Soyinka Backs Achebe On Civil War Memoir

How about that.

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has backed his literary colleague, Prof. Chinua Achebe, in the raging controversy over the roles of some prominent Nigerians during the Nigerian civil war.

Soyinka, in an interview published in The Telegraph of London, but obtained by THISDAY yesterday, said the Igbo were victims of genocide during the three-year civil war, which was fought to break up Nigeria.

Achebe had stirred the hornet’s nest in his civil war memoir, “There Was A Country”, when among others, he accused wartime Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon and the then Finance Minister, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, of carrying out a genocide against the Igbo.

The claim has generated considerable controversy, with many commentators accusing Achebe of re-writing history.

Soyinka, however, justified the secession bid and described Biafrans as “people who’d been abused, who’d undergone genocide, and who felt completely rejected by the rest of the community, and therefore decided to break away and form a nation of its own.”

He also condemned religious militancy, saying now is the time to tackle Boko Haram, the insurgent group that has visited terror on the North, killing over 1,500 since 2009.

According to him, what Boko Haram is doing is not religion, but criminality.

He said: “All religions accept that there is something called criminality. And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour. Let me repeat something I first said at the meeting organised by UNESCO a few weeks ago, which was prompted by the recent film insulting the religion of Islam and depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a very crass way.

“The first thing to say is that we do not welcome any attempt to ravage religious sensibilities. That can be taken for granted. But you cannot hold the world to ransom simply because some idiots chose to insult a religion in some far-off place which most of the world has never even heard of. This for me is a kind of fundamentalist tyranny that should be totally unacceptable.

“So a group calls itself the Boko Haram, literally: ‘Book is taboo’, the book is anathema, the book is a product of Western civilisation, therefore it must be rejected.

“You go from the rejection of books to the rejection of institutions which utilise the book, and that means virtually all institutions. You attack universities, you kill professors, then you butcher students, you close down primary schools, you try and create a religious Maginot Line through which nothing should penetrate.

“That’s not religion; that’s lunacy. My Christian family lived just next door to Muslims. We celebrated Ramadan with Muslims; they celebrated Christmas with Christians. This is how I grew up.

“And now this virus is spreading all around the world, leading to the massacre of 50 students. This is not taking arms against the state, this is taking up arms against humanity.”

He said the unrest in Nigeria following the Boko Haram insurgency had attained a critical mass and criticized the way the Federal Government was handling the terror war.

“The president of Nigeria is making a mistake in not telling the nation that it should place itself on a war footing. There’s too much pussyfooting, there’s too much false intellectualism of what is going on, such as this is the result of corruption, this is the result of poverty, this is the result of marginalization.

“Yes, of course, all these negativity have to do with what is happening right now. But when the people themselves come out and say we will not even talk to the president unless he converts to Islam, they are already stating their terms of conflict,” he added.

Soyinka said if religion were to be taken away from the world, he would be one of the happiest people in the world.

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We Dont Regret What We Did In The Biafran War - Gowon

Nigerian Head of State, who prosecuted the civil war, General Yakubu Gowon, has absolved his regime and late Chief Obafemi Awolowo of accusations by Professor Chinua Achebe, in his new book, “There was a country,” that they pursued sub-human policies that killed Biafrans especially children during the war, which has been described as pogrom and genocide against the Igbo.

Speaking from his London home in a telephone chat with Vanguard, Gowon said he prayerfully took the decisions he took during the war and had no cause to regret his actions because “If there was no secession, there wouldn’t have been the war that we had, which was a very unfortunate situation in the life of Nigeria.”

What is your comment on Professor Achebe’s latest book?

Let me read it first. I’m not in the country now. In the book, he said you and Chief Obafemi Awolowo implemented some policies aimed at killing the Igbos such as starvation and preventing food from getting to Biafran children during the war.  What is your take on that?

Let him check himself and of course on our part, we know that, that was not what we were.   That was how we were portrayed but, on our part, we know that was not what we were in our actions and all that. But would you please go and ask historians about the beginning of the war rather than for you to ask me to comment about whether Awolowo and I actually had hands in what he is talking about? Go and find out from historians?

One would think that, as the then Head of states, you have direct and undiluted truth about the issue?

The historians will tell you the correct story.  I am not in Nigeria presently and honestly this is a question that I have had to answer several times. You would have asked them if there was a controversy or whoever did what. Let them do their own interpretation of what happened.

But you are a key factor in getting to the root of the newly generated controversy…

(Cuts in) If there was no secession, we wouldn’t have the civil war. Awolowo was not the cause of the secession. Why then are they bringing him into this controversy?

If there was no secession, there wouldn’t have been the war that we had, which was a very unfortunate situation in the life of Nigeria. That is the answer that I would give to you about this.

What is your take on the opinion that your ‘no victor no vanquished’ resolution and failure to try the secessionists for treason account for some of the brewing controversies?

You can be rest assured that as far as we are concerned, we did everything that was possible.   And we have no cause to regret what we did.

So, I think whoever is saying what I am now hearing that they are saying, the question is; why are they saying what they are saying now? For what reason are they saying it at this time?

VANGUARD

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"We Are Disappointed" The Awolowos Reply Chinua Achebe

The storm generated by renown novelist, Prof Chinua Achebe, over his claim that war-time Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, and the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo formulated the policy of genocide against Igbo during the civil war continued, yesterday.

Awolowo’s daughter, Dr (Mrs) Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu, said she was disappointed about Achebe’s claim. She also hinted that the Awolowo family may issue a formal response on the controversial claim by the novelist in his latest memoir on Biafra, ‘There was a country’.

But a former governor of Anambra State, Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju, said whatever Achebe said about the civil war should be taken seriously. Mbadinuju cited the novelist’s antecedents. Awolowo was the vice chairman of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), equivalent of deputy to Gowon, during the civil war.

Dr Awolowo-Dosunmu told Vanguard, yesterday, while responding to the Achebe claim: “One is still trying to come to terms with the sense of disappointment about the person who wrote what is now a brewing controversy in the country.

“While a formal statement responding to the offensive comments of the writer is being prepared by the family all I can say for now is that I feel so disappointed”.

Vanguard

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Reactions Trail Chinua Achebe’s Comment on Obafemi Awolowo

A few days after excerpts from Prof. Chinua Achebe’s latest memoirs, entitled ‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra,’ was published in the Guardian of London, the book is still the subject of what promises to be a long-drawn debate on the Internet and social media, particularly on the Facebook.

In the book, which focuses on the Nigerian Civil War, Achebe claims that former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon (retd.) and the late Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, initiated the economic policies that caused the deaths of over two million Igbo through starvation during the war.

The controversial paragraph from the book reads, “It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on the surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations.

“However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbo at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose – the Nigeria-Biafra War – his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams.

“In the Biafran case, it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation – eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.”

Many Nigerians who read the excerpts on the Internet appear to be sharply divided over the content of the book.

While some accused Achebe of whipping up ethnic sentiments and accusing Awolowo falsely, others have expressed the opinion that the writer has told the truth about the civil war.

In a contribution posted on the Facebook, Mayowa Akinsola disagreed with Achebe. He wrote, “I consider this statement from the highly revered literary icon an attempt at sectional revisionism. Where emotion and sentiment rule our judgments, the ability to say the truth becomes a problem. Many countries in the world had experienced civil war before, America inclusive, so what we experience during the civil war was not new.

“Let us forget about the incidents that led to the war, all the principal actors in that incident should be held responsible, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu inclusive.

“Awolowo was perfectly right when he said that everything in war was fair. War is not a child’s play, when you declare a war, a battle line is drawn, the result is always clear from the beginning, the game is either you win or you lose.”

Also reacting to Achebe’s claims, Jesse Adeniji remarks, “Awo didn’t massacre two million people. Nigeria did, especially those of the Northern extraction who felt Kaduna Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna killed their icons.”

But Olusola Solarin chose to confine all matters relating to the civil war in the dustbin of history. He says, “Achebe should live the rest of his life happy. Nigeria and the Yoruba are existential realities today.”

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