How does it
feel to be 80?
I’ve been incredibly cheered by so many people calling to congratulate
me. Therefore, my answer should not be mistaken for grouchiness. Let us say you’ve
lived your life on an exotic island. There were glorious periods of laughter
and gaiety. Although there were also periods of painful failures; life, for the
most part, has been a fulfilment. Then you are 80. You can remember the distant
past as though yesterday. You wonder where all the years have gone. You cannot
understand the fuss about being 80 – until someone offers you a tot of cognac
and you shake your head and confess shyly, “I don’t drink anymore.” Your body, like
the calendar, reminds you you’re an old man!
How would you say exile has treated
you?
A simple question not easily answered. I fled Nigeria at 31. Although
I’d travelled halfway round the globe before then I count that time as the
moment a new life began for me. I gained the welcome anonymity I did not have
in Lagos. I could go back in time and enjoy the life of a young adult that I’d
missed. I was a citizen of the world with freedom to travel in Africa and
explore Europe. The downside was a sense of not belonging.
At 80 perhaps it is time to return
home or don’t you think so?
Apart from extended visits in the early part of this decade, I spent altogether
seven of the forty-nine years since 1966 in Nigeria when I twice tried to resettle
in the 1990s. It didn’t work out.
Independence night in 1960 left a
bitter taste in the mouth of many like you so much so that you stayed away from
the celebration. What political significance did that moment have for the
country ever since?
The precise moment that Nigeria became an Independent state was at the
stroke of midnight on Saturday, October 1, 1960. I was editor of the Sunday Times waiting in the office for pictures of the handing over
of the Constitutional Instruments by Princess Alexandra, Queen Elisabeth’s
cousin, to Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa; so I had valid excuse not to
be at the Race Course venue to witness the historic moment. However, it is true
that I was not overly keen to be there. It just didn’t seem right that those
who fought hardest for Independence were outcasts. It so happened that they
boycotted the ceremony. Maybe that was a signal for the bitterness that soon
engulfed the early post-Independence years.
Some say that journalists have partly
been the cause of Nigeria’s problems. A colleague of yours at the Daily Times
writing in Drum, according to you, partly caused the mayhem in 1966. How have
journalists fared in reporting your country ever since?
A misplaced humour by my friend, Nelson Ottah, with a photo montage that
went seriously awry was blamed among other things for the killing of Igbos in
the North. I didn’t see the joke in the picture mount-up or in its accompanying
write-up, but that did not justify the terrible slaughters that ensued. In the
wider picture of the record of the Nigerian Press, I don’t think the Press
should be held responsible for the malaise in the country. Some people will say,
he’s bound to say that; isn’t he? He’s one of them! But in fairness, what the
Press does is hold up a mirror to the society at large. The Press should not be
blamed when some people don’t like what they see.
However, I’ve since learned that there is such a thing as
self-censorship. I left Nigeria all those years ago believing in the absolute
truth of the slogan “publish and be damned”. I came to learn that even in the
Western world whose media boast that they have absolute freedom, there is an
addendum. When it comes to reporting Africa the gloves are usually off,
however. Africa is still the Dark Continent in the minds of many readers.
Foreign reporters feed into that, albeit with a revised stereotyping. We don’t
eat missionaries any more; instead, we are universally, individually,
collectively corrupt and incompetent, and dependent on foreign aid. The
visiting foreign reporter is an intrepid do-gooder who wants to save Africans
from themselves. Unfortunately, our indigenous Press hold them as role models.
Nigeria descended into war in 1967.
Was it unavoidable?
In theory all wars are avoidable.
You played a part in that war on the
side of Biafra. Do you regret it? What part did that play in your going into
exile?
I was already abroad before the crisis became a war. My sympathy was for
the struggle of the Igbo people. I made that known wherever my travels took me.
That was as much part as I played. I would have been happiest if the war became
a stalemate so that a just and proper end to the dispute could be negotiated.
It happened that Biafra lost the war. Gowon said there was no victor, no
vanquished. The Igbos have been reintegrated into the Federation. It suggests
that the story is ended. If you want to take an absolutely cynical view you
would remind yourself that most of today’s established nations were put
together by force of arms. The great democrat Abraham Lincoln fought and won a
civil war that kept the U.S. as one and indivisible nation.
Nonetheless, someone like me might reply that in the modern age it ought
to be possible to build a nation on a foundation of consent and trust. We see
ethnic conflicts and separatist movements all over the world, even among
enlightened and sophisticated societies. There is the current crisis in Ukraine
where thousands have died. There is the lingering undercurrent of
French-Canadian “nationalism”; the Basques in Spain; the Kurds in Turkey and
Iraq. Closer to our experience is the demand for Scottish Independence. The
nationalists lost a recent referendum but I don’t believe it is over for good.
Even so, what struck me was that after 300 years of the termination of Scottish
Independence; 300 years of “Great Britain”; three hundred centuries, during
which Scotsmen and Englishmen bestrode the world jointly as subjects of a
common sovereign, and together built an empire on which the sun never set; and despite
the negative propaganda hurled at the nationalist campaign – including EU and
US subtle and not so subtle interventions – as many as 45 percent of the voters
asked for Independence!
Your former colleague, the late
Chinua Achebe wrote his last book, There was a Country that sparked so much
controversy back home. What was your assessment of the book in the light of
events of the civil war?
Chinua Achebe was not my colleague. In fact, I can’t remember that we
ever met and had a conversation. I’ve read the book. I’m glad he wrote it. It
was how he saw things. It spoke for him. The fact that it caused so much
controversy was proof that he touched certain nerves. That didn’t include my
nerves.
In spite of the war Biafra was able
to deploy its resources such that it developed its own technology to fight the
war. But in spite of the fact that Nigeria won the war and despite the benefit
of the oil boom, it can’t make a bicycle as yet. What do you think accounts for
this?
You are spot on. An admirable achievement of Biafra was the creativity
it inspired among a population on the brink of decimation. The old saying that
necessity is the mother of invention was ever so true about the Biafrans. But
when they re-joined an economy which seeks to create wealth not by building or
planting things but in importations, a curse of the oil boom, an economy in
which business acumen means angling for contracts to make a quick buck, the
creativity inspired by the Biafra spirit ended very quickly. At any rate it had
never caught on in the rest of the country. “Waiting for Federal allocation”
should be the motto of every state finance ministry in the land!
You wrote Then Spoke the Thunder some
10 years ago. At 80 do you still feel there are gaps that need to be filled? Is
another memoir coming?
I can’t see another memoir or the need for one. But there is a bitter
story I want to tell, if I can work out a humorous way of telling it. It’s very
much in my head.
Nigeria is holding another election
next month. What are your fears and expectations?
My hope
is that we avoid violence. My fear is that the losers will automatically claim
that the elections were rigged.
Between the two Presidential
candidates – Jonathan and Buhari – who do you think is the better suited for
the job?
I’ve
never voted in a political election in my life. I thought I could not honestly say I was transparently
objective and neutral if I cast a vote for one side or the other. I’ve always
stopped short of concerning myself with who the better candidate is. I
concentrate on watching out for transparency in the electoral process, on fairness
and I patiently await the decision of the electorate.
No comments:
Post a Comment