Biafran_War_&_Chimamanda_Nagozi_Adeche

The Royal African Society Biafra in Print Author(s): A. H. M. Kirk-Greene and C. C. Wrigley Source: African Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 275 (Apr., 1970), pp. 180-184 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/719882 . Accessed: 01/02/2011 03:31 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher'publisherCode=oup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Oxford University Press and The Royal African Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Affairs. http://www.jstor.org BOOKS Biafra in Print THE LITERATUREthe Nigerian civil war promises to divide into the same sort on of categorisation as its varied participants. There are ' Federals ' and ' Biafrans '. There are hawks and doves. There are insiders and outsiders, do-gooders and interferers, the knowledgeable, the emotional and the hysterical. The sole incontrovertible fact to emerge from the books reviewed here is that ex-Biafra looks set to win the post-armistice war of words in the same decisive way as she won the propaganda war of 1967-1969. It will need more-and more of it more quickly-than Nigeria's rumoured multi-professorial rationalization of the conflict (three professors are said to be embarking on a large-scale history of it) if the record is not to risk further distortion at this critical period of evaluation. Imbalance in the published documentation could be as fatal to a Nigeria that has now been firmly kept one as it was to the constitutional health of the First Republic. Of the eight titles discussed here, Breadless Biafra need not detain us long. In four years of crisis we have read too much from tip-and-run newspapermen to accept uncritically Mr. Sullivan's advertised credentials of' an impartial observer whose duty it was to weigh each assertion and observation and to write " the facts " '. And when told, in a chapter on political history sensationally headed ' the Legacy of Death ', that Lugard gained control of the present-day coast of Nigeria in 1885 and in the 1890s ' rescued the last remnants of Hausa-Fulani power in the North,' I regretted that I had worked through as far as p. 81. If, as Sullivan believes, ' there is little we can do about what has passed except to correct its impact on the present,' a good place to start such correction is the historical content of his narrative. The handling of the civil war by the TV programmes in Europe and the USA has left us in no doubt of the influence, irrespective of its honesty, of impact by imprint. Mr. Mok's personal report of a people in agony-the gloss is his own-is primarily a pictorial record, by one of Time-Life's 'award-winning, veteran correspondents.' Should the blurb fail to alert us what to expect by way of objectivity, Mr. Mok completes the job: ' Students seeking historical perspective will not discover it here-this is the fragmented and often angry testament of one witness.' The would-be chronology places the May 1966 riots in June, invents a new ethnic ancestry for General Gowon, ignores the pivotal Degree No. 34, and ascribes to the Sardauna the Sultan's status of 'spiritual leader of 27 million Muslims'. The sixty photographs maintain the high standard we all associate with Life magazine; the text remains unambiguously in the style we associate with Time magazine. Fortunately, we all like pictures, however horrifying. From America we turn to Europe. Jean Biihler's book, subtitled ' The Tragedy of a Gifted People', is a German translation from the original French edition which appeared under the uncompromising title of Tuez-les tous! A Swiss journalist of long experience, Biihler has almost a dozen books to his credit. The German edition lacks many of the illustrations in the original and, more importantly, ends with a very different peroration. Yet the conviction of Biafra's rights and Biihler's homage to the Rising Sun are still there, and his conclusion is unchanged: here was a tribal quarrel that had escalated into a war of planned extermination. From a book that describes itself as having been born from shame we should perhaps expect no more sophisticated judgement than this. 180 BIAFRA IN PRINT 181 The analysis by Alain Renard, one of the exponents of the intensity of France's commitment to the Biafran cause, is in a far higher class. Unlike Nwankwo and Ifejika (reviewed below), with a similar premise in the title he at least has the grace to add to his a point d'interrogation. His discussion is founded on a sound historical basis. For instance, Renard is one of the few writers to pay due attention to the separatist toying by both the North and the Western Region which antedated the East's secession. With the modesty as becoming to a scholar contributing to Aubier's Collection Tiers-Monde et diveloppementas it would be out of character in a journalist's reporting, M. Renard eschews the temptation to present la grande solution. Instead he places in sober perspective the total decolonization process in Nigeria. From this he evolves the idea of a confederation as offering the best hope of political stability. Though this was indeed one of the four alternatives that Gowon put before the ad hoc constitutional conference in September 1966, it soon became discredited because of its greater opportunities for drawing apart instead of for closer union. But the fact that few Nigerians would today go along with the confederal option should not dissuade their intelligentsia from reading one of the best analyses of the situation yet to emerge from any French publishing house. Some of this welcome can be extended to M. Debre's Biafra an II. This was one of the first books on the Nigerian war to be published. Appearing in mid1968, it preceded by 6-15 months the others reviewed here: Biihler apart, they all belong to the summer and autumn months of 1969. Like most of the other authors, Debra too is an experienced journalist-his book won him a national award sponsored by the Syndicat des Journalistes et Ecrivains. In Chapter 1 he flies into l'adrodromesecret d'Ouli. Ten pages and three full stops later (the style is as breathtaking as that ghostly blacked-out landing on the superbly engineered airstrip at Uli that was to become so symbolic of Biafra's dogged defiance) we know we have arrived at a familiar destination: 'By the time the sun sinks that evening thousands of Biafrans will have died with it, yet not one of those still living will for one moment ever think of surrendering or giving up the fight.' Chapter 2 manages to incorporate 3,000 words without a single stop to allow us to catch our breath under the cascade of impressionistic vignettes. While this cameo-style of writing is perhaps more appropriate to a novel or a poem, at least French is a language that lends itself well to such an artistic device. Historical events are interwoven, not unskilfully, with personal accounts of August 1968 spent on Biafran soil. There are lengthy translations from official Biafran documents such as the harrowing ttmoignages reproduced from Pogrom and verbatim selections from Time magazine reportage. Debr6 ends his account with exclusive interviews with Ojukwu and Okweichime, Chief of Staff, and with a Nigerian who, gazing at the Arc de Triomphe, murmurs: '" La France' C'est notre seul espoir maintenant." Il s'appelle Ndami (sic) Azikiwe, I'histoiredu Nigeria commence avec lui et se termineaujourd'hui.' How near that hope was to being realised was shown when, within the fortnight, President de Gaulle announced his support for the Biafran stand and arms of French origin helped to check the Federals' announced 'final aasault ' and so postpone a military decision by a further 15 months. To the best of my knowledge there has been no Biafra an I; if there is to be a follow-up volume to Biafra an II, M. Debra might care to risk a pun and entitle it in the same way as a Nigerian friend patriotically transcribed the title of his present book: Biafra en Deux. The joint authorship of Biafra: Britain's Shame-the chapters are in fact written separately and so signed, three apiece-is another exercise in knocking the British government, then but more so now, by another two experienced journalists. Their text is complemented by informative footnotes and some fifty photographs. 182 AFRICAN AFFAIRS Those who have followed Mr. Waugh's transformation from a specialist in British politics to a leading advocate of the Biafran cause in the Spectator (a belief that last year motivated his decision to stand as a parliamentary candidate in Somerset on a platform that was 'purely Biafran ') will not be disappointed by the theme of this book. It is composed as an indictment of Britain's ' complicity in the genocide of 11 million Biafrans '. Readers will not so much dispute the pre-1967 facts, which indeed are well condensed, as their interpretation; and on occasion the basic premises from which they are developed. But Waugh and Cronj6 are not alone, on either side, in attaching supreme significance to the 'if' potential of the Minorities Commission of 1958 and the Aburi meeting of 1967. Like the massacres of 1966, these were watershed events, psychologically as well as politically. Despite the bias of its subtitle, the book deserves to be widely read. It offers a notable arguing of the Biafran case as it was seen by so many in Europe and North America. The authors discussed so far have all been spectators. We now turn to two of the players--one of them, indeed, the captain of his team. Mr. Uwechue was a Nigerian career diplomat. In 1966 he went to Paris as charge d'affaires to open the Nigerian embassy there. After the massacres of September that year he defected and became a highly successful spokesman of the Biafran cause in France. In December 1968 he resigned again, over Ojukwu's inflexible stand on peace talks. His book is loaded with a preface, an historical introduction, and no less than two forewords, one by Dr. Azikiwe and one by President Senghor. Uwechue's own contribution is thus reduced to less than 100 pages. Like Renard, he favours a confederal solution, envisaging something like the United States of Nigeria. His middle chapters, where he is speaking from personal knowledge, are of more value than his concluding ones on the accepted need for positive leadership and the optimum size for the army. One of the merits of this book is the insight which Mr. Uwechue's reasoned and reasonable ' reflections ' provide into the attitudes of a Nigerian intellectual who allowed his mind rather than his heart to govern both his decisions to resign. First disgusted with the Federal government and later disenchanted by Biafran leadership, his dilemma assumes an unusual quality that at once enhances the value of his book to those concerned with the rights and wrongs of the war. The two Ojukwu volumes consist of' selected speeches with journals of events ' and 'the random thoughts of C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, General of the People's Army'. These thoughts are random in that they have not been re-ordered into a homogeneously developed argument but are made up of over a hundred excerpts from press conferences, personal interviews and addresses to student and other organisations. The speeches proper, each section of which is accompanied by a brief, first-person ' diary of events ', are clearly primary material for any study of the war. They take the story up to May 1969. Until we have more memoirs written from exile-and the chances of this must be regarded as highly likely-this ' essential Ojukwu' is as necessary reading for every Biafran adherent, convert or non-believer as it is for any scholar intent on hearing all shades of opinion. Whether we think of Ojukwu as sinner or saint, his story is here to remain; those whose portraits have decorated the front cover of Time magazine and the Economist do not quickly disappear into historical limbo. Since the story of Ojukwu is also the story of Biafra, this semi-autobiography becomes a major tool in any analysis of the events of the past four years. With the passion of the conflict spent, the books reviewed here-those by Ojukwu and Uwechue apart-have less topicality now than they had when they were written. They belong more to the category of polemics of the moment than BIAFRA IN PRINT 183 studies for all time. This does not detract from their interest; it merely limits their appeal. Ojukwu and Uwechue are in a different class, for as senior Biafrans (present and past) their writings are ipso facto important. Indeed, Ojukwu's obiter dicta must qualify as indispensable material for any serious student of Nigeria between 1966 and 1970. While these two books (along with Renard's compellingly developed argument) are direct contributions to first the history and then the study of the civil war, the rest seem more likely to remain as interesting contributions to its historiography; and eventually as data for the Nigerian intent on carrying out research into the attitudes of these 'passionate whites' (the felicitous term is Kaye Whiteman's, writing in Venture), many of whom in one way or another played such a conspicuous role in prolonging the Biafran war. The aftermath of the civil war will not be confined to relief, reconstruction and reintegration. All the signs are that by this time next year the editors will have on their desk another dozen books on the Biafran war for review. May we hope these will include some by Nigerians' We need all this, and more, for the period of reassessment and re-enactment at the analytical level that is going to preoccupy political historians for many years ahead. Are there not American scholars still fighting their civil war, a hundred years after Gettysburg' Though each such book may hopefully have some fresh contribution towards the total record and our greater understanding, none is likely to achieve the recognition of a definitive work of scholarship until the cabinet archives, ex-Biafran as well as Nigerian, are made available to uncommitted researchers. This can hardly be very soon. In the meantime we must rest content with the partial and the partisan, the assumptive and the deductive. In the absence of the final, objectively presented record, the best of these have a genuine part to play in explaining the whys and hows and why-nots of the Thousand-Day Wonder that was Biafra. St. Antony's College, A. H. M. KIRK-GREENE Oxford Breadless Biafra, by John R. Sullivan. Pflaum Press, Ohio, 1969. 104pp. $1.50. Biafra Journal, by Michael Mok. Time-Life Books, 1969. 95pp. $1.95. Biafra: Trag6idie eines begabten Volkes, by Jean Biihler. Flamberg Verlag, Ziirich & Stuttgart,1968. Frs.15. Biafra: naissance d'une nation' by Alain Renard. Aubier, 1969. 255pp. Frs.12. Biafra an H, by Frangois Debra. Julliard, 1968. 219pp. Frs.15. Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War, by Ralph Uwechue. O.I.T.H. International Publishers, London. 190pp. 25s. Biafra: Britain's Shame, by Auberon Waugh and Suzanne Cronj6. Michael Joseph, 1969. 118pp. 30s. Biafra, by C. Odumegwu Ojukwu. Vol. I: Selected Speeches; Vol. 2: Random Thoughts. Harper and Row, 1969. 390, 226pp. 32s. paperback,$12. hard covers. Nothing is less likely to commend itself than the propaganda of an extinguished state, especially in the immediate aftermath of its defeat. Few people now wish to be reminded of Biafra, least of all, perhaps, those who recently called themselves by that name. Nevertheless these books-one by the former BBC reporter who became one of Biafra's most dedicated defenders, the other by two young Ibo journalists-deserve to be pressed on the attention of those who would now like to draw a veil over this enormous tragedy. They are of course propagandist works. It would not be difficult to fault them for omissions and for overstatements, and they both spend too much time on the remoter antecedents of the war, which would be better left to professional historians. But on the war itself they have much to contribute. Mr. Forsyth is particularly interesting on the actual military campaigns. (He is also devastating about the bias and ignorance of British officials and the shoddy evasions of British politicians, but these by now are hardly F2 184 AFRICANAFFAIRS news). The most valuable part of the Nwankwo-Ifejika book is the epilogue by Mr. Nwankwo, describing life in Biafra in the summer of 1968. But in particular these books should serve to refute two widely disseminated myths. One is that Ojukwu rebelled against Nigeria in May 1967. The truth is of course that Nigeria had fallen apart ten months before. Both books contain chilling accounts of the murder of Ibo soldiers by their Northern comrades in the putsch of July 1966, an episode less well known than the civilian massacres which followed, but probably at least equally decisive. Even if these tales gained something in horror in the survivors' telling, there is enough to show how impossible it was for Ibos then to accept a federal authority controlled by Northern troops. Mr. Forsyth also shows that when the smoke cleared in October there were five de facto kings in Nigeria-the four regional governors and Colonel Gowon, whose writ did not then run beyond Lagos-and that a modus vivendi could have been reached, and millions of lives saved, if Gowon had not been prodded into declaring himself king of all Nigeria. The constitutional conference which he had very properly called in August was now scrapped-not because it was unable to agree, but because, if it had met then, it would have agreed on a confederal solution. The other myth is that of an ignorant people led into an unnecessary war by an unscrupulous dictator and a self-seeking elite. This myth has survived the testimony of a long succession of reporters, and of everyone with any knowledge of the Ibo people: and so it will doubtless survive Mr. Forsyth's insistence on the popular character of the war. No doubt, too, since the Ibo authors are graduates, But it is hard to read Mr. they can be written off as members of the ' elite'. Nwankwo's account without recognising that his anguish over the sufferings of the common people was deep and genuine. Impressive too is his frank admission that, even apart from the suffering, all was not well in Biafra. There was bickering in the administration and between soldiers and civilians, and some of those in high places were insulating themselves from the general misery. Such criticisms are evidence of the grain of truth that the myth, like most myths, does contain; but that the criticism could be voiced in a country under siege is also evidence that the resistance of Biafra was the resistance of a free people. Only in the last months is it probably true that the leaders were denying peace to a people who had passed the limit of endurance. Nwankwo and Ifejika were, in their innocence, appealing to British humanity and sense of justice. They know now, if they still live, that the rulers of Britain will go to all lengths to prevent the making of nations in Africa, when their making would be inconvenient to Britain; and that though the British people were generally sympathetic to Biafra they are not nowadays willing to bestir themselves against evils which do not directly touch them. C. C. WRIGLEY University of Sussex The Biafra Story, by Frederick Forsyth. Penguin Books, 1969. 237pp. 6s. The Making of a Nation: Biafra, by Arthur A Nwankwo and Samuel U. Ifejika. C. Hurst, 1969. xii, 361pp. 55s.