I am a historian and I have always believed that if we want to
talk history we must be dispassionate, objective and factual. We
must take the emotion out of it and we must always tell the truth.
The worst thing that anyone can do is to try to re-write history
and indulge in historical revisionism. This is especially so when
the person is a revered figure and a literary icon.
Sadly, it is in the light of such historical revisionism that I view
Professor Chinua Achebe’s assertion (which is reflected in his
latest and highly celebrated book titled ”There Was A
Country”) that Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late and much
loved Leader of the Yoruba, was responsible for the genocide
that the Igbos suffered during the civil war. This claim is not
only false but it is also, frankly speaking, utterly absurd. Not
only is Professor Achebe indulging in perfidy, not only is he
being utterly dishonest and disingenuous but he is also turning
history upside down and indulging in what I would describe as
ethnic chauvinism.
I am one of those that has always had tremendous sympathy for
the Igbo cause during the civil war. I am also an admirer of
Colonel Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu who stood up for his people
when it mattered the most and when they were being
slaughtered by rampaging mobs in the northern part of our
country.
At least 100,000 Igbos were killed in those northern pogroms
which took place before the civil war and which indeed led
directly to it. This was not only an outrage but it was also a
tragedy of monumental proportions.Yet we must not allow our
emotion or our sympathy for the suffering of the Igbo at the
hands of northern mobs before the war started to becloud our
sense of reasoning, as regards what actually happened during
the prosecution of the war itself.
It is important to set the record straight and not to be selective
in our application and recollection of the facts when
considering what actually led to the starvation of hundreds of
thousands of Igbo women, children and civilians during that
war. And, unlike others, I do not deny the fact that hundreds of
thousands were starved to death as a consequence of the
blockade that was imposed on Biafra by the Nigerian Federal
Government.
To deny that this actually happened would be a lie. It is a
historical fact. Again I do not deny the fact that Awolowo
publicly defended the blockade and indeed told the world that it
was perfectly legitimate for any government to impose such a
blockade on the territory of their enemies in times of war.
Awolowo said it, this is a matter of historical record and he was
quoted in a number of British newspapers as having said so at
the time.
Yet he spoke nothing but the truth. And whether anyone likes
to hear it or not, he was absolutely right in what he said. Let me
give you an example. During the Second World War a blockade
was imposed on Germany, Japan and Italy by the Allied Forces
and this was very effective. It weakened the Axis powers
considerably and this was one of the reasons why the war ended
at the time that it did. If there had been no blockade, the Second
World War would have gone on for considerably longer.
In the case of the Nigerian civil war though the story did not
stop at the fact that a blockade was imposed by the Federal
Government which led to the suffering, starvation, pain, death
and hardship of the civilian Igbo population or that Awolowo
defended it. That is only half the story.
There was a lot more to it and the fact that Achebe and most of
our Igbo brothers and sisters always conveniently forget to
mention the other half of the story is something that causes
some of us from outside Igboland considerable concern and
never ceases to amaze us.
The bitter truth is that if anyone is to be blamed for the
hundreds of thousands of Igbos that died from starvation during
the civil war, it was not Chief Awolowo or even General Yakubu
Gowon but, rather it was Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu
himself. I say this because it is a matter of public record and a
historical fact that the Federal Government of Nigeria made a
very generous offer to Ojukwu and the Biafrans to open a road
corridor for food to be ferried to the Igbos and to lessen the
suffering of their civilian population.
This was as a consequence of a deal that was brokered by the
international community who were concerned about the
suffering of the Igbo civilian population and the death and
hardship that the blockade was causing to them.
Unfortunately Ojukwu turned this down flatly and instead
insisted that food should be flown into Biafra by air in the dead
of the night. This was unacceptable to the Federal Government
because it meant that the Biafrans could, and indeed would,
have used such night flights to smuggle badly needed arms and
ammunition into their country for usage by their soldiers. That
was where the problem came from and that was the issue.
Apart from that, Ojukwu found it expedient and convenient to
allow his people to starve to death and to broadcast it on
television screens all over the world in order to attract sympathy
for the Igbo cause and for propaganda purposes. And this
worked beautifully for him.
Ambassador Ralph Uweche, who was the Special Envoy to
France for the Biafran Government during the civil war and who
is the leader of Ohaeneze, the leading igbo political and socio-
cultural organisation today, attested to this in his excellent book
titled ”Reflections On The Nigerian Civil War”. That book was
factual and honest and I would urge people like Achebe to go
and read it well.
The self-serving role of Ojukwu and many of the Biafran
intelligentsia and elites and their insensitivity to the suffering of
their own people during the course of the war was well
enunciated in that book. The fact of the matter is that the
starvation and suffering of hundreds of thousands of Igbo men,
women and children during the civil war was seen and used as a
convenient tool of propaganda by Ojukwu and that is precisely
why he rejected the offer of a food corridor by the Nigerian
Government.
When those that belong to the post civil war generation of the
Igbo are wondering who was responsible for the genocide and
mass starvation of their forefathers during the war they must
firstly look within themselves and point their fingers at their
own past leaders and certainly not Awolowo or Gowon. The
person that was solely responsible for that suffering, for that
starvation and for those slow and painful deaths was none other
than Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the leader of Biafra,
himself.
I have written many good things about Ojukwu on many
occasions in the past and I stand by every word that I have ever
said or written about him. In my view he was a man of courage
and immense fortitude, he stood against the mass murder of his
people in the north and he brought them home and created a
safe haven for them in the east.
For him, and indeed the whole of Biafra, the war was an attempt
to exercise their legitimate right of self-determination and leave
Nigeria due to the atrocities that they had been subjected to in
the north. I cannot blame him or his people for that and frankly I
have always admired his stand.
However he was not infallible and he also made some terrible
mistakes, just as all great leaders do, from time to time. The fact
that he rejected the Nigerian Federal Government’s offer of a
food corridor was one of those terrible mistakes and this cost
him and his people dearly. Professor Chinua Achebe surely
ought to have reflected that in his book as well.
When it comes to the Nigerian civil war there were no villains
or angels. During that brutal conflict no less than two million
Nigerians and Biafrans died and the Yoruba who, unlike others,
did not ever discriminate or attack any non-Yoruba that lived in
their territory before the civil war or carry out any coups or
attempted coups, suffered at every point as well. For example
prominent Yoruba sons and daughters were killed on the night
of the first Igbo coup of January 1966 and again in the northern
”revenge” coup of July 1966. Many of our people were also
killed in the north before the outbreak of the civil war and again
in the Mid-West and the East during the course and prosecution
of the war itself. It was indeed the predominantly Yoruba Third
Marine Commando, under the command of General Benjamin
Adekunle (the ”Black Scorpion”) and later General Olusegun
Obasanjo, that not only liberated the mid-west and drove the
Biafrans out of there but they also marched into Igboland itself,
occupied it, defeated the Biafran Army in battle, captured all
their major towns and forced the Igbo to surrender. Third
Marine Commando was made up of Yoruba soldiers, and I can
say without any fear of contradiction that we the Yoruba
therefore paid a terrible and heavy price as well during the war
because many of our boys were killed on the war front by the
Biafrans.
The sacrifice of these proud sons of the South-West that died in
battle to keep Nigeria one must not be belittled, mocked or
ignored. Clearly it was not only the Igbo that suffered during
the civil war. Neither does it auger well for the unity of our
nation for Achebe and the Igbo intelligentsia that are hailing his
self-serving book to caste aspersions on the character, role and
noble intentions of the late and revered Leader of the Yoruba,
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, during the civil war.
The man may have made one or two mistakes in the past like
every other great leader and of course there was a deep and
bitter political division in Yorubaland itself just before the civil
war started and throughout the early ’60′s. Yet by no stretch of
the imagination can Awolowo be described as an Igbo-hating
genocidal maniac and he most certainly did not delight in the
starvation of millions of Igbo men, women and children as
Achebe has tried to suggest.
My advice to this respected author is that he should leave Chief
Awolowo alone and allow him to continue to rest in peace. This
subtle attempt to denigrate the Yoruba and their past leaders, to
place a question mark on their noble and selfless role in the war
and to belittle their efforts and sacrifice to keep Nigeria
together as one will always be vigorously resisted by those of us
that have the good fortune of still being alive and who are aware
of the facts. We will not remain silent and allow anyone, no
matter how respected or revered, to re-write history.
Simply put by writing this book and making some of these
baseless and nonsensical assertions, Achebe was simply
indulging in the greatest mendacity of Nigerian modern history
and his crude distortion of the facts has no basis in reality or
rationality. We must not mistake fiction and story telling for
historical fact. The two are completely different. The truth is
that Professor Chinua Achebe owes the Awolowo family and the
Yoruba people a big apology for his tale of pure fantasy.

Femi na you be that? Are you no longer Goodluck Ebele Nnamdi Azikiwe's brother?

Hehehe..people playing on Igbo's political idiocy to achieve points.

Don't fvcking tell me GEJ ain't Igbo, cause na una claim am as brother pass Ijaw people.

Mr Kayode

paraphrased:

" I accept that the Nigerian government was responsible for the food blockade that led to the death of millions of civilians. I accept Awolowo was responsible for the blockade."