By Chido Onumah
Nigeria’s celebrated
novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is an interviewer’s delight, whether she is
talking about Nigeria, novels, feminism or hair. A few weeks ago, she was a
guest of Stephen Sackur’s HARDtalk on BBC ()where she talked about Biafra,
ethnicity in Nigeria, the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War and the censorship of the
movie version of her novel about the civil war, Half of a Yellow Sun.
“Nigeria as a country
has never really engaged with Biafra,” Ms Adichie said in response to Stephen
Sackur’s question about whether today’s Nigerians had learned enough about the
important lessons of the war. “There is a lot that is unresolved about that
period of our history.”
I agree with Ms.
Adichie. Nigeria has not engaged with Biafra and there is a lot that is still
unresolved about the civil war. But it’s not just Biafra and that tumultuous
period of our history. There is a lot that is unresolved about Nigeria as a
whole and many aspects of our existence as a country. Nigeria has not engaged
with June 12, just as we have not engaged with Boko Haram, to mention only two
of the more recent episodic convulsions that threaten the very foundation of
the country.
In a sense, the
Biafra experience could be a metaphor for the many unresolved problems that
confront us as a country, whether we are talking about agitations by minority
ethnic nationalities, the upsurge in militancy across the country, the quest
for the balkanization of the country by fringe groups that go by all sorts of
absurd names or the infernal resolve of a group to impose a religious code on
an otherwise secular country.
“How should we make
sense of Nigeria’s 21st century identity?” Stephen Sackur had asked
in the introduction to his programme.
Interestingly, around the time of that interview, there were rallies,
amongst other troubling occurrences in Nigeria, in London and a few cities
around the world in support of the Biafra renaissance.
A week earlier, some
Biafra protagonists were arrested after a failed attempt to take over a radio
station in the eastern city of Enugu and declare, or perhaps revive, the
Republic of Biafra. It was in the same city that pro-Biafra “forces” were
arrested for a daring attempt to take over the Enugu State Government House.
Enugu was the first and one of the three capitals of Biafra while the secession
lasted.
How do we make sense
of all this? There are those who think that what we are witnessing is a
necessary and passing phase in the attempt to build a nation. It may well be!
But, it may also spell doom for a country that has had more than five decades
to forge a “perfect union”, but has squandered each opportunity.
Clearly, as a
country, we haven’t learned anything about the regrettable civil war of
1967-1970 or the other tragic events that occurred before that war. We have
also not learned from the dreadful upheavals that have taken place after the
war; events that have shaken the very foundation of our existence as a country.
Nigeria will
disintegrate unless we collectively do something about it. Nations are not
built on mere wishful thinking. No country that is run the way Nigeria is being
run survives for too long. The hard truth is that there is nothing sacrosanct
about Nigeria. A nation is neither an eternal nor a divinely ordained construct
as is often delusively proclaimed, in the case of Nigeria, by our exceptionally
depraved ruling class and their sympathisers. It comes into being at a
historical juncture – through a combination of factors and forces – and can
cease to be by the same logic.
Nigeria was an
arbitrary creation of British colonialists who coupled disparate ethnic
nationalities for economic and other reasons. Of course, many countries around
the world were created through the same process and for the same reasons. The
problem in the case of Nigeria, however, was that there were no attempts, at
independence and subsequently, by Nigerians, the new inheritors of the
contraption the British left behind, to remake the country in the image of a
people who had broken the shackles of colonialism and had to build an
egalitarian society; a nation of equity, social justice, the rule of law and
all the fundamentals of a modern state.
How then do we move
forward from the boiling cauldron – the outcome of a forced and dubious amalgam
of different ethnicities, religions and cultural beliefs – to a nation of equal
opportunity, shared vision and common future when we fail to learn from our
history and allow primordial interests and short-term gains to stand in the way
of a collective need for national survival?
Just as the
colonialists intended, we have managed never to miss an opportunity to
highlight the fault lines that have kept us perpetually at war with one
another. And just like the colonialists, our rapacious and thieving ruling
class, military and civilian, from across the country – emphasizing our fault
lines – have succeeded in not only misruling us but also dividing us.
Take the simple and
harmless matter of honouring the winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential
election, Chief MKO Abiola, by the ongoing National Conference. That election
was annulled by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, colluding with some of the vile
creatures who today are the drivers of our so-called democracy. Babangida and
company have yet to explain the reason for that criminal complicity.
That election showed
that Nigerians could rise above ethnic and religious divisions given a purposeful
and selfless leadership. Of course, it also showed that Nigeria’s ruling elite
are not interested in the unity of this country beyond what they can get from
it; never mind that they are always proclaiming that “The unity of Nigeria is
not negotiable.”
June 12, 2014, marked
the 21st anniversary of that election. Sadly, when a motion, seeking
to pay tribute and give national recognition to Chief Abiola and hundreds of
Nigerians who died protesting the annulment, was moved at the National
Conference by Orok Duke from Cross River State, delegates were reportedly
“divided along regional lines as those from southern Nigeria favoured the
motion while those from the North rejected it”. And this fierce rejection of a
legitimate quest for justice is recorded in a 21st century Nigeria;
ironically, in a gathering consecrated to banish inequity and injustice and the
multiple handmaids of Nigeria’s stillbirth.
This was an election
in which the masses of the “North” ensured that Chief Abiola from Ogun State in
“southern Nigeria” beat his opponent, Alhaji Bashir Tofa from Kano State in
“northern Nigeria”; an election in which Abiola and his running mate, Babagana
Kingibe, both Muslims, won across the length and breadth of the country.
It is heartbreaking
that a representative of civil society at the National Conference that aims to
address the many flashpoints of our distorted nationhood, Mallam Nasir Kura,
from Kano State, was reported to have led the chorus of voices from the “North”
that opposed any attempt to remember June 12, Abiola and Nigerians from all
walks of life who paid the supreme sacrifice during that upheaval. For Kura and company, June 12, like its
unfortunate victims, is “dead and buried”.
Make
no mistake, while that rowdy session over honouring Abiola which attracted the
attention of security operatives and was going to turn the confab into a WWE
arena may have looked like an attempt to promote an “ethnic agenda”, accusing
people of being ethnic jingoists for that action does not tell the whole story.
After all, Olusegun Obasanjo, former president, chief beneficiary of the June
12 debacle and Abiola’s kinsman was – until his recent conversion, like Paul on
his way to Damascus – one of the most trenchant traducers of Abiola and June
12.
To
be continued.
conumah@hotmail.com; Twitter: @conumah
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