring it in Biafra, as Jeyifo understands Achebe's effort?The issue of class is central to the contradictions of Biafra as Achebe has acknowledged elsewhere and as other Biafrans have declared.The intersection between ethnicity and class is also central to challenges of internal cohesion faced by Biafra as well as being central to the counter coup that was a catalyst of the war.Achebe describes some members of the Biafran elite in his story 'Girls at War', as engaging in a cynical attitude to the war, stockpiling choice foods while the majority starved, a situation increasingly pronounced as Biafra's circumstances deteriorated.Ozobodi Osuji, on Nigerian centred listserves, reinforces this account with a graphic story of his mother's astonishing ability to corner large supplies of food in Biafra, some of which she used in feeding the populace.Girls at War and Other Stories is one of Achebe's most important books. In the story 'The Madman', in that work, he reaches a peak of his ironic art, demonstrating his narrative genius and originality of vision as one African artist able to craft an identity by challenging and subverting his indigenous religious culture rather than celebrating it, in a manner that evokes questions of the boundaries between truth and fiction, appearance and reality, sanity and insanity, creating the work within a cultural milieu where Foucault's ascendancy in developing similar themes was unknown.The Girls at War' story itself is important as an unromantic exploration of Biafra in its various stages of development, from the vibrant self sacrifice of the beginning of the war to the open demonstrations of self serving strategies as the situation became increasingly brutal.Biafran ambassador to France Ralph Uwechue has an imagistically resonant part of his autobiography on Biafra Reflections on the Ngerian Civil War: Facing the Future (extract attached) describing a discussion he had over food and wine with other high ranking members of the Biafran government in a foreign country during the war. Uwechue describes his impression of the unrealistic hard line stance towards negotiations with Nigeria and conditions associated with it portrayed by the Biafran government, even though it was clear Biafra was in such dire straights that stance was unreasonable.He describes the representative who had internalised Ojukwu's views as presenting Ojukwu's hard line position between mouthfuls of caviar.I dont need to spell out the irony there but J. P. CLark sums up this picture well from a related context in reference to the war in his great poem "Casualties":The casualties are manyand a good number wellOutside the scene of ravage and wreckThey are the emissaries of riftSo smug in smoke-room they haunt abroadThey do not see the funeral pilesAt home eating up the forests.They are wandering minstrels who, beating onThe drum of human heart, draw the worldInto a dance with rites it does not know."In this extract I combine what might be two versions of the poem.Ntieyong Udo Akpan, Chief Secretary to the Military Government, Head of the Civil Service and Member and Secretary to the Cabinet of Eastern Nigeria till the end of the civil war in The Struggle For Secession, 1966-1970: A Personal Account Of The Nigerian Civil War( part of it can be read on Google books) narrates at length a most unflattering story of Ojukwu as an autocrat and a nepotist, for whom clan, family and cabal associates were given roles that enabled them to eventually undermine him by flattering his weak character, helping to stoke fires of almost paranoid defensiveness in relation to the war, when pragmatic considerations were vital, particularly after the losses of 1968, when Biafra was hemmed in.Uwechue describes Ojukwu as a tyrant unbalanced in assessment of grave situations, sidelining other officers and experienced politicians whose help he need but hardly acknowledged. The description of Ojukwu as a dictator is unequivocally reinforced by Philip Effiong, his replacement as head of state, in an interview Uwechue quotes,.Obi N. Ebbe, for his part, in Broken Back Axle: Unspeakable Events In Biafra( part of it can be read on Google books)has a terrible story to tell of what he understands as the role of caste and discrimination-the osu factor-in destroying Biafra.The osu are a caste in Igboland discriminated against by other Igbos, regardless of whatever level of achievement reached by the osu, a practice described as still active among Igbos,as testified to by no less that seven groups/pages on Facebook , the largest having 843 members, dedicated to stopping the practice, spaces where osu and other victims tell their stories,along with very rich explorations of the phenomenon available through a Google search, such as M.O.Ene's "Rethinking the Osu Concept" and Victor Dike's "The Politics of Descent Based Discrimination: Reflections on the Osu Caste System in Igboland and the impact of Globalisation on Marginal Groups".Ebbe describes a fateful chance comment denigrating a high ranking member of the Biafran govt as osu, leading eventually to historically verifiable set backs suffered by Biafra which he describes as initiated by osu saboteurs who wanted to make sure Biafra failed so they would not assist in giving birth to a nation in which they would be second class citizens.The story he tells is too emotionally rich and historically detailed to be dismissed. It requires investigation.If the Biafran elite truly identified with the sufferings of the generality, would they have addressed the crisis the way they did? Very few weapons, and few trained soldiers, yet the path of further diplomacy was forsworn on account of modifications to the Aburi accord, unpleasant and deeply disturbing, yes, but, to adapt Ukpabi Asika's words, was secession a guarantee of security?The people were dying in massive nos yet even as he flew into exile Ojukwu is described by Effiong as expecting that the war would continue.I see Ojukwu as a great but deeply flawed man.thankstoyin--On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Biko Agozino <bikozino@yahoo.com> wrote:--
At last, Oga BJ is tackling this book of the year just a week after his comrade, Edwin Madunagu, cautioned the left against engaging with the book for fear that it could reopen old wounds and make it difficult for the left to reunite in the future. Madunagu's column in the Guardian remained cryptic about atrocities that he said he witnessed during the war and how hostile leftists were to his efforts to re-open debates about the history of the civil war in the past.
Below, BJ has started what promises to be a controversial engagement with the book and already he has offered fresh interpretations: There was a Country refers also to Nigeria (which is increasingly not working like a country) and not only to Biafra; Achebe comes across as a propagandist (and an ethnic one at that) unlike his realist literary personae of the past; Achebe was delusional in presenting the work as an intellectual contribution devoid of tribalism; and Achebe only mentioned the ruling class in the final part of the four-part book.Let us wait and read every word of Jeyifo's series of commentary on the book before responding to BJ since he is one of the most respected authorities on Achebe as he indicated in his opening paragraph; he has published books and essays on Achebe as one of the greatest realists of the past 100 years worldwide.
However, to say that Achebe is only just emerging as a propagandist is to miss the point that he has always been one given his theory that arts for arts sake was nothing but deodorized dog shit. But Achebe who worked with Aminu Kano in a progressive political formation and lambasted his fellow Igbo leader, Azikiwe, mercilessly in the very propagandist The Trouble with Nigeria, is far from being an ethnic propagandist; Achebe only recognizes the historically-specific fact that the ethnic violence in Nigeria almost always picks on one ethnic group without justification while the intellectual left pretends that only class analysis is valid.
BJ should watch the Leninist danger of not recognizing snow in the real world because it does not look like snow in the textbooks by saying that Achebe only mentioned class at the end of the book. Rather, he should try to read the book from the perspective of ethnic-class-gender articulation as advanced by Stuart Hall or from what is known in Critical Race Theory as the intersectionality perspective for the book dwelt on the educated elite, the religious elite, the expatriate elite, the political class, the military top brass, the business elite and the ruling classes in other countries compared to the masses even when the word, class, was not always used.
Finally, BJ should avoid the temptation to join ethnic war-lords in apportioning blame for genocide equally to the genocidized and the genocidists for as Soyinka pointed out in Of Africa, even if thieves robbed your home because you left a window open at night as they did Achebe's apartment in Enugu during the war, it does not follow that the thieves are not guilty especially if charged with a grave crime as genocide given that the leaders of the war crime went about bragging that all is fair in war.
Hopefully, the progressive in BJ will join the call for reparations to be paid to the survivors of the Biafra genocide that cost us more than 3 million lives, including non-Igbos, instead of joining the wicked to blame the victims and even if a punitive war crimes trial is avoided in the spirit of the African Mbari or Ubuntu that Achebe invoked from beginning to end.
Oga BJ, we look forward to learning from your historical materialist reading of Achebe's truthful book as usual, but I hope that you will not read it like any Truthful Lies from your opus on fictional literature characterized by spiritual escapism in West Africa (echoing your almost identical 'ibeji', Ola Rotimi, The Gods Are Not To Blame) compared to the realism of Southern African variants.Make we dey check am...BikoJeyifo: First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (1)
Where one thing stands, another thing will thing stand beside it.Chinua Achebe, Arrow of GodFIRST, there was a country; then there wasn't. To any one who has read Chinua Achebe's recently published book, There Was A Country, this statement that serves as the title of this piece refers to Biafra. Achebe's book is a powerful and harrowing account of the crises that led both to the creation and the destruction of the secessionist republic. But I am also adverting to Nigeria in this statement. For implicitly and implacably, Achebe's new book also hints at a Nigeria that once was - or at least was on the verge of becoming - but is now vanished, seemingly forever, leaving only the trace of a national desire that is now completely in ruins. Not since Wole Soyinka's The Man Died published in 1972 has a book so grippingly taken us back to the very foundations of how our country came into being only to be almost immediately faced with the possibility of being stillborn, with only very vague hints at how, if we are courageous, truthful and fortunate, we might yet realize the Nigeria that we wish for.Thus, Achebe's new book is almost at every turn aware of itself as the work of a writer, an intellectual addressing other writers and intellectuals and challenging them on such fundamental issues as the relationship of the writer to ethics and justice and the responsibilities of the true, humanistic intellectual to racial, national and ethnic others. Indeed, as much as Achebe's new book is also very much conscious of the general reader and is for the most part mainly addressed to the international community and the world at large, like Soyinka's 1972 book it is also a direct challenge to Nigeria's community of writers and intellectuals, especially those who see themselves in the progressive and humanistic traditions of intellectualism. At any rate, this is the point of departure for the series of reflections on Achebe's new book that begins with this week's column.Chinua Achebe is of course one of the world's preeminent writers and intellectuals. For members of my generation of Nigerian and African writers, critics and academics, as we came to intellectual and political-activist maturity, Achebe was a figure who exerted a powerful, authoritative fascination for us, even if there were the inevitable occasional small disagreements and quarrels. For me in particular, I have always regarded Achebe as one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in perhaps the last one and half centuries. The proof of these assertions is the fact that among all living writers and second only to Wole Soyinka, Achebe is the writer to whose works I have returned again and again in the last three decades. In all, I have written a monograph and about five essays, three of them quite substantial, on Achebe as a writer and intellectual. Moreover, the regular or dedicated readers of this column may, I hope, remember that on many occasions in the last five and half years, the epigraphs for essays in the column have been drawn from what I consider the plenitude of wisdom and insight in Achebe's writings. This is the broad background for the reflections in the series on Achebe's most recent book that commences with this piece and I ask the reader to please bear this in mind.I can report that the Achebe that I have personally encountered in this book is more or less the enormously powerful realist writer that I had seen and greatly admired in nearly all his previous writings minus his poetry. However, there is another Achebe that is almost completely new to me in There Was A Country. It is a challenge to precisely characterize this new or other Achebe that is standing beside the old, urbane and subtle realist writer in this new book, but I will try.The writer as propagandist, media apparatchik and ideologue, this is the Achebe that stands side by side with the great writer we've seen and admired since Things Fall Apart. As I went through the middle two parts of the four parts of There Was A Country, I was startled by the recognition of how close, from start to finish, Achebe had been to the Biafran political leadership. By his own often repeated assertions and anecdotes in the book, Achebe was not only one of the most important roving ambassadors for Biafra he was also the star media and information propagandist for the breakaway republic. And also going by his own assertions in the book, Achebe was a close adviser and confidant of Ojukwu, the Head of State of Biafra.To perceive one of the many ramifications of this aspect of Achebe's self-presentation in his new book, it is important to recognize that while some prominent intellectuals felt and expressed major differences with the Biafran leadership during the war - with some actually being accused, tried and executed for treason – to the very end Achebe remained close to and intimate with the Biafran leadership. In my view and unless I am mistaken, among all major and highly regarded African writers in the 20th century, only Agostino Neto of Angola went farther than Achebe in Biafra in placing his writing and his intellectual capacities completely at the service of the state. The point, though, is that while Neto, who was himself the leader of the anti-colonial nationalist movement and Head of State of the independent Angolan state, was very open and even militant in insisting that his intellectualism was indivisible from his role and actions as a politician-statesman, Achebe in There Was A Country operates under the presumption that regardless of how close and faithful he was to the Biafran leadership, his independence and autonomy as a writer and intellectual were intact. But this is at best a genuine but mistaken assumption; at worst it is more or less a self-serving delusion and mystification.In this series, I intend to bring these "two Achebes" that we encounter in There Was A Country into a dialogical relationship with each other: on the one hand, the superb realist writer and progressive intellectual; on the other hand, the war-time propaganda, media warrior and ethno-nationalist ideologue. For those who might intuitively presuppose that I have in mind a hierarchy, a "higher" and "lower" order of integrity between these two putative Achebes, l hasten to say that this is not so. In other words, I will in this series not be holding one "Achebe" as a corrective, a benchmark for the other. Far from this, my central frame of reference, simply, is that against Achebe's own presuppositions we must keep both in view, the writer and the ideologue.Achebe's book is divided into four parts. In reality, the fourth and last part is really an epilogue that brings the chronological, temporal ordering of the contents of the book from the past of the first and second coups of 1966, the pogroms of May and August of the same year, and the Nigerian-Biafran war to present-day Nigeria. For those who might have either completely missed it or seen it and not paid much attention to it, let me emphasize the fact that it is in this fourth part, precisely on page 243, that Achebe for the first time in the book talks explicitly of a Nigerian ruling class. Thus, for the main three sections of the book, there is not even a casual nod to class; the focus is totally and uncompromisingly on "tribe", on ethnicity.For everyone of us and especially for writers and intellectuals, this raises many questions. Was this a deliberate choice on Achebe's part? What particular kind of conception of ethnicity does he deploy in There Was A Country? Was there no "ruling class" in the Nigeria of the pre-civil war years? And in Biafra, was class so effectively and completely folded into ethnicity that it had little or no relevance or significance? If Achebe quite deliberately decided to base the main sections of his book on ethnicity while excluding class and other indices of social standing and identity, what methodological and philosophical pressures does this exclusion place on him as a writer and intellectual, especially in light of the fact that he is, first and foremost, a realist writer? Can the devastating case that Achebe makes against the Nigerian ruling class in the fourth section of his book also be made against the Biafran ruling class of which he was such a prominent and influential figure, especially with regard to the central moral and human catastrophe at the heart of the book, this being the issue of mass starvation and the alleged attempted and nearly successful genocide committed against the children of Biafra?These are extremely difficult questions for which there are no easy or simple explanations. Achebe's new book provides us with both a great challenge and a wonderful opportunity to engage them honestly and rigorously.To be continued.
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Compcros Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin. For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue- unsubscribe@googlegroups.com You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin. For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue- unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
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