Culled from
http://www.ekekeee.com/?p=4903
Since the release of the book THERE WAS A COUNTRY -A personal history of the events leading to the Nigerian Civil war and indeed the war itself – by no less a person than the great CHINUA ACHEBE, there have been so many reactions by various people from all works of life– Young people, retired Civil Servants, Ex-Military generals, Politicians, People in the Academia, Writers, Nigerians and even Foreigners who were either part of the War or had simply followed the events of the war from their vantage positions or from personal researches conducted.
Let me say that books like Achebe’s are meant to stimulate national discourse. Hence, I was not surprised at the level of discourse it has generated and is still generating. The first few weeks after the book was released , I read a lot of reviews on various forums and even read a review by someone writing a column in one of Nigeria’s dailies who hadn’t even as much as read the forward to the book. Now after reading so many opinions, it is pretty difficult to be objective when one gets to read There was a country, but I hope to stay on track throughout this write-up. At the risk of repeating what has been said before, this write up aims to take a different approach entirely.
I was born a little over a decade after the last bullet was fired on January 15 1970, so you can argue that don’t I even know, or have any experience of the, or you might even be wondering who made me an expert that I would now be commenting on events that I knew nothing about. You may well be right. I knew nothing about the war until now,but whose fault would that be? Yes, no one taught us in school– such a huge part of my Country’s History wasn’t relevant enough to have been taught in our Elementary/Secondary Schools. Our leaders were either too ashamed of their involvement or too shortsighted to have left it out of the school curriculum. The average American is conversant with the history of the United States of America because it is taught in their schools, and they know how and why the American Civil War was fought. A war of genocidal proportion was not considered huge enough to be taught to the generation born after the war in Nigeria.
Having read the book and having lived in this country for the number of years that I have, having earned an education, besides the Nigerian blood that flows through my veins, I think I am qualified to talk about the events, albeit briefly, of the Civil War so well documented by Professor Achebe to whom I owe a debt of gratitude.
The Igbos led by Odumegwu Ojukwu declared a Republic, THE REPUBLIC OF BIAFRA. They thought they had had enough, and they thought Nigeria, led by General Yakubu Gowon, was going to let them secede without a fight. They must have thought there was a happy ending like the Israelites who looked forward to a happy ending in their promised land– that fabled land that flowed with milk and honey. Alas they were wrong, and what followed was something the likes of which we would never pray for ever again. Now I am not going to go into the merits or otherwise of the Ojukwu-led Igbo decision.
But how was Nigeria before the civil war? Just before Nigeria’s Independence (the period between 1940 and 1960), there was a country. There was a country where things actually worked, where young University Graduates had three or more Job offers to choose from, where Graduates had the option of having their prospective Employers bring the interviews to the. Then people living in the urban centers with access to electricity didn’t have to bother about procuring generators because power outages were not in their dictionary. There was a country where the roads in the cities were proper roads and not some death traps. In that country back then, meritocracy was an established order: you didn’t get a job because you knew people in high places, you needn’t know any one upstairs to get a good job or a business deal. People didn’t have to bother about sleeping with doors shut let alone having all manner of fences and security men where they could virtually sleep with both eyes well and truly shut, because they were completely safe from Robbers, Kidnappers, Suicide Bombers and all sorts of miscreants and hoodlums. It was an era where people truly believed in hard-work and the value of a good name being better than ill-gotten riches. You could safely travel from one part of the country to the other by road without having to go on some religious fast beforehand, teachers were dedicated and proud of their jobs.
There was a country where a Headmaster was so well respected he could have been a god, where discipline was second nature, where accountability actually had a meaning, a country that wasn’t dependent on Oil, a country famed for her exploits in agriculture(Cocoa, Groundnut ,Oil Palm ). This is the country I choose to remember, this is the country I hope to leave for my grandkids.
The Nigerian Civil War or the Nigerian-Biafran war was fought between July 6th of 1967 and January 15th of 1970; a period spanning thirty unwholesome, grueling months. It is recorded that approximately three million souls were lost (it doesn’t matter if they were Biafrans or Nigerians). But Three million people died in the process. It was the darkest moment in our History. Here was a country that was so hopeful and so bright at independence in 1960 that Chinua Achebe wrote “we had no doubt where we were going. We were going to inherit freedom –that was all that mattered. The possibilities for us were endless. Nigeria was enveloped by a certain assurance of an unbridled destiny, of an overwhelming excitement about life’s promise”.
How did it get sour ever so shortly? There are arguments that Nigeria should never have been a country in the first place, that the British only amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates for selfish economic reasons, that Nigeria was too diverse to have worked. Plausible as those reasons may sound, couldn’t Nigeria have worked? The Nigeria of our founding fathers’ dreams stopped existing shortly after independence.
A close look at some of the issues leading to the secession of the Igbos will reveal that those issues are still prevalent in the Nigeria of 2013. Insecurity is at an all time high. Today, we have Boko-Haram killing thousands of people in the North, the Militants of the Niger Delta reign supreme, Kidnappers in the South East, violence in Jos– a once peaceful town – has reached an unbelievable nadir and bomb blasts reverberate all over the country. Only recently, the Emir of Kano was attacked. Unfortunately, members of his entourage lost their lives in the process.
Marginalization and tribal sentiments have taken a totally new meaning in Nigeria, from the South East to the Delta to the North Central states, everyone cries of being marginalized. The issue of Corruption, lack of accountability and probity is another matter entirely. Transparency International ranks Nigeria as the 35th most corrupt nation on earth; corruption in the Oil and gas sector is mind-blowing, billions of naira belonging to the Nigerian people stolen by a few greedy and corrupt oil marketers with the aid of some people in the Ministry of petroleum and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Unemployment and poverty rates are ridiculously high. 23.9% (which translates to about 20.3 million Nigerians) are unemployed, and more than 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. A near total collapse of infrastructure; major roads are in deplorable conditions thereby becoming death traps, our airports are in a state of disrepair, no functional rail system, power distribution is erratic to say the least with industries relying on their own power generation to function.
We run an over bloated Government cabinet simply too expensive to allow for real growth of the economy. Political ‘god-fatherism’ is the order of the day, electoral malpractice/fraud is widespread… I can go on and on listing the problems with Nigeria, but can we get back on track? Can we get back to the Nigeria we will be proud of, the kind of Nigeria we want our grand children to live in, where they wouldn’t have to bother about tribe or religion, where the quality of education will be comparable to anywhere else in the world, where accountability will reign, where the government is truly accountable to its people, where infrastructure is world class? Yes we can.
I personally believe that Nigeria can be great again; I am a believer in the fact that in our diversity lies our strength. This generation: the generation that was born after the war will be the generation that would chart a new beginning for Nigeria. Believe me when I say we have come of age. We are in our late 20s to mid 30s, we are well educated, some of us have attended the best schools in the world, we have so much access to information so much so that the Ziks and Herbert Macauleys and Aminu Kanos and Ahmadu Bellos and Awolowos and the Enahoros would have been envious. We have to harness this information at our disposal to make Nigeria great again.
It is not enough for us to criticize the government of the day; we have to be proffering solutions as well. We have to get involved in the political system. No longer shall we sit on the sidelines saying we are too young. Have we considered how young General Gowon and Lt.Col Ojukwu were when they both led Nigeria and Biafra respectively?
So let’s get registered, put ourselves up for electoral positions, from the Wards to the Federal level. That’s the way we can change the nation. Let young professionals reach out, not on the basis of tribe or religion but based on ideals and the hope that we can change the nation. Whatever we are good at, we can bring to the table.
Are you a great writer, an excellent orator, a strategist, a good organizer, or a great researcher? Let’s bring all of these skills and even more to the table. Let’s get to the grassroots and stimulate national consciousness. It may not be achieved in one day or even in 4 years, but let us set out to build a country in description of which historians will write, scores of years from now, in truth, that There Was A Country which stuttered, but which was rebuilt by a generation better than their fathers.
Written by Batarhe Foghi
Follow me on twitter @batarhe
