The South African achievement is a massive historical milestone.
I like your measured tone.
May I suggest that perhaps you might have missed a word here in the speed of typing:
"This was why, Obasanjo, in the face of all the frustrations attending the annullment of the June 12 elections, and murder of the winner, resisted the pressure from other Yoruba generals not to rule war out as solution."
The sentence seems to suggest that he saw war as one solution but the next line suggests that he did not think war a wise idea.
The sentence seems to suggest that he saw war as one solution but the next line suggests that he did not think war a wise idea.
Thanks
Toyin
--
Compcros
-- On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
Toyin:
By the South African model of restitution one alludes to the whole spirit of reconciliation and truth committee that ensured that South Africa to quote Cyprian Ekwensi 'survived the peace.' This was the original plan of Nigeria at the cessation of hostilities; this was the spirit in which the Ikemba was welcomed back home as a hero and not hounded internationally; this is the spirit in which the Igbo diaspora must continue to engage with Nigeria in the interest of peace of all Nigerians including the overwhelming majority of Igbos resident in Nigeria. South Africa learned its lessons from Nigeria, and what we now get from a section of the Nigeria diaspora is that that lesson is not worth learning.
As a high profile citizen ot Nigeria, Ogbuefi Achebe can do no less that encourage them along this path in word, deed and publication He owes the majority of the Igbos on the planet, who incidentally are resident in Nigeria actions that promote their well being within the nation. If the average Igbo are left to feel that if even Achebe can give up, why not us, then all is lost. He cannot afford to be tired in spite of the myriad frustrations of Nigeria. No effort is too great for the peace dividend. This was why, Obasanjo, in the face of all the frustrations attending the annullment of the June 12 elections, and murder of the winner, resisted the pressure from other Yoruba generals not to rule war out as solution. In spite of his many warts, the wily general at least got that right; and no one could accuse him of cowardice, as a battle-tested victorious general (unlike internationally-ensconced internet warriors).
So Nigeria should continue its well=taught out position of peace and reconciliation among its various groups. a national conference can be convoked as has been variously canvassed if there are thorny structural issues to be ironed out. The Holocaust reparations model would not work because it has to start with all the South first paying reparations to the North the first batch of the overwhelming victims of the January 1966 coup; then the West and finally part of the East itself! Nigerian diasporic warriors of reparations must therefore sheathe their swords.
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2013 19:59:40 +0000From: tvade3@gmail.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Addition-the Holocaust model is certainly not valid in the Biafran case, Olayinka, for the reasons you describe, but is routinely invoked, because it helps speedy mobilisation of sentiment and avoids the less than unsavoury questions emerging from a close look at the role of the Biafran leaders in the catastrophe.Trying to capture the Biafran case in terms of a simple, representative verbal or visual image, such as is achieved by the historical resonance of the term 'Holocaust' or the pictures of the starving inmates of the Nazi death camps, which people may be seen as trying to create an equivalent of in the image of the stomach bloated Biafran child, does not succeed in a manner that is adequately sensitive to history.A battle for the iconicity of images...."Starving child, yes...but what is the burden of culpability for that starvation...?"'Genocide? Hmmm...in terms of what criteria?'It goes on and on....toyin
On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 7:35 PM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for this effort.Could you please explain the South African model you mention?Can you recommend any text one may read on this?Now, while your reference to Ikemba is on point, does this not need modification:' It was because the South Africans knew they gave as much as they got relative to their strength' ?A problem with the Biafran issue was the manner in which the civilian population was managed by both sides in the conflict. I think that will always be controversial.Side A- If you dont surrender, we shall starve youSide B- We are starving, children and other non-combatants are dying in large numbers but we shall hold on as long as possible in case we can still wrest victory out of our overwhelmed situationtoyin
On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
Before we go too much in the direction of hair splitting analysis of such terms as ethnicity, may I state my wholesome agreement with BJ's thesis of a departure in focus from Achebe's earlier stance on Nigeria in which ethnicity was played down in favour of nation building ethos as presented in the Nangamangs as a class text and anti hero of No Longer at Ease. I may actually preempt BJ in venturing a reason for the volte faced ideological stance of Achebe just as one of his supporters on the forum attempted to guess BJ's reason for his 'attack' on Achebe, i.e. Achebes comment on Awo. First I dont think BJ is any more an Awoist than my late dad who was a Zikist till his final days.To my mind the reason for Achebes change of focus is none other than his current place of sojourn/permanent residence. He found it convenient and irresistable to succumb to the Holocaust model being canvassed by a voluble section of the Igbo diaspora who wanted a big catch to champion their cause for reparations. Problem is that the model being canvassed is ill-suited for the Nigerian experience. In the Holocaust example as I maintained in my earlier posting the Nazi policy from the start was anti-Jewish and in the face of allied bombardment culminated in the Holocaust. In the Nigerian case, the pogrom happened as a REVENGE for the beheading of a preponderant section of the country ostensibly by members of another group still having their leadership largely intact. This reaction is not logically justifiable; but the whole situation was mismanged by the leadership on either side. In the case of the |Holocaust millions of unarmed people were herded into gas chambers without raising a finger to defend themselves in the context of war. In the Nigerain case there was a military wing for the secessionists just as in South Africa that had a military wing that was weaker than their enemies. It was because the South Africans knew they gave as much as they got relative to their strength that they did not invoke the Holocaust model.(the Jews never raised a standing army to fight the Nazis, but died unarmed)The Igbo case to my mind is better addressed by the South African model rather than the Holocaust reparations model. If the Holocaust model fits the bill, the late Ikemba would not have agreed to come home but would have canvassed that model to the end of his life. The Will of the Ikemba demonstrated that with the good will of his compatriots he recovered, so did many of his Igbo compatriots.Finally, it seems that much of the sabre rattling is coming from one part of the gender divide in the diaspora. What is needed is the moderating yet assertive voices of the other gender in the dispora and on this forum regarding this issue, to rein in their dogs of war.Olayinka Agbetuyi
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 23:05:48 -0500
From: harrow@msu.edu
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
toyin
(to shorten things up-it is getting late)
1. i hate "caucasians"--it seems an awkward, historically repulsive term, to avoid the directness of "the whites." les blancs; the whites. whiteness; whitey.
if you don't like it, try oyiba, that works perfectly well
2. what is omoluabi?
3. what exactly do we lose if we use the term "community," instead of ethnicity?
no one would call the English an ethnicity; but they do form a community, with its own cultural values, its own exclusions and inclusions, etc. you are perfectly right to describe the quaint customs of their community at train stations. i once stood outside a cordoned off area, patiently waiting with thousands outside victoria station, while the police ascertained that the bomb threat from the ira was gone, before we could get inside.
gotta tell you: the calm lines of people did not have anything whatsoever to do with what it would have been in new york! we don't even have a word for what those strange englishers do when they wait for buses--"queuing"--all i know from queus is that they are tails in french, another white people who don't wait in lines either
ken
ken
On 1/3/13 6:42 PM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU wrote:ideally or to a large extent?-beautiful'.... citing judith butler, for whom our agency comes from a subjectivity formed both in resistance and acquiescence to the forces that govern our psyches, like our parents.striking thought in this context- 'that doesn't mean ethnicity doesn't exist; it means it isn't innate. and it means no one is defined by it, because if they were, they would not have agency.'
is this completely true-'i strongly believe that it is colonial thought that gave ethnic definitions to africans as if they were objects: wolof are this, igbos are that, etc. i despair to think that africans would have accepted these designations as if they were innate, as if the colonialists won.'Various people may have pervasive among them, a conception of what it means to be Yoruba or English, for example, in a general sense.The Yoruba conception/s for example, may perhaps be summed up in the concept of 'omoluabi'.In English general culture, these ideas also emerge along with people's views of what their culture consists of as a democracy where certain things are believed not to be possible even if they could be elsewhere.What of the drive in England-if I remember well- to get immigrants to demonstrate a degree of identification with what was described as an English way of life?I found it very interesting that while waiting at train stations in London, the Caucasians-if anybody knows of a better term please let me know- , particularly the women, would almost never ask you to move so they could sit on the available space on the bench. They would wait until you noticed them standing and interpreted themas waiting for you to move so they could sit.I found this amazing, coming from a country where you ask rather than wait.I have also found it striking that in my experience in England, people, particularly women, referring to people one does not know,do not look one in the face in passing without flashing a polite smile. Amazing! It must something learned.It should be obvious that peoples may be described in terms of cultures and why cant ethnicity be one way of looking at culture?thankstoyin--
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 10:36 PM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
dear shina
the long extract was from johannes fabian's Moments of Freedom, which is about popular culture.
it echoes his other work on time, which you mention, in one chapter. ethnicity is not central to this book, but it figures in to it.
the core is the cultures he discusses in Shaba, and the way popular culture (like the informal sector) functions outside the dominant, ordered, state, high, etc culture. for him freedom characterizes the popular, and its political resistance is a function of its placement in society as unofficial, unvalued, etc. like for instance things like smoking! or storytelling, vs publishing a novel, say
as for ethnicity, i do not think it is the same as genes.
we have genes, we inherit lots both genetically in the culture our parents place us into, in the world, which mark us. but none of this determines us, like a fiber we can't resist.
we are, i would hazard, a combination of the same things as culture above: ordered and controlled by larger forces than our will, and disordered, unofficial, resistant.
i postulated something like that earlier, citing judith butler, for whom our agency comes from a subjectivity formed both in resistance and acquiescence to the forces that govern our psyches, like our parents.
i made that claim concerning colonialism; but here we can simply make something similar re ethnicity: we are in it, especially as it interpellates us and we respond to it; and we resist or refuse it; and we find our agency in the play of both this acquiescence and resistance.
i strongly believe that it is colonial thought that gave ethnic definitions to africans as if they were objects: wolof are this, igbos are that, etc. i despair to think that africans would have accepted these designations as if they were innate, as if the colonialists won.
that doesn't mean ethnicity doesn't exist; it means it isn't innate. and it means no one is defined by it, because if they were, they would not have agency.
to be human is to have agency--the very thing colonialists and slave owners and early anthropologists and historians all tried to deny africans
ken
On 1/3/13 3:10 PM, shina73_1999@yahoo.com wrote:
Prof.,
I must say I enjoy reading the Fabian extract you posted. I am certainly interested in reading the whole essay if I can lay my hands on it. Is he the same Fabian that wrote a book on anthropology and time or something?
For quite a while now, I've been fascinated, especially by the debate in nationalism studies between the primordialists and the constructionists. I took a serious interest in the debate on ethnic configuration between Anthony Smith and Ernest Gellner.
Even now, I still feel some form of uneasiness when we read too much instrumentality into ethnicity. Of course, ethnicity is malleable, but is that all there is to it? For instance, I have been thinking about the connection between Achebe's childhood upbringing in Ogidi (narrated in the first parts of TWAC) and his purported ethnic jingoism. Aren't we all born with some form of primordial fibre, as Herder believed, that somehow influences our worldview one way or the other?
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
-----Original Message-----
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:18:35
To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
dear shina
this is a pretty great answer. you fill out the notion of the informal
really nicely, convincingly.
i have been reading johannes fabian, who writes some pretty interesting
stuff concerning ethnicity identities in the congo, that i thought i
would share with you. i do want to repeat that the notion that ethnicity
is "constructed" doesn't imply it isn't "real," that people don't
understand themselves and others to belong to some group, be it
religious or tribal or whatever you want to call it. it is given a
reality; it isn't somehow buried in their bones. but being given a
reality doesn't negate its reality: my memory of a discussion on this
point a year or so ago points to this assertion.
anyway, here is fabian:
"By the late 60s it wasa clear tha most forms of ethnicity , certainly
those that posed social and political problems and became the target of
funded research, were invented (no pejorative sense intended) by groups
of displaced people after they had migrated or for other reasons lost
their place in their societies owing to wars, the collapse of
nation-states, or the demise of colonial regimes. Ethnics are people, we
were told, to whom separation from their territory of origin and their
past has become a problem of identity in relating to their new
surroundings. As an assemblage of cultural symbols and practices that
ethnics brough along, remembered, and more often than not (re) invented,
ethnicity could be construed for the purpose of organizing action such
as claiming civil rights, access to jobs, economic resources, and
political power. Paradoxically, though somehow died to displacement, to
separation of place from identity, ethnicity could also become a
desirable, or inescapable, idiom of cultural, social, and political
practices for populations that had remained in place and had never
thought of their habits of speech, dres, or cooking as 'ethnic..' As it
turned out, it did not take long for invented ethnicity to become
commoditized in a vast array of goods for consumption, from food and
fabric patterns to music and therapeutic rituals.
It cannot be denied that, in the situations that produced African
popular culture, elements appeared in the past and continue to exist in
the present that seem to fit what has been conceptualized as ethnicity.
But closer examination reveals that african 'tribalism' (to use a term
that has more currency among those concerned than 'ethnicity')has been
different in its origins as well as its later development. One way to
probe these differences is to ask in what sense theories of ethnicity
can be counted among conceptualizations that pprivilege space over time.
In Zaire many, if not most, of the ethnic identities (symbolized, for
instance, by a label supposedly marking common descent, or by languages
purported to be distinctive of a group) were demonstrably colonial
impositions, administrative and missionary. The overriding concern of
colonial regimes was to define colonial space and to map territorial
divisions on various levels down to localities. How arbitrary these
impositions were can be seen from the fact that they were easily ignored
when the colony faced the problem of securing its external frontiers.
When these wet set, most of them cut through linquistic and cultural
areas; when cultural specificity could not be assigned a territory, it
was ignored." (74-5, in Moments of Freedom).
given this, one might reflect on one or two points: the scuttlebutt in
cameroon was that ahidjo wasn't really fulani, but only pretended to be
so in order to advance socially. this notion of "choosing" to be fulani
or hausa, so as to get a job or advance, was commonplace.
the other point i have is more a question: if the assignation of
ethnicity to a people is driven by the desire to control them, and
therefore is tied to where they come from (territory), then can it be
said that driving them out of the lands to which they disperse is an
attempt to reassert a weakened control. (ex. igbos dispersing throughout
nigeria, especially to the north)?
third point (last one, i promise). in the film Bhaji on the Beach, by
Gurinder Chadha (a great film), she sets two groups in opposition: the
indians living in england, and the indian woman who has just arrived
from asia. guess who dresses in saris, versus dressing in sharp skirts
and blouses? the indian woman from the continent berates her sisters in
england and says, you people are living in the dark ages, as though
nothing from home, or yourselves, ever changed, while we have modernized
far more than you.
!
ken
On 1/2/13 10:24 AM, shina73_1999@yahoo.com wrote:
Making Our Suffering Sufferable: National Integration and the Logic of Informality
Let me thank the moderator for calling all of us to task on the informal sector as an important aspect of Nigeria's national existence. I am all too glad I could lay my hands on something on which I can be educated and which can contribute to the ongoing debate about the national well being of Nigeria. All I think I have done is simply to identify what I've observed for a while as a 'citizen' of Nigeria. I am therefore also waiting for Prof. Olukotun to contribute a magisterial piece that will move the debate forward and enable small fry like me learn from the mouth of the elder.
While we await that contribution, permit me to share an elaboration. I will do this by responding in part to Prof. Harrow's historical reconstruction of Ibrahim's graphic statement. For Harrow, ethnicity should be seen more as a construct rather than an original sin.
"ethnicity wasn't an original sin; it is the current sin, reconstituted
as if it were an originary identity, a response to a period of
insecurity and weakness".
I agree with this historical trajectory and it gives us the foundation for arriving at where we are now as a 'developing' state. By 'original sin', I think what Ibrahim meant is simply that the foundation for the construction of ethnicity was laid at the emergence of the Nigerian state by both the colonisers and the postcolonial leadership. The failure of that leadership as well as the dynamics of postcolonial politics in Nigeria compromised the promises of independence for the majority of the anticolonial masses in Nigeria. That, we can say, is the beginning of the fundamental problem of suffering in Nigeria. Philip Zachernuk, in Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas (2000), gives a very damning analysis of the pre-and post-independence roles of our 'founding fathers' that contributed, in a large part, to where we are today.
I hazard the hypothesis that the dream of national integration became fatally aborted with the inability of the nationalists to come to term with the question of how a law and order state founded on an exploitative logic could birth social transformation. From then on, the imperative was to attend more to what can be called the national, rather than the social, question. The former concerns how the unruly diversity created by the Lugardian amalgamation can be brought under a mechanical unity. The latter concerns how that diversity can benefit from the social transformation of their lives. Unfortunately, the leadership failed to see the intimate connection between the fulfilment of the latter and the achievement of the former. It is in this sense, for me, that nationalism became an elitist bubble that burst every time it confronts the raw edges of the people's deprivation and suffering. What has happened to our beloved NYSC and the Quota system?
How are the hapless masses expected to react to the volte-face of the nationalists after independence as well as the gradual but steady impoverishment of their existence through the steady and inexorable collapse of formal structures? Of course, find their own meanings within an informality that answers to a Geertzian logic of commonsense and ontology. The informal sector is, for me, a penumbral, elastic and contradictory site of confrontation for, and enactment of, meanings. To follow Geertz, it is a web of significance individuals have spun for themselves to enact their understanding of what they are capable of doing in socio-economic terms.
Remember, as far as I am concerned, informality was created from the imperative of suffering. It is an ongoing attempt to make suffering sufferable. And its structures are therefore not erected to deny that suffering, but to deny that "life is unendurable" and meaningless outside the spheres of the state. The informal sector therefore speaks to an instrumental social existence and the ontology of survival that attends it.
It is within this penumbra of informality that all kinds of activities-white, black, grey, paradoxical-operate The realm leaves the beast of ethnicity to roam largely unfettered. It is the realm where jokes abound about the owambe Yoruba, the cunning Ibo, the Hausa who is eternally a 'mola' (a dunce, largely a perjorative corruption of 'mallam') and the rascal Warri guy! Within the realm, my constructed 'Yoruba' identity sits snugly with me than the fact that I am an igbomina person. Ethnicity enables the struggle for existence beyond the vale of tears called the state! We mend our roads (for instance, like my own axis of the network that broke down barely three months after it was 'mintly' commissioned), organise our own security, provide our own foods and enact our own existence. We also freely and ethnically caricature and confront anyone who attempt to hinder such meaningfulness.
Outside of this loose realm, of course we come together for the sham ritual of integration when Nigeria confronts, say, Brazil in an international soccer match. After this-and woe to the leadership if we are beaten silly-we return to burrow in our informality beyond the lures of patriotic zeal. I give you an instance: Do you imagine there can be a comparison, in terms of attendance, between a Man U versus Barca match (on the one hand), and a Nigeria versus Togo match? I don't think so. If I watch the Nigerian match, it is likely for the reason that I am a football addict, not because of any patriotic zeal. The informal sector, I repeat, was constructed from the deadwoods of nation-building.
For proper national integration to commence, it must commence at this level of informality, paradoxically. It is paradoxical because informality is meant to operate beyond the scope of government and in opposition. Nation building must commence there because it packs an untapped national energy that our leadership have failed to see all the while beyond their instrumental perception of informality as another avenue to increase revenues and line the already obscenely bloated pockets.
Thus, if I must be patriotic, the state must come to my rescue in answering the social question that confronts me daily. If it does not, to hell with patriotism! The leadership can go on singing their lonely songs of national unity.
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
-----Original Message-----
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 11:36:04
To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
dear shina and ibrahim
i too like ibrahim's formulation, but i think in a sense he has the
chronology wrong.
the nation state in africa is weaker, not stronger, than what it was 50
years ago. 50 years ago you could travel across the terrain of most
states, virtually all, with the state itself in control of security and
resources. even if it was a neocolonial state, it was, for all that, a
dominant force. the authoritarianism of the 70s and 80s weakened the
hold of the state over citizens by eliminating considerable
participation in the organs of the state, and the neoliberal
dismantlement of state organs completed that. we now live in a situation
where what the global economic forces command is what happens,
everywhere from greece and spain and france to mali and somalia and
elsewhere. that "command" is a neoliberal economic order, one where
decisions are not made by the state, but by the international instruments.
for instance, the imf loans money to an african state, like senegal
whose case i know; it says, you can devote 16% of the budget to
education--not a penny more. the student body grows, the buildings are
overcrowded and old and falling apart; no more budget for more
professors or new buildings or labs or books. nada, nothing, rien.
the decision is out of the hands of the state entirely.
and this is true of all of it.
i know the state still functions, still siphons money through its
agencies, but its powers, even as a nepotistic state, is reduced. this
is mbembe's point in On the Postcolony. and we see it translated into
greater business tycoons, greater impoverishment of the masses; greater
interference in state security by militias or un peacekeepers or oau
forces or ecowas
weapons flow from one dismantled state into another, and mali collapses;
e congo has collapsed for 20 years; who would drive from port harcourt
over to cameroon these days, or throughout the north of nigeria at
night? in the 70s that wasn't a problem.
in this context, doesn't it make sense that the ethnic enclave seeks its
own economic and security forces, and to do so mobilizes the population
around local, i.e. ethnic identities, pumps them up whenever possible,
vilifies the others as threatening one's own community?
voila the seeds for genocidal, fraternal wars over resources, fed by the
conditions of a helpless state, or a corrupted state, too weak to enable
the national population, national identity to form and take hold.
ethnicity wasn't an original sin; it is the current sin, reconstituted
as if it were an originary identity, a response to a period of
insecurity and weakness
ken
On 12/31/12 5:04 AM, shina73_1999@yahoo.com wrote:
Ibrahim,
You got this summation right about Nigeria:
"Nigerians experience citizenship as truncated
ethnicity--the original sin--and this gets reproduced in whatever they
do or say."
This has always been my point especially with regards to Nigeria's puny efforts at nation-building or national intergration. We are more a contrapted hodgepodge of ethnicities and religions than a nation with dreams of national greatness.
Most of the times when I am confronted with a document asking for my 'nationality', I face afresh the dilemma of living in Nigeria. Am I really a citizen and recognised as such or just plainly a Yoruba guy making my ends meet in my own informal ways? Most times, I feel a rebellious prompting to indicate 'Yoruba' in such column than 'Nigerian'.
I am sure that beyond those who have found hook-and-crook ways to latch on to the neck of this frail and dying political entity, most 'Nigerians' don't have any iota of attachment to Nigeria. The informal sector of the economy is the burial ground of patriotism in Nigeria. That is where the people labour outside and beyond the care of the state. And that is where the toga of ethnicity adorn their activities.
So, ask me: "Afolayan, are you a Nigerian?"
Honest answer? I don't know.
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
-----Original Message-----
From: Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdullah@gmail.com>
Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:57:02
To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
You check it out; that is what I get out of reading Nigerian history.
There was no Yorubaland; no Hausaland(kasar Hausa?); no Igboland; no
Itsekriland; and suddenly there are!!!! There were Oyo, Ibadan;
Ijesha; Kano; Katsina; Zazzau; Kanem-Borno; then the Sokoto
Caliphate...then Northern Nigeria; Southern Nigeria; Mid-West; East;
West; then South-South; then this that.......Where is Ngeria???
Hope this helps.
IB
=============================
On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 3:36 PM, Seun Odeyemi <blacng@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Mr. Abdullah,
Please can you explain further what you mean by the construct "truncated
ethnicity" as it applies to Nigeria? Is it that Nigerians consider
themselves, first, foremost and primarily, as part of a particular ethnic
collectivity--say, Ibo, Ibibio, or Itsekiri--and only secondarily, as a
member of that historical-political construct called the Nigerian state?
Seun.
On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 11:21 PM, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdullah@gmail.com>
wrote:
I also suspect that BJ has gone overboard in his quest to red card--
Achebe. The point about realist writings is that they come up straight
as mothers' milk--ideological constructs, easy to swallow as faction(
fact plus fiction) not fiction! What you read in achebe can be
reproduced ad infinitum for almost all Nigerian intellectuals. And
this is the point that should interest us, not what achebe said today
or what Kongi will say tomorrow. What undergirds all these literary
effusions/discourses et al is the simply the historical accident of
how citizenship is constructed/reproduced/experienced/consumed in
post-colonial Nigeria. Nigerians experience citizenship as truncated
ethnicity--the original sin--and this gets reproduced in whatever they
do or say. This is as true of the left as it is true for the
right/centre.
How do we transcend/subvert this original sin without reproducing it
in its multi-layered ccomplexity is what we should be discussing. As
BJ himself has repeatedly made clear in the two postings there is
nothing new in what Achebe has to say!!!
IB
============================================
On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 3:42 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
this is probably not the place to argue this, but i feel my friend bj is--
not
correct in his definition of realism. it is a genre, a construct, like
all
others; no closer to "real facts" than other genres, but ideologically
presented to the reader as if it were an imitation of reality. in that
regard, it is more immersed in ideology than other genres that make more
obvious their constructions of "reality."
achebe's title as the greatest realist in the past 150 years is
overblown,
in my view, regardless of the definition of realism employed.
further, the issue of ethnicity here should take into account not simply
the
politics of the coup plotters or the leadership of the regions, but how
the
events were presented by the population to themselves: did people say,
"those igbos in biafra want to secede"? did the biafrans, like achebe,
say
the same?
it isn't a question of whether this or that individual came from the
north
or spoke hausa or wore robes: it is how he represented himself, and how
he
was taken by others.
ken
On 12/29/12 9:43 PM, Chido Onumah wrote:
First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's
New
Book (2)
By Biodun Jeyifo
Superficially, it was understandable to conclude that this was indeed
"an
Igbo coup". However, scratch a little deeper and complicating factors
are
discovered: One of the majors was Yoruba, and Nzeogwu himself was Igbo
in
name only…he was widely known as someone who saw himself as a
Northerner,
spoke fluent Hausa and little Igbo, and wore the traditional Northern
dress
when not in uniform.
Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country
In the end, I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute
power
over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can
arrange
stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like.
Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile
If in There Was A Country "a Nigerian ruling class" only appears in the
narratives and reflections of the author in the final fourth part of the
book, this is only the most stunning aspect of the general intellectual
and
discursive architecture of the book. This "architecture", this "grammar"
is
none other than the fact that for nearly all other parts of the book
with
the exception of that concluding fourth part, all of Achebe's
"explanations", all of his speculations in the book are relentlessly
driven
by ethnicity, and a very curious conception of ethnicity for that
matter.
Logically, inevitably, the corollary to this is that "explanations" and
speculations based on class, and more specifically on intra-class and
inter-class factors, are either completely ignored or even deliberately
excluded. As I shall presently demonstrate, this is a remarkable
departure
from virtually all of Achebe's writings prior to this recently published
book. For now, let me illustrate this startling matter of the complete
subsumption of class into ethnicity in There Was A Country with two
particularly telling examples out of innumerable other instances in the
book.
The first of our two selected examples pertains to nothing less than the
January 15, 1966 coup itself, arguably the "opening shot" in the chain
of
events and crises that led to the Nigeria-Biafra war, the central
subject of
Achebe's book. It so happens that there is quite a significant body of
both
general and academic writings and discourses on this signal event. And
indeed, Achebe's long citation of his sources in the bibliographic
section
of his book mentions many of these writings and discourses on the
January
15, 1966 coup. It is therefore baffling that of the variety of "motives"
or
"interests" that have been ascribed to the coup plotters, the single one
that Achebe addresses in his book is ethnicity, "tribe": Was it, or was
it
not, "an Igbo coup".
There have been suggestions, there have been speculations that it was a
"southern coup", this in light of the fact that most of the political
and
military leaders assassinated or inadvertently killed were,
overwhelmingly,
either northerners or southerners in alliance with northern leaders.
More
pertinent to the present discussion, there has also been an even more
plausible speculation that class and ideological interests were
significant
in the motives of influential members of the coup plotters like Chukwuma
Kaduna Nzeogwu and Wale Ademoyega. Of the two alliances of the ruling
class
parties of the First Republic, the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) and
the
United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA), with the exception of Festus
Okotie-Eboh, the Finance Minister, all those assassinated belonged to
the
NNA. S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region, was a diehard NNA
chieftain; there is compelling evidence that this was why he was
assassinated while Michael Okpara, the Premier of the Eastern Region,
was
spared because he was a major figure in the UPGA alliance. As a matter
of
fact, there is clear evidence that some of the coup plotters had the
intension of making or "forcing" Chief Awolowo to assume the office of
Prime
Minister in the belief that the progressive northern allies of UPGA were
far
more regionally and nationally popular and credible than the southern
and
conservative allies of the NNA.
Achebe's book pays not the slightest attention to these other probable
factors in assessing the motives of the January 15 coup plotters. Was
it, or
was it not, "an Igbo coup"? That is all Achebe is interested in
exploring -
and disproving – in There Was A Country. Of the many threads that form
the
complex fabric of that fateful coup d'état, this single thread of
ethnicity
or "tribe" is all that Achebe strenuously tries to unravel in his book.
This
may be because by the time of the terrible pogroms of May 1966 against
Igbos
in the North, all other plausible motives for the coup had been almost
completely erased by assertions, indeed pronouncements that the coup had
incontrovertibly been an Igbo coup. But Achebe's book was written more
than
forty years after the event and it had the advantage of both historical
hindsight and a vast body of accumulated research and discourses. For
this
reason, there is no other conclusion left for us other than a finding
that
Achebe almost certainly has a driving rationale for sticking exclusively
to
ethnicity or "tribalism" while simultaneously ignoring or excluding all
other plausible, and in some cases factual, factors.
At any rate, this is precisely what Achebe repeats in the second of our
two
examples. This pertains to the period of regional and nation-wide crises
between 1964 to 1966 that preceded the January 15 coup and the
Nigeria-Biafra war. Here, in Achebe's own words, is the particular case:
"By
the time the government of the Western region also published a white
paper
outlining the dominance of the ethnic Igbo in key government positions
in
the Nigerian Railway Corporation and the Nigerian Ports Authority, the
situation for ethnic Igbos working in Western Nigeria in particular and
all
over Nigeria in general had become untenable" (p. 77). This is indeed a
fact, but it is a partial fact, one aspect of a complex of facts and
realities many of which Achebe chooses to ignore or obscure. It is
useful to
carefully state what these other facts and realities were.
First, the government of the Western region that Achebe alludes to here
was
that of Chief S.L. Akintola and his party, the Nigerian National
Democratic
Party (NNDP). Arguably, these were the most perniciously right-wing
government and party in southern Nigeria in the entirety of our
post-independence political history. Achebe completely ignores this fact
and
fixes exclusively on this government's anti-Igbo programs and diatribes.
Secondly, Akintola's government and party were not only virulently
anti-Igbo, they were also scurrilously anti-welfarist and
anti-socialist. A
brilliant orator and a master of Yoruba rhetorical arts, Akintola
tirelessly
satirized a range of targets and issues of which Igbos were only one
composite group. He was particularly fond of spewing out twisted,
parodic
visions of welfarism and socialism in which everything would be shared –
wives, children, family heirlooms and personal belongings. There is not
the
slightest doubt in my mind that Achebe had to have been aware of these
facts
and realities; but he ignores them completely. Thirdly and lastly,
Akintola
and his party quite deliberately stoked the fires of intra-ethnic
tensions
and resentments within Yoruba sub-groups and they took this as far as
founding a rival Pan-Yoruba organization to the Egbe Omo Oduduwa which
they
called "Egbe Omo Olofin". And for good measure, they tried,
unsuccessfully,
to instigate the late Duro Ladipo to write and produce a play to counter
Hubert Ogunde's famous pro-Awolowo and pro-UPGA play, Yoruba Ronu.
It must be emphasized that all these intra-class and intra-ethnic facts
and
realities were so well-known at the time that Achebe could not have been
ignorant of them. We are left with no other conclusion than that Achebe
simply had no place in his book for any factors, any realities beyond a
pristine, autochthonous conception of ethnic identity and belonging in
which
no other aspects of social identification are allowed to "contaminate"
the
singularity of ethnicity . This, I suggest, is what we see in its
quintessence in the argument expressed in the first of the two epigraphs
to
this essay to the effect that Nzeogwu being Igbo "in name only", the
January
15 coup could not have been "an Igbo coup".
In last week's beginning essay in this series, I made the assertion that
Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in the
last century and half. I now wish to clarify the relevance of that
assertion
to the present discussion. One of the most compelling claims of realism
is
that it is the mode or genre in which the chain of representation in a
work
of literature or, more broadly, an intellectual treatise, comes closest
to
the chain of causality in nature, history or society. In a layman's
formulation of this "big grammar", this means that above all other
modes,
forms and genres, it is in realism that what is presented in a work of
art
or a treatise is as close as you can possibly get to how things actually
happened. Another way of putting this across is to suggest that
typically
and unavoidably, there being always and forever a big gap between how
things
actually happen and how they are (re)presented in writing, it is only
the
most gifted and talented realist writers that come close to bridging
that
gap.
In all of Achebe's books on our pre-colonial and postcolonial
experience, he
had come closer than perhaps any other writer to this conception and
practice of realism. More specifically, ethnicity, class and
individuality
had been superbly interwoven and productively explored in such titles as
No
Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The
Trouble
with Nigeria and Home and Exile. Thus, in my opinion, There Was A
Country
marks a radical rupture in Achebe's writings on our country, a rupture
in
which the realist rigour of his previous writings gives way to, or is
considerably modified by a mystique, an apologia, an uncompromising
defense
of Igbo ethno-nationalism. I do not think that Achebe took this path in
a
fit of absent-mindedness; to the contrary, I think it is a decision, a
choice he made in this new book quite deliberately and purposively. In
next
week's continuation of this series, I shall deal extensively even if
only
speculatively with this choice, with particular reference to what I
personally regard as one of the most controversial aspects of There Was
A
Country, this being the link that Achebe makes in the book between what
he
deems the endemic ethnic scapegoating of Igbos in our country and the
utter
collapse of meritocracy in post-civil war Nigeria.
Concluded.
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
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kenneth w. harrow
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distinguished professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
harrow@msu.edu
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CompcrosComparative Cognitive Processes and Systems"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
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