This is quite a long read but the author does a painstaking job of driving home his points in the best rebuttal of Professor Achebe's controversial book so far.

Achebe and the Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent:

A writer should not be an accomplice to lies. Even when thorns infect the land, a writer must embody and defend the perennial destiny of high values and principles. It is not the business of a writer to side with the powerless against the powerful; the powerless can be thoughtless and wrong. (The Nazi party was once a powerless group). A writer should not prefer falsehoods to reality just because they serve patriotic ends. In times of great upheavals in a multi-ethnic society, a writer should get out and warn the society that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences. Pride in one’s ethnic identity is good, patriotism is fantastic but when they are not properly moderated by other higher considerations, they can prove more destructive than nuclear weapons.

I was in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife when another round of the war of self-determination and secession broke out between Modakeke and Ife. As the war escalated, a single bullet wasn’t enough to kill the “enemy,” he had to be butchered into little pieces and the severed heads displayed at each other’s market squares to huge approval and celebration. Such was the power of the mutual hatred unleashed from their pride in their respective ethnic identities that these two communities were not rebuked by the fact that were both Yoruba, both Nigerians, or that the massacres were being conducted around the famed cradle of Yoruba civilization.

Patriotism when deployed must always be simultaneously governed by something higher and lower than itself like the arms of a democratic government. These provide checks and balances so that patriotism doesn’t become a false conception of greatness at the expense of other tribes or nations. It is for this reason that we proceed to discuss Achebe’s patriotic autobiography, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra in the light of something higher than it: 21,000 pages of Confidential, Secret, Top Secret US State Department Central Files on Nigeria-Biafra 1967- 1969 and something lower: The Education of a British Protected Child by Chinua Achebe himself.

…A Country is written for modern day Igbos to know from where the injustice of their existence originated. Achebe’s logic is neat but too simple: Africa began to suffer 500 years ago when Europe discovered it (that is, there was no suffering or intertribal wars before then in Africa). Nigeria began to suffer when Lord Lugard amalgamated it. And Igbos began to suffer because of the event surrounding the Biafran secession. To Achebe there should have been more countries in the behemoth Lord Lugard cobbled together called Nigeria. What Achebe does not take into account is the role rabid tribalism plays in doing violence to social cohesion which makes every region counterproductively seeks a perfect answer in demanding its own nation state. There are over 250 tribes in Nigeria and there cannot be over 250 countries in Nigeria. There are officially 645 distinctive tribes in India and only one country. All over the world there are tens of thousands of tribes and there are only 206 countries. What the tribes that constitute Nigeria need to learn for the unity of the country is the democratization of their tribal loyalties. And that inevitably leads to gradual detribalization of consciousness which makes it possible to treat a person as an individual and not basically a member of another tribe. That is the first error of Achebe.

Instead of writing the book as a writer who is Igbo, Achebe wrote the book as an Igbo writer hence working himself into a Zugzwang bind. In chess once you are in this bind, every step you make weakens your position further and further. All the places that should alarm the moral consciousness of any writer, Achebe is either indifferent to or dismisses them outright because the victims are not his people. However, in every encounter that shows Igbos being killed or resented by Nigerians, or by the Yoruba in particular, Achebe intensifies the spotlight, deploying stratospheric rhetoric, including quotes from foreign authors with further elaborations in endnotes to show he is not partial. Achebe calls upon powerfully coercive emotive words and phrasings to dignify what is clearly repugnant to reason. Furthermore, not only does he take pride in ignoring the findings of common sense, he allocates primetime attention to facts-free rants just because they say his people are the most superior tribe in Nigeria. The book, to say the least, is a masterpiece of propaganda and sycophancy. And yet it is not a writer’s business to be an accomplice to lies.

First let’s take Achebe’s Christopher Okigbo. Throughout the book, Achebe presents Okigbo in loving moments complete with tender details: Okigbo attending to Achebe’s wife during labour, Okigbo ordering opulent room service dishes for Achebe wife in a swank hotel while millions were allegedly dying of starvation and Achebe was out of the country, Okigbo being a dearly beloved uncle to Achebe’s children, Okigbo opening a publishing house in the middle of the war. Out of the blue he writes that he hears on Radio Nigeria the death of Major Christopher Okigbo. Major? The reader is completely shocked and feels revulsion for the side that killed him and sympathy for the side that lost him. Unlike other accounts like Obi Nwakanma’s definitive biography of Okigbo, Achebe skips details of Okigbo running arms and ammunition from Birmingham to Biafra and also from place to place in Biafra; he omits the fact that Okigbo was an active-duty guerrilla fighter killing the other side before he himself got killed. Like many other episodes recounted in the book, Achebe photoshops the true picture so that readers would allocate early enough which side should merit their sympathy, which side should be for slated for revulsion. Pities, cheap sympathy, sloppy sentimentalism, one-sided victimhood are what are on sale throughout the book. Achebe of course is preparing the reader for his agenda at the end of the book.

To Achebe, the final straw that led to secession was the alleged 30,000 Igbos killed in the North. He carefully structures the narrative to locate the reason for this systematic killing/pogrom/ethnic-cleansing in the so-called usual resentment of Igbos and not from the fallout of the first coup in the history of Nigeria. Achebe dismisses the targeted assassinations as not an Igbo coup. The two reasons Achebe gives are because there was a Yoruba officer among the coup plotters and that the alleged leader of the coup, Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was Igbo in name only. “Not only was he born in Kaduna, the capital of the Muslim North, he was widely known as someone who saw himself as a Northerner, spoke fluent Hausa and little Igbo, and wore the Northern traditional dress when not in uniform(pg 79).” Really? First, it was not mysterious that Azikiwe left the country in October 1965 on an endless medical cruise to Britain and the Caribbean. Dr. Idemudia Idehen his personal doctor, abandoned him when he got tired of the endless medical trip. Not even the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference never held outside London but hosted in Lagos for the first time in early January was incentive enough for Azikiwe to return and yet he was the president of the nation. In a revelation contained in the American secret documents, it was Azikiwe’s presidential bodyguards that Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the coup’s mastermind, used to capture the Prime Minister, Abubakar Balewa. Once Ifeajuna and Major Donatus Okafor, the Commanding officer of the Federal Guards tipped off Azikiwe about the planned bloodshed, Okafor, Godfrey Ezedigbo and others Guards became freer to meet 12km away in Ifeajuna’s house in Apapa to take the plan to the next level. The recruitment for the ringleaders was done between August and October 1965. Immediately Azikiwe left, planning and training for the execution began.

Second, the eastern leadership was spared when others were brutally wasted. Third, the head of state Major-General Aguyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, didn’t try and execute the coup plotters as was the practice if it were a pure military affair. (Ojukwu told Suzanne Cronje, the British-South African author that he asked Aguyi-Ironsi to take over and told him how to unite the army behind him. That was the reason he made him the governor of Eastern Region.) Four, when Awolowo, Bola Ige, Anthony Enahoro, Lateef Jakande, etc were imprisoned for sedition, they served their terms in Calabar away from their regions as was the normal practice. When Wole Soyinka was imprisoned for activities at the beginning of the civil war, he was sent to faraway Kaduna and Jos prisons but the ring leaders of coup plotters were moved from Lagos back to the Eastern Region, among their people on the advice of Ojukwu. Five, during the Aburi negotiations, why was full reprieve for the coup plotters put on the table? Six, a freed Nzeogwu by April 1967 before the secession joined in training recruits in Abakaliki for the inevitable war with Nigeria. He later died on the Nsukka front fighting for Biafra. Yet that was Achebe’s Hausa-speaking, kaftan-wearing Kaduna man, who is Igbo in name only. It was an Igbo coup. (The same repackaging was attempted for the invasion and occupation of the Midwest. It was called liberation of the Midwest from Hausa-Fulani domination when it was simply another Igbo coup for Igbo ends planned in Enugu albeit headed by a Yoruba, Colonel Victor Banjo)

The January coup didn’t foment a much more viscera response in Western Region since their assassinated political leader was part of the corrupt, troublesome, election-rigging class. To Westerners, the coup was good riddance to bad rubbish. However to the Northerners who were feudal in their social organization and Hobbesian in their consciousness, it was different matter. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the slain Sardauna of Sokoto was their all in all; he was the heir to the powerful Sokoto Caliphate and descendant of Usman dan Fodio. More than Azikiwe and Awolowo, Sardauna was the most powerful politician in Nigeria (pg 46). Murdering him was murdering the pride of a people. Achebe chooses to ignore this perspective and more importantly was the fact that Igbos in the North were widely taunting their hosts on the loss of their leaders with Rex Lawson’s song “Ewu Ne Ba Akwa” (Goats are crying) and others celebrating “Igbo power”, the “January Victory.” Posters, stickers, postcards, cartoons displaying the murdered Sardauna begging Nzeogwu at the gates of heaven or Balewa burning outright in pits of hell, or Nzeogwu standing St George-like on Sardauna the defeated dragon began to show up across Northern towns and cities. These provocations were so pervasive that they warranted the promulgation of Decree 40 of 1966 banning them. The Igbos didn’t stop. Azikiwe is more honest than Achebe. In his pamphlet, The Origins of the Civil War, he writes: “…some Ibo elements who were domiciled in Northern Nigeria taunted Northerners by defaming their leaders through means of records or songs or pictures. They also published pamphlets and postcards which displayed a peculiar representation of certain Northerners, living or dead, in a manner likely to provoke disaffection.” It was these images and songs that eventually led to the so-called pogroms/ethnic-cleansing/genocide not the coup. The coup was in January, the pogroms started late in May, and the provocations were in between.

However Igbos in the East did not sit idly by. They started the massacre of innocent Northerners in their midst. Achebe chose to ignore this account since it doesn’t serve his agenda so we return to Azikiwe: “Between August and September 1966, either by chance or by design, hundreds of Hausa, Fulani, Nupe and Igalla-speaking peoples of Northern Nigeria origin residing in the Eastern Nigeria were abducted and massacred in Aba, Abakaliki, Enugu, Onitsha and Port Harcourt.” It is important to note that these Northerners never published nor circulated irreverent or taunting pictures of Eastern leaders unlike the Igbos of the North, they were just massacred for being Northerners. The government of Eastern Region did not stop these massacres. Neither did the Igbo intellectuals. Ojukwu, the military administrator even made a radio broadcast saying that he can no longer guarantee the security of non-Eastern Nigerians in the East, Easterners who did not return to Igboland would be looked on as traitors. This was when Professor Sam Aluko who was the head of Economics department at University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a personal friend of Ojukwu fled back to the West. Azikiwe continues in his book: “Eyewitnesses gave on-the-spot accounts of corpses floating in the Imo River and River Niger. [Faraway]Radio Cotonou broadcast this macabre news, which was suppressed by Enugu Radio. Then Radio Kaduna relayed it and this sparked off the massacres of September – October 1966 [in the North]”.

Achebe, like Enugu Radio, suppressed this information and goes on to pivot the ‘pogrom’ on the fact that Igbos were resented because they were the most superior, most successful tribe in the country. He claims they were “the dominant tribe(pg 233)” “led the nation in virtually every sector – politics, education, commerce, and the arts(pg 66),” which included having two vice chancellors in Yoruba land; they the Igbos are the folkloric “leopard, the wise and peaceful king of the animals (pg177),” they “spearheaded”(pg 97) the struggle to free Nigeria from colonial rule: “This group, the Igbo, that gave the colonizing British so many headaches and then literarily drove them out of Nigeria was now an open target, scapegoats for the failings and grievances of colonial and post-independent Nigeria(pg 67).” An Igboman, Achebe writes, has “an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots…Unlike the Hausa/Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion, and unlike the Yoruba he was unhampered by traditional hierarchies…Although the Yoruba had a huge historical head start, the Igbo wiped out their handicap in one fantastic burst of energy in the twenty years between1930 to1950 (pg 74).” Beside the fact that this has a language consistent with white supremacist literature, Achebe, to demonstrate he is not partial or a chauvinist, based himself on a 17 page report by Paul Anber in Journal of Modern African Studies titled Modernization and Political Disintegration: Nigeria and the Ibos.

I looked up the 1967 journal. Curiously this ‘scholar’ was designated as “a member of staff of one the Nigerian Universities.” Why would a scholar hide his place of work in a journal? I checked the essays and book reviews in all the 196 issues of Journal of Modern African Studies from Volume 1 issue 1 of January 1963 to the last issue Volume 49 November 2011, there was nowhere a piece was published and the designation of the scholar vague or hidden. Also this Paul Anber never published any piece before and after this article in this or any other journal. I wanted to start checking the academic staff list of the five universities in Nigeria then until I realized again that it says “he is a staff of Nigerian university;” I would have to check the names of janitors and cleaners, and other non-academic staff too. The truth is Paul Anber is a fake name under which someone else or a group of people possibly Igbo is masquerading. And he/they never used this name again for any other piece or books. So that this ruse would not be found out was the reason he/they hid his/their university. And this piece like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been the cornerstone of books and widely quoted by other journals over a period 45 years. It is the cornerstone of the chapter A History Of Ethnic Tension And Resentment which Achebe used to skew the motive for Igbo people’s maltreatment from the fallout of January 1966 coup and the inflammatory provocations they published to resentment for being allegedly the most successful and dominant tribe in Nigeria.

Had Achebe not been overdosing on rabid Igbo nationalism, he would have had his chest-beating ethnic bombasts inflected by a deeper and more sobering analysis of the Nigerian situation in the next essay in the Journal: The Inevitability of Instability by a real and existing Professor James O’Connell, an Irish priest and professor of government in a real and existing institution: Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. O’ Connell argues that the lack of constitutionalism and disregard for rule of law fuel psychology of insecurities in all ethnic groups. He fingers as an inevitable cause of our national instability, Nigerians’ “failure to find an identity and loyalty beyond their primordial communities that lead them constantly to choose their fellow workers, political and administrative, from the same community, ignoring considerations of merit.”

The symbolism of Igbos heading the University of Ibadan and University of Lagos both in Yoruba land was a positive image to assist Tiv, Hausa, Ijaw, Urhobo, Yoruba, Ibibio, Igbo, Efik, etc students shed their over-loyalty to their respective primordial communities and to fashion a higher sense of identity that is national in character and federal in outlook. To Achebe, the symbolism was an example of the dominance and superiority of Igbos. “It would appear that the God of Africa has created the Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of ages,” Paul Anber quotes Azikiwe saying in his West African Pilot, “History has enabled them not only to conquer others but also to adapt themselves to the role of preserver… The Ibo nation cannot shirk its responsibility.” Anber says in his/their essay: “The Ibo reaction to the British was not typically one of complete rejection and resistance, though Ibos were militantly anti-colonial. Since modernisation is in many respects basically a process of imitation, the Ibos modelled themselves after their masters, seeing, as Simon Ottenberg put it, that ‘The task was not merely to control the British influence but to capture it.’ To some degree, it may be said that this is precisely what they proceeded to do. Faced with internal problems of land hunger, impoverished soil, and population pressure, the Ibos migrated in large numbers to urban areas both in their own region and in the North and West…”

The spirit of inclusive humanism, the Martin Luther King Ideal, the Mandela Example, the conscience of a writer should necessitate that if a child in Sokoto goes to bed hungry someone in Umuahia should get angry. If a pregnant woman in Kotangora needs justice someone in Patani should be able to stand up and fight for her. If an Osu group is being maltreated in Igboland, someone in Zaria should stand up and defend them. But to Achebe, there should be no mercy for the weak in so far as he or she is unfortunate enough to belong to the other side. Take for instance the butchering of the lone shell-shocked “Mali-Chad mercenary” wandering around “dazed and aimless” in the bush Achebe witnessed. To show the fight-to-finish courage of his people in face of overwhelming force, he describes how Major Jonathan Uchendu’s Abagana Ambush succeeded in destroying Colonel Murtala Mohammed’s convoy of 96 vehicles, four armoured vehicle killing 500 Nigerians in one and a half hours. “There were widespread reports of atrocities perpetrated by angry Igbo villagers who captured wandering soldiers. I was an eyewitness to one such angry bloody frenzy of retaliation after a particularly tall and lanky soldier – clearly a mercenary from Chad or Mali wandered into an ambush of young men with machetes. His lifeless body was found mutilated on the roadside in a matter of seconds (pg 173).”

Achebe does not tell us if he tried to prevent this cold-blooded butchering even though there was an episode where he intervened to save the life and chastity of a Biafran woman arguing with some wandering Nigerian soldiers who wanted to requisition her goat for food (pg 201). If Achebe couldn’t intervene in the butchering, what did he think of the killing then or now that he is writing the book with the benefit of hindsight? Shouldn’t the man have been handed over as a prisoner of war? Was his killing not a violation of Geneva conventions which he so much accused the Nigerian side of disrespecting (pg 212)? Did villagers behaving this way not rebus sic stantibus blur the lines between soldiers and civilians hence making themselves fair game in war? Also notice how Achebe starts the narration with an active first person voice: “I was an eye witness to…” and how he quickly switches to a passive third person voice in the next sentence: “His body was found…” Achebe quickly goes AWOL “in a matter of seconds” leaving a moral vacuum for the Igbo writer to emerge and the conscientious writer to go under.

When atrocities are being committed against Biafrans, Achebe deploys strong active voice (subject + verb), isolates the aggressive phrases of military bravado with italics or quotation marks. But when Biafra is caught committing the atrocity, he employs passive sentence structures, euphemisms and never isolates pledges of murder in italics or quotation marks. Take the “Kwale Incident(pg 218)” that eventually became an international embarrassment for Biafra. Based on an unsubstantiated source, he writes, “Biafran military intelligence allegedly obtained information that foreign oilmen…were allegedly providing sensitive military information to federal forces – about Biafran troop positions, strategic military manoeuvres, and training.” So they decided to invade. “At the end of the ‘exercise’,” Achebe writes, “eleven workers had been killed”

Also compare these two accounts: the background is the Biafran invasion of Midwest. Despite Ojukwu’s assurance to them before the secession that he would absolutely respect their choice of belonging to neither side, he invaded them, occupied their land, foisted his government on them, took charge of their resources, looted the Central Bank of Nigeria in Benin, set up military check points in several places to regulate the flow of goods and human beings, imposed dawn-to-dusk curfews, flooded the airwaves with Biafran propaganda, imprisoned and executed dissidents on a daily basis according to Nowa Omoigui’s The Invasion of Midwest and Samuel Ogbemudia’s Years of Challenge. In fact, “The Hausa community in the Lagos street area of Benin and other parts of the state were targeted for particularly savage treatment, in part a reprisal for the pogroms of 1966, but also out of security concerns that they would naturally harbour sympathies for the regime in Lagos,” Omoigui writes. The Midwesterners regarded Biafrans as traitors. And the Nigerian army came to the rescue.

Achebe writes: “The retreating Biafran forces, according to several accounts, allegedly beat up a number of Mid-Westerners who they believed had served as saboteurs. Nigerian radio reports claimed that the Biafrans shot a number of innocent civilians as they fled the advancing federal forces. As disturbing as these allegations are, I have found no credible corroboration of them (pg 133).” Yes, he can’t find it; they were not his people. Also note his euphemisms: “allegedly beat up”… “shot a number of innocent civilians”(shot not killed). He writes: “a number of innocents” to disguise the fact that massacres took place. He also writes: “saboteurs.” Midwesterners collaborated with federal forces to liberate their lands from Biafran traitors and occupiers, Achebe calls them “saboteurs.” Now note in the next paragraph how he describes what happened to his people when the federal army in hot pursuance of the Biafran soldiers reached the Igbo side of the Midwest. It is noisily headlined: The Asaba Massacre(pg 133).

“Armed with direct orders to retake the occupied areas at all costs, this division rounded up and shot as many defenceless Igbo men as they could find. Some reports place the death toll at five hundred, others as high as one thousand. The Asaba Massacre, as it would be known, was only one of many such post-pogrom atrocities committed by Nigerian soldiers during the war. It became a particular abomination for Asaba residents, as many of those killed were titled Igbo chiefs and common folk alike, and their bodies were disposed of with reckless abandon in mass graves, without regard to the wishes of the families of the victims or the town’s ancient traditions.” Then he goes on to quote lengthily from books and what the Pope’s emissary said about it in a French newspaper, what Gowon said, what was said at Oputa panel etc etc. He found time to research. They were his people unlike other Midwestern tribes’ sufferings he couldn’t find “credible corroboration of.” Achebe is incapable of being interested in the sufferings of others.

In the chapter The Calabar Massacre, Achebe not only totally blanks out the well-documented atrocities including massacres Biafran forces committed against the Efiks, Ibibios, Ikwerre, when they occupied their lands and when they were retreating in the face of Federal onslaught, he goes on to tell lies against the federal forces. Achebe writes: “By the time the Nigerians were done they had ‘shot at least 1,000 and perhaps 2,000 Ibos[sic], most of them civilians.’ There were other atrocities throughout the region. ‘In Oji River,’ The Times of London reported on August 2, 1968, ‘the Nigerian forces opened fire and murdered fourteen nurses and the patients in the wards.’” Achebe continues still referring to the same Times article: “In Uyo and Okigwe more innocent lives were lost to the brutality and bloodlust of the Nigerian soldiers(pg137).” How the fact checking services of his publishers allowed him to get away with these is baffling. I looked up the 1968 piece of course. It is a syndicated story written by Lloyd Garrison of the New York Times to balance the piece by John Young which appeared three days before. In the piece Achebe quotes, there is no mention of Uyo or Okigwe or Oji River at all.

This is what is in the piece – the journalist was quoting Brother Aloysius, an Irish missionary in Uturu 150km away from Abakaliki: “But when they took Abakaliki, they put the 11 white fathers there on house arrest. In the hospital outside Enugu, they shot all the fourteen Biafran nurses who stayed behind, then went down the wards killing the patients as well. It was the same thing in Port Harcourt.” This missionary had believed the ruthlessly efficient Biafran propaganda service. Because of the atrocities Nigeria soldiers committed in the Ogoja –Nsukka front and the revenge killings in Asaba, the world had been alerted and it was hurting Nigeria’s arms procurement abroad. So Gowon agreed to an international observer team made of representatives from UN general secretary and OAU to monitor the activities of the three Nigerian divisions and the claims of Radio Biafra. In their first report released on 9th October 1968, there was no evidence of the killings even though it was brought to their attention. Even Lloyd Garrison and other members of the international press corps in Biafra couldn’t find evidence of that particular killings in the hospital. Also note Achebe’s statement: “By the time the Nigerians were done they had ‘shot at least 1,000 and perhaps 2,000 Ibos[sic], most of them civilians.’” How can an intelligent mind write “they had shot at least 1,000” which an uncertainty, and then following it up with another uncertainty: “perhaps 2,000 Ibos” and then say with certainty “most of them are civilians”? How can you say for sure that most of them are civilians when you are not even sure whether they are 1000 or 2000? It defies sense and logic to build a certainty on two concurrent uncertainties and then call it the truth. But that is the meaning of propaganda. William Berndhardt of Markpress and Robert Goldstein were on contract from Ojukwu to handle Biafra’s marketing and propaganda. Nathaniel Whittemore’s seminal thesis, How Biafra Came to Be: Genocide, starvation and American Imagination of the Nigerian Civil War revealed how they did it and how it worked.

Achebe proceeds to celebrate “the great ingenuity” of scientists from Biafran Research and Production Unit who developed “a great number of rockets, bombs, and telecommunication gadgets, and devised an ingenious indigenous strategy to refine petroleum.” Then he drops the most disingenuously incongruous jaw-dropping statement in the book: “I would like to make it crystal clear that I abhor violence, and a discussion of the weapons of war does not imply that I am a war enthusiast or condone violence (pg 156).” That is Achebe who pages before lamented the lack of weapons for his people; that is Achebe who travelled the world soliciting material relief including arms for Biafra; that is Achebe who watched the butchering of a lone mercenary without flinching; that is Achebe who told Rajat Neogy on pg 105: “Portugal has not given us any arms. We buy arms on the black market. What we cannot get elsewhere, we try and make.”

But there is a reason why he drops this dishonest statement here; he is preparing us for what is coming next. We all know what happened in The Godfather when Don Michael Corleone renounced Satan and all his evil works: Achebe begins to praise the indigenously manufactured bomb, “Ogbunigwe” (meaning mass killer, a translation unlike others Achebe doesn’t include in the book for obvious reasons). He continues: “Ogbunigwe bombs struck great terror in the hearts of many a Nigerian soldier, and were used to great effect by the Biafran army throughout the conflict. The novelist Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike captures the hysteria and dread evoked by it in a passage in his important book Sunset at Dawn: A Novel about Biafra: When the history of this war comes to be written, the ogbunigwe[sic] and the shore batteries will receive special mention as Biafra’s greatest saviours. We’ve been able to wipe out more Nigerians with those devices than with any imported weapons”

If the other side dare uses “wipe out,” Achebe would have flagged it at an evidence of the plan to “annihilate the Igbos” but here, he let it pass without comment. It is from his side. And Ogbunigwe was not a product of Igbo ingenuity; it was a “bespectacled” American mercenary from MIT uncovered by the Irish journalist Donal Musgrave that was secretly training Biafrans on how to use fertilizers to make bombs (cf 13 August 1968 cable from American embassy in Dublin to the one in the Lagos).

In the book, Achebe narrates the many diplomatic missions – official and unofficial – he embarked on for the secession. A particularly telling one was to the President of Senegal, Leopold Senghor(pg162). He and Ojukwu were attracted to Senghor because of his Negritude philosophical movement. [This story of course is not true. Sam Agbam who Achebe claimed he travelled with was executed alongside with Victor Banjo, Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Philip Alale in Enugu on Saturday 23rd September 1967. What Achebe went to warn Senghor about didn’t become an issue until June 1968 when Biafra was losing and Ojukwu had to move the capital further south to the heartland of Umuahia then to Orlu. And there was a monstrously centripetal migration of Igbos towards the new capital which resulted in the humanitarian catastrophe. And the Uli airport Achebe claimed they flew from hadn’t being constructed before his travel companion Sam was executed on 23rd September 1967. It was constructed and opened for use in August 1968 because Enugu and Port Harcourt which were Biafra’s only airports had fallen into the hands of Nigerians. So let’s take Achebe’s story as story and move on]. Achebe tells us after days of bureaucratic obstacles, he directly delivered to Senghor, Ojukwu’s personal letter that “informs him of the real catastrophe building up in Biafra.” Senghor, Achebe writes, “glanced through the letter quickly, and then turned to me and said he would deal with it overnight…as soon as possible (pg 162).”

...There's still a lot more. Read the rest of the review here:
http://pwc-review.com/submissions/achebe-and-the-moral-obligation-to-be-intelligent/

Damola Awoyokun, a Structural and Marine Engineer in London is also the Executive Editor of Pwc Review. He can be reached at executiveeditor AT pwc-review DOT com

Since this Damola guy is soo intelligent how come his intelligent has not made him world acclaimed? @justasking

Afam4eva: Since this Damola guy is soo intelligent how come his intelligent has not made him world acclaimed? @justasking

HIS POINT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HIM.
READ THE POINTS, IF YOU DO NOT AGREE,
THEN MAKE YOUR OWN POINT WITH EXPLANATIONS.
DO YOU KNOW THAT SAME QUESTION FITS YOU AND ME?
IF AFAM4EVA OR OLAOLUFRED IS KNOWLEDGEABLE ENOUGH, WHY IS OUR NAMES NOT EVERYWHERE LIKE OBAMA'S?

Olaolufred:

HIS POINT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HIM.
READ THE POINTS, IF YOU DO NOT AGREE,
THEN MAKE YOUR OWN POINT WITH EXPLANATIONS.
DO YOU KNOW THAT SAME QUESTION FITS YOU AND ME?
IF AFAM4EVA OR OLAOLUFRED IS KNOWLEDGEABLE ENOUGH, WHY IS OUR NAMES NOT EVERYWHERE LIKE OBAMA'S?

He has no right to tell someone who's more world acclaimed for his intelligence to be intelligent. If he's more intelligent than Achebe then he should put it to good use and achieve half of what Achebe has achieved. I can understand someone disagreeing with Achebe's assertion but saying that Achebe is unintelligent is unacceptable.

Afam4eva:
He has no right to tell someone who's more world acclaimed for his intelligence to be intelligent. If he's more intelligent than Achebe then he should put it to good use and achieve half of what Achebe has achieved. I can understand someone disagreeing with Achebe's assertion but saying that Achebe is unintelligent is unacceptable.

THAT ALSO MEANS THAT BOTH AFAM4EVA AND OLAOLUFRED HAS NO RIGHT TO TELL WHETHER HE IS RIGHT OR WRONG.
THAT IS A SIMPLE LOGIC.

this is one problem with yorubas, a book that was released mid last year,

all yorubas, elite and novice, big and small, poor and rich, experts and amateurs, has replied the dam book.
why are you guys behaving like women or little girls.

why do these guys love nagging like women.

Can't read this very lengthy Opinion of a Nobody !

Olaolufred:

THAT ALSO MEANS THAT BOTH AFAM4EVA AND OLAOLUFRED HAS NO RIGHT TO TELL WHETHER HE IS RIGHT OR WRONG.
THAT IS A SIMPLE LOGIC.

The fact that i believe in something doesn't make it right or doesn't make anyone who doesn't believe in it unintelligent.

Afam with all sincerity, you have no brains.
So he have no right to speak on his own opinion?
I have always known you as a bigot,
but you just took it to the gutters.

Nice article!!

I love the way this guy exposed Achebe's lies and deceit.

Achebe truly deserves his place in the "2012 Politics Section Hall of Shame".

What he calls a book is a "body of lies", meant to poison the minds of folks who lack the ability to reason rationally, folks blinded by ethnic bigotry and a supremacist mindset.

Mr Ban Ban go Ban tire today. Anybody that says a negative thing against Awo na Ban

Bunch of hyprocrites

I hope this noner bought a lotta copies of the world acclaimed memoir of 2012 as sourvenoirs? Let him keep on ranting.

As expected folks have started foaming in the mouth, angry that someone has the audacity to expose the lies and deceit in a book written by their legend. Instead of disproving the points raised by the writer, they're asking for his achievements.

No matter how highly rated you are, the moment you start spreading poisonous lies and deceit, you lose your respect. It's sad, but that's where Achebe has put himself. He will be remembered for his bitterness, deceit and bigotry..

Damola,leave Achebe alone and stop seeking cheap popularity,this is the Sixth essay of him on Achebe i have read so Far
kinda reminds me of one Nichole gravity that sang "i want finish timaya" to become Famous

GARRI (x7):

No matter how highly rated you are, the moment you start spreading poisonous lies and deceit, you lose your respect. It's sad, but that's where Achebe has put himself. He will be remembered for his bitterness, deceit and bigotry..

Well said Garri. Truth as it's often said is this, everyone (no matter how world acclaimed or intelligent) has a right to their opinions, but no one has a right to their own facts. What the hitherto respectable prof did was cunningly try to portray is heavily biased and skewed views as true representations, in other words, facts.
The onus is therefore on anybody (whether renowned or not) with counter facts to rubbish his rather horrendous claims, as it turned out to be.

Afam4eva:
He has no right to tell someone who's more world acclaimed for his intelligence to be intelligent. If he's more intelligent than Achebe then he should put it to good use and achieve half of what Achebe has achieved. I can understand someone disagreeing with Achebe's assertion but saying that Achebe is unintelligent is unacceptable.

And what exactly did Achebe achieve? writting a story book? why is he not a nobel laureatte? mtschewwww

huptin:

And what exactly did Achebe achieve? writting a story book? why is he not a nobel laureatte? mtschewwww

You're right. He didn't achieve anything. I wonder why we're even talking about him.

o'boy:
Damola,leave Achebe alone and stop seeking cheap popularity,this is the Sixth essay of him on Achebe i have read so Far
kinda reminds me of one Nichole gravity that sang "i want finish timaya" to become Famous

Why should he leave him alone? If a well respected and influential prof can descend into peddling lies as facts, then by all means, anyone with enough ammo to fish him out deserves all the "cheap popularity"!

Rubbish, Professor Achebe has said his piece, he has my respect any time, any day

[size=28pt]Achebe speaks on the world stage,they reply him on nairaland and oshun defender
Who is the bigger masquerade?
[/size]
I didn't bother to read that garbage sha

o'boy:
Damola,leave Achebe alone and stop seeking cheap popularity,this is the Sixth essay of him on Achebe i have read so Far
kinda reminds me of one Nichole gravity that sang "i want finish timaya" to become Famous

This isn't about popularity!!

It's about exposing lies and deceit published as fact by a supposed literary icon!!!

It's about the descent of Prof. Achebe from a literary legend to a bitter, deceitful liar with a mission of poisoning the mind of the younger generation thus fanning the embers of ethnic distrust and suspicion.

Achebe seeks to cause confusion in a country where he doesn't reside.

That my friend is what this thread is about!!

babyosisi: [size=28pt]Achebe speaks on the world stage,they reply him on nairaland and oshun defender
Who is the bigger masquerade?
[/size]
I didn't bother to read that garbage sha

Na one of the problems wey we dey face for this country and Africa be dis. We are intellectually lazy, and only expect the "respected" and "world stage" elites to think for us and tell us what to do. Without even briefly reading the thing for the merits of whatever he's saying, whether it makes sense or not, you already called it garbage

Afam4eva:
He has no right to tell someone who's more world acclaimed for his intelligence to be intelligent. If he's more intelligent than Achebe then he should put it to good use and achieve half of what Achebe has achieved. I can understand someone disagreeing with Achebe's assertion but saying that Achebe is unintelligent is unacceptable.

[quote author=Afam4eva]
I agree with Afam. He shouldn't question Achebe's intelligence. I guess the writer was too upset with Achebe's misleading assertions.

Moukafoam: Mr Ban Ban go Ban tire today. Anybody that says a negative thing against Awo na Ban

Bunch of hyprocrites

^^^I'm just starting to realise this as well.

Achebe has earned my respect a thousand times over with this book. By now peeps should realise Achebe is someone that speaks his mind and the truth no matter whose 'delicate' sensibilities are hurt. He's a legend!

@OP

If the so-called Damola Awoyokun is not inherently idiotic and ridiculously ill-informed, then stupidity can be fixed. I guess when this son or daughter of a bit.ch alluded to the fact he\she was at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, he\she was a student. Granted the inherent boastfulness and loudmouthed tendencies found among Demola Awoyokun’s ilk, it in not uncommon among his\her people to compare shooting war such as Nigeria\Biafra civil war with communal “hide and seek game” between Modakeke and Ife.

Again, due to self arrogation, it is safe to say that this moronic airhead called Demola Awoyokun attended a university called Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife and could not possible be in position to rebut any eyewitness account of the Nigeria\Biafra civil war. I could remember there was no university in Nigeria named Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife in early 80s as the university was known as University of Ife, Ile-Ife.

I could not believe my eyes when the so-called numbskull called Demola Awoyokun who would want us to believe he\she had atom of brain cell looked dumb and silly while regurgitating every known crap or statement Nowa Omoigui has been forced to withdraw or retract.

Honestly, Nigeria needs to disintegrate. Beside the problems of tribalism and lack of proper education, most inhabitants of the colonial contraption are inherent lazy and loudmouthed.

GARRI (x7):
As expected folks have started foaming in the mouth, angry that someone has the audacity to expose the lies and deceit in a book written by their legend. Instead of disproving the points raised by the writer, they're asking for his achievements.

No matter how highly rated you are, the moment you start spreading poisonous lies and deceit, you lose your respect. It's sad, but that's where Achebe has put himself. He will be remembered for his bitterness, deceit and bigotry..

Well said, still, he is, at his very best, human. No matter how impartial a person claims to be, you still see character flaws. Moreover, since he was involved in it, it is possible he honestly could not see the wood for the trees .

@ Topic, interesting article, one of the reasons one should look at both sides of a story before drawing a conclusion.

PROUD-IGBO:


^^^I'm just starting to realise this as well.

Achebe has earned my respect a thousand times over with this book. By now peeps should realise Achebe is someone that speaks his mind and the truth no matter whose 'delicate' sensibilities are hurt. He's a legend!

Proud Igbo, I'm not sure many people have a problem with Achebe speaking his mind, infact almost everyone hailed him when he spoke his mind about the national awards and the decay in the country because it was the TRUTH, regardless of delicate sensibilities. The "truth" part of this latest speaking-of-his-mind is what is causing the whole wahala. From the article above, the writer has done serious work in showing the book as mostly predicated on LIES and parochial HYPOCRISY.

huptin:

And what exactly did Achebe achieve? writting a story book? why is he not a nobel laureatte? mtschewwww

The reference about the crap “nobel laureate” shows the depth of your ignorance.

Gangnam:

Proud Igbo, I'm not sure many people have a problem with Achebe speaking his mind, infact almost everyone hailed him when he spoke his mind about the national awards and the decay in the country because it was the TRUTH, regardless of delicate sensibilities. The "truth" part of this latest speaking-of-his-mind is what is causing the whole wahala. From the article above, the writer has done serious work in showing the book as mostly predicated on LIES and parochial HYPOCRISY.

Pls educate us. How do we know what's the truth and what's not. Who determines that?

a) National Assembly

b) The house of commons in the UK

c) Governors forum

d) Demola