By Biodun Jeyifo
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| Chinua Achebe |
The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society…
Achebe, There Was A Country (page 61)
In bringing this series of critical reflections on Achebe’s new book to an end this week, I must first acknowledge an error of literal fact that I made in an earlier essay in the series. Please note that I say an error of literal fact, not of substantive analysis or judgment.
This error concerns the assertion that I made in the very first essay of the series that it is only in the fourth and final part of his book, precisely on page 243, that we find the term “Nigerian ruling class”. As a matter of fact, Achebe actually uses the same term in the first part of the book, on page 69. Here’s the relevant sentence: “As we reached the brink of full-blown war it became clear to me that the chaos enveloping all of us in Nigeria was due to the incompetence of the Nigerian ruling class”. Indeed, I might as well add that in the second part of the book, on page 108, Achebe also uses what could be regarded as a cognate term, this being “the Nigerian ruling elite”.
And in this particular instance, his critique of members of our country’s “ruling elite/class” is far more devastating, far more unforgiving. This he does by analogizing them collectively to “Anwu” the wasp, “a notorious predator from the insect kingdom”. I have no words to match Achebe’s own characterization of the scale of the predatoriness of our ruling class: “Wasps, African children learn during story time, greet unsuspecting prey with a painful, paralyzing sting, then lay eggs on their body, which then proceed to ‘eat the victim alive’”. Well, this does mean that Achebe uses the term “ruling class” more than the one time that I stipulated in the first essay in this series. But there is more to this error than meets eye that remains fixated on the literal facts of the case.
After I wrote and published that first essay in this series I discovered my error. I wondered why I had missed the two previous occasions before the fourth part of the book when Achebe had indeed used the term “ruling class” or “ruling elite”. It did not take me long to understand why. Simply stated, the substantive fact, quite different from the literal fact, is that it is only in that final fourth part of his book that, from start to finish, Achebe uses the term “ruling class” to analyze the terrible state of things in our country. In other words, on the two previous occasions in Parts One and Two when he had used the term, Achebe had merely “dipped” it into what could be described as the boiling cauldron of “tribe” or ethnicity as his singular frame of reference. One proof of this is the significant fact that in spite of his extremely damning indictments of the both the pre- and the post-civil war Nigerian ruling class, the term does not appear at all in the Index to the book.
In effect, the claim that I made in that first essay in this series still stands, this being the claim that it is a remarkable, even defining feature of Achebe’s book that while the whole of the fourth part of the book talks of the Nigerian ruling class as the frame of reference for understanding all that is wrong in our country’s affairs, in the other three parts of the book it is the “tribe”, the ethnic group - sometimes refracted through the Regions of the First Republic - that is the object either of Achebe’s searing indictment or, with particular regard to his Igbo people, of his solicitude and solidarity. In this connection, here is a typical observation from Part One of the book: “The original idea of one Nigeria was pressed by the leaders and intellectuals from the Eastern Region. With all their shortcomings, they had this idea to build the country as one. The first to object were the Northerners, led by the Sardauna, who were followed closely by the Awolowo clique that had created the Action Group”. (Page 51).
This statement is as false as it is unworthy of a progressive writer and public intellectual of Achebe’s stature. From the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914 to the brink of the outbreak of the Nigeria-Biafra war, progressive politicians and intellectuals from all parts of the country led the struggles for a united, equal and just Nigeria. From this perspective and in my own personal opinion, the greatest objection to Achebe’s new book is that because for much of the three substantial parts of the book class politics is completely subordinated to ethnic politics and because Achebe apparently has no idea of class politics in pre- and post-civil war Nigeria that was/is in fact separate and distinct from the Anwu predatory archetype, his book almost completely leaves out of account the few but significant expressions and traditions of class politics within and across Nigeria’s ethnic groups. Before bringing this series to its conclusion on this issue, I would like to briefly register and endorse some of the most moving and valuable parts of this extraordinarily controversial book, some of these being paradoxically based on deep and changing realities and sentiments around ethnicity and ethnic belonging as a positive value in our continent and our world.
I don’t think that it is overstating the case to observe that There Was A Country probably aspired to be and will for decades be regarded as the definitive Igbo literary epic of this age. It is an epic of suffering, endurance, resilience and survival. Like all great epics, it is based on the rediscovery of fundamental moral and philosophical ideas that go to the core of communal survival and human worth, especially in seasons of great, overwhelming catastrophe. Again and again in the book, Achebe dips into Igbo creation myths, folklore, legends and proverbs to underscore the scale of the issues involved in the production of this epic.
Definitely, he does on occasion over-idealize aspects of traditional Igbo culture and worldview that he wishes to propose as self-defining and self-constituting counterweights to the festering cesspool of the Nigerian spiritual and moral malaise. But the cultural capital of what Achebe attempts here is undeniable and they are consistent with what other African writers like Soyinka, Ngugi and Tanure Ojaide, in their essays and literary works, have done for Yoruba, Kikuyu and Urhobo ethnic nations respectively: demonstrate that ethnic groups have an unfolding historic identity and can and should serve as repositories from which to rediscover and rekindle the virtues of democratic republicanism and common human decency and dignity in this new millennium. In this perspective, ethnicity, indigeneity and locality are not antithetical to but are indeed consistent with universal values that link all of us in our country and our planet to a common future, a common destiny.
But the ethnic provenience of the epic Igbo project of There Was A Country takes its toll on the intellectual and artistic merits of the book. In a marked contrast with almost all the other books he had written, there is in this new book a veritable collapse of the “union and trust” between writer and readers that Achebe, in the epigraph to this essay, identifies as the basis of all great writing. Let me carefully explain what this entails.
I have stated repeatedly in this series that Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in the last one and half centuries. Among all other claims, realism bases itself on the ability, the unflinching resolve of the writer to let reality speak for itself, no matter where it leads the writer, the artist, the philosopher. But this is easier said than done for no writer, no artist can (re) present the fullness, the infinity of reality; what the writer can hope for is that in what he or she chooses from reality, nothing significant, nothing absolutely germane to the reality depicted is left out. Where this happens the reliability of the writer is destroyed and with it goes his or her trustworthiness. On this count, Achebe’s new book evinces the collapse of realist writing and philosophy the like of which we had heretofore never encountered in his writings. Let me put this in simple language: in this new book, whatever is not compatible with Achebe’s epic ethnic Igbo project is simply left out, even if and where such things were of great import in the affairs of the nation.
The central issue here, as I have repeated again and again in this series, is the omission of class for most of the contents of the book. Let me cite only two among the myriad of such omissions in the book. First, in all of the first three and most substantive parts of this book, in vain will the reader look for the signs, the evidence that beyond the ethnic/regional blocs, there were class alliances of both right-wing and progressive ideological and political currents. Indeed, there is no mention of the UPGA alliance between the NCNC, the Action Group and the NEPU, the three most important social democratic parties of the First Republic that straddled the North and the South. Secondly, there is no mention in the fourth part of the book of the fact that while the big, moneyed interest groups among Igbo people in the post-civil war period have done badly compared to the big, moneyed interest groups of Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani elites, the lower middle class of Igbo traders, merchants and exporter-importers have done very well indeed compared with similar class and interest groups of the country’s other ethnic groups.
For me personally, it is a matter of great regret that the reactions to Achebe’s book have been divided almost entirely along ethnic lines: to thy tents, O Israel! Well, not completely, so there is still hope that across our various ethnic and regional communities, we can still forge alliances based on interests that combine the best and the most positive values of our historic ethnic nations with progressive egalitarian values that will work for the vast majority of our peoples that remain disenfranchised and marginalized, regardless of how well or how badly their rich and powerful ethnic brethren are doing in Nigeria at large.
One last word and I am done. The decision to fight to the finish was the most fateful decision taken by the Biafran ruling class of which Achebe was a morally and intellectually authoritative figure. This decision played its own role in the mass starvation of the children of Biafra. Let it be known that human political and military history is replete with such terrible decisions. If Biafra had survived the sacrifice would have paid off; defeat, on the contrary makes it worse, infinitely. How has Achebe processed this particular extra emotional, psychic burden of defeat? Not a word about this in There Was A Country. I wonder; I really wonder.
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