CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE’S FATHER AND THE BIAFRAN WAR

Up until July 10, 1967, there was serious uncertainty as to when Nsukka and the University would be invaded by the Nigerian troops. Civil defense personnel were instructing people on how to defend themselves just in case there were air raids. As the Nigerian troops advanced, Biafran troops retreated from Nsukka to Opi, leaving the town dangerously unprotected. Alarmed, James Adichie quickly tried to take his young family of his wife and two children (Ijeoma and Uchenna) home to Abba. The Biafran militia stationed at Opi instructed him to go back to the campus, presuming he was panicking. He tried again to evacuate his family but was sent back once more. It was in the third attempt that he succeeded and passed the strong-headed militia. He quickly returned alone to the University campus the following day. Now alone, he felt that Nsukka would not be taken so swiftly after all.

At about 8pm of July 9, 1967, the University Registrar, Vincent Ike, rushed in his Morris Minor car to 617 Odim street where James Adichie was staying and shouted his name severally, asking him to evacuate and leave the campus immediately. The Registrar also drove to Imoke street and shouted at one Emmanuel Ezike to evacuate too. Within thirty minutes, Adichie and his domestic hand, Melitus, rushed portable odds and ends, including his dinner for that night, into his car. He was at a lost what to pick or leave from his vast store of accumulated properties. At the end, they drove homewards towards Abba.

The horde of humanity hurrying to leave Nsukka that night was touching. Some women had their children on their backs while leading others by the arm and carrying heavy loads at the same time. Others dragged goats or other young animals along with them. Indeed, it was with difficulty that Adichie maneuvered his car through the human traffic until he eased through Opi (Adichie, 2013b). A few hours later, the first artillery mortar shell landed and exploded at Nsukka. This was on Monday, July 10. The great stampede to leave Nsukka intensified. (Ike, 1989:41).

Loud sound of shelling in distant places was heard at Abba at the early stages of the war. Because of these loud reports, Adichie put his family again into his car and drove off aimlessly away from there. He drove until he got to Umuna, around Orlu area, and then began to ask about for his colleague back at the University, Emmanuel Ezike.

When the man eventually saw them, he generously accepted them and fed the family as well as started making arrangements for accommodation for them. They were in his village of Umuowa at that time. Luckily enough, the family got accommodated in the man’s brother’s place.

The University of Nigeria had moved from Enugu (when it fell on October 4, 1967) to Umuahia (which was the capital of Biafra at the time). The University remained at Government College, Umuahia from October 1967 until the fall of Umuahia in April 1969. Some offices were at Umudike, a short distance away. The University later moved to Aboh-Mbaise and then to Emekuku Community Technical Secondary School until end of war.

About October 1967, after staying a while at Umuna, Adichie left his family and went to Umuahia to join other staff of the University. He sought for and got accommodation in the house of a kinsman at Umuahia. Meanwhile, many academic staff members had been deployed to various Biafran Directorates to help in the war efforts. James Adichie was in charge of the Manpower Directorate.

The main work of the Directorate was to collate people’s names and where they were working before the war in order to build up a manpower database for the new Biafra. Throughout his stay at Umuahia, he experienced the heavy strafing and bombings from Nigerian war planes. Many people were killed during these air raids.

Adichie was not using his car to go to work, because the war planes targeted moving vehicles quite often. The car was hidden under a camouflage of leaves to escape notice. The problem of feeding was partly solved by the relief material gotten from organizations such as CARITAS. When Umuahia fell in April 1969, James had to flee with other people. He always had made-in-Biafra petrol in his car, ready for evacuation.

Incidentally, his host who had a big motorbike, refused to move. James Adichie had to drag him into his car and out of Umuahia. They drove to Umuna where the Adichie family was staying. This kinsman stayed for only two nights and trekked defiantly to Abba. He was to die some months later.

At Umuna, James made bomb shelter just like everyone else to withstand the constant bombings from the Nigerian war planes. It was very difficult getting money from the banks because no public institutions were really visible and had a direct address.

They were hidden in different places in Biafra. It was at this point towards the end of war that James Adichie was informed that his father had died. News of the death of his father caused in him the greatest shock he ever got during the war. He could not believe that his father could die like every other person. During the early stages of the war, his father had refused to leave Abba.

He had said he would at least kill one Nigerian soldier before they would gun him down. When the situation got worse and Nigerian soldiers were advancing into Abba and surrounding towns, neighbours had to almost drag the man away from his house before he agreed to join them in leaving Abba.

They had first gone to Umunya and then to other places before they settled at Nsugbe in a refugee camp. There was no communication between him and his children, including James. There was a demarcation cutting through the Biafran country, running roughly along the long Onitsha-Enugu route.

One side of the demarcation which was occupied already by Nigerian troops was called “Biafra 1”,, the left side of the demarcation spreading across the rest of the Biafra country in which Biafran soldiers occupied was called “Biafra 2”. While James’ father was in Biafra 1, he was in Biafra 2. It was difficult and dangerous to cross over from one sector to the other.

But when James heard that his father had died, he made desperate efforts to cross over to the other sector. The Biafran soldiers at the trenches along the boundary were not keen on letting him pass through. He pleaded but they were firm in their refusal. He, therefore, was not able to see the remains of his father. The war was almost coming to an end by this time. When it eventually did on January 14, 1970 which was the day that General Philip Efiong officially made a formal declaration of surrender, James Adichie and his family began to drive back to Abba.

There were Nigerian soldiers everywhere and some of them were harassing the returning civilians, sometimes beating them up or even killing them. James and his family had to go through very embarrassing experiences during this time.

Top Biafran government officials were being arrested so people of that cadre were camouflaging themselves in that they were returning in rags rather than in neat clothing. So the absence of the clout of status facilitated easier intimidation by the mostly semi-illiterate Nigerian soldiers. Adichie observed that the fairly educated officers were mostly Yoruba while the largely uneducated rank and file was mostly of northern origin.

The latter were rough in their handling of the returning refugees. At a time, some army men stopped James Adichie and others as they were moving towards Abba and ordered them to begin to remove a pile of cement blocks which blocked off a road. James quietly obeyed the order as others did. He had hidden his car some distance away. His family, including his house help Melitus, was in the car.

Years later, James Adichie observed that without the devotion of Miletus, one or more of his children would have died in the rough circumstances of the time. After executing the “order” from the soldiers, James returned to where he had packed his car and saw that it was gone. He was alarmed. He came back to the officers and told them that his car and his family were nowhere to be found.

Probably because of the way he laid his complaint firmly and passionately, the officers promised to get his car back. They searched around and saw it with the rank and file soldiers. By this time, these soldiers had beaten up a member of the Adichie’s family who was in the car. James swallowed the pains and moved on with his family.

There were other incidences on the way to Abba, including when a rough soldier wanted to sandwich himself into the well-packed car as his own idea of hitch-hiking. James, who had by now gotten fed up with the attitude of these soldiers, firmly insisted that the ruffian got down from the car and that he was ready to be killed if the soldier stuck to his guns. James’ wife pleaded with her husband to calm down. She was not ready to be a widow, not now that the war had ended. Fortunately, the soldier yielded and left the car.

Upon coming home to Abba, the Adichie family had to start from scratch. James Adichie’s mother was sick and it was difficult feeding at this time. Help was to come from a friend who gave the family some money which sustained them for a considerable while.

Some valuables that were brought to the house of the Adichies by their neighbours for safekeeping at the beginning of the war had all gone with wartime looting. Some of the valuables included an elephant tusk. Unfortunately, the owner of this elephant tusk and other people who had kept things at the Adichies strangely suspected the family of stealing those valuables!

This false accusation raged on for many years after the war and had to peter out with the passage of age and time.
James Adichie visited the refugee camp where his father was buried in a mass grave at Nsugbe. Stoically, Adichie quietly scooped up sand from the grave and had it preserved in a polythene bag. On returning home, he kept the memento behind his father’s picture in fond and deep respect of the man who had made sure he got educated.

Adichie had to remain for some time at home before he reported at the University of Nigeria campus to resume his post as lecturer. Amidst the wreckage caused by the war, including the stark reality of having lost very valuable materials such as his PhD academic gown to wartime looting, James settled down stoically. He quietly resolved to move ahead with life, determined to excel in his chosen area of endeavour.

It is instructive that not long afterwards, he and his colleagues were able to achieve the hiving off of the Statistics Department from the Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Astronomy of the University.

Excerpts from:
Animalu, Alex; Uche, Peter and Unaegbu, Jeff. (2013). Biography of Nigeria’s Foremost Professor of Statistics, Prof. James Nwoye Adichie. Abuja: Ucheakonam Foundation (Nig.) Ltd. (132 pages).

(Pix:Prof. James Adichie during his graduation from the University College, Ibadan on December 3, 1960)

REFERENCES:
Adichie, J.N. (2013b). “My Nigerian Civil War Experience”. Second Interview Session granted to Alex Animalu and Jeff Unaegbu, June 15, at Animalu’s residence in Nsukka.

Ike, V.C. (1986). “The University and the Nigerian Crisis: 1966-1970” in Obiechina, E. et al (eds) University of Nigeria 1960-85: An Experiment in Higher Education. Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press.

© Jeff Unaegbu.

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