Chinua Achebe - There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

A LSO BY C HINUA A CHEBE

The Education of a British-Protected Child

Collected Poems

Anthills of the Savannah

The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories

Things Fall Apart

No Longer at Ease

Chike and the River

A Man of the People

Arrow of God

Girls at War and Other Stories

Beware Soul Brother

Morning Yet on Creation Day

The Trouble with Nigeria

The Flute

The Drum

Home and Exile

Hopes and Impediments

How the Leopard Got His Claws

(with John Iroaganachi)

Winds of Change: Modern Short Stories from Black Africa

(coeditor)

African Short Stories

(editor, with C. L. Innes)

Another Africa

(with Robert Lyons)

T HERE W AS A C OUNTRY

A PERSONAL HISTORY OF BIAFRA

Chinua Achebe

THE PENGUIN PRESS

New York

2012

THE PENGUIN PRESS

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in 2012 by The Penguin Press,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Chinua Achebe, 2012

All rights reserved

1966, Benin Road, Penalty of Godhead, Generation Gap, Biafra, 1969, A Mother in a Refugee Camp, The First Shot, Air Raid, Mango Seedling, We Laughed at Him, Vultures, and After a War from Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe. Copyright 1971, 1973, 2004 by Chinua Achebe. Used by permission of Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Achebe, Chinua.

There was a country : a personal history of Biafra / Chinua Achebe.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-101-59598-5

1. Achebe, Chinua. 2. Authors, Nigerian20th centuryBiography. 3. NigeriaHistoryCivil War, 19671970Personal narratives. I. Title.

PR9387.9.A3Z46 2012

823'.914dc23

[B]

2012005603

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Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A n Igbo proverb tells us that a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.

The rain that beat Africa began four to five hundred years ago, from the discovery of Africa by Europe, through the transatlantic slave trade, to the Berlin Conference of 1885. That controversial gathering of the worlds leading European powers precipitated what we now call the Scramble for Africa, which created new boundaries that did violence to Africas ancient societies and resulted in tension-prone modern states. It took place without African consultation or representation, to say the least.

Great Britain was handed the area of West Africa that would later become Nigeria, like a piece of chocolate cake at a birthday party. It was one of the most populous regions on the African continent, with over 250 ethnic groups and distinct languages. The northern part of the country was the seat of several ancient kingdoms, such as the Kanem-Bornuwhich Shehu Usman dan Fodio and his jihadists absorbed into the Muslim Fulani Empire. The Middle Belt of Nigeria was the locus of the glorious Nok Kingdom and its world-renowned terra-cotta sculptures. The southern protectorate was home to some of the regions most sophisticated civilizations. In the west, the Oyo and Ife kingdoms once strode majestically, and in the midwest the incomparable Benin Kingdom elevated artistic distinction to a new level. Across the Niger River in the East, the Calabar and the Nri kingdoms flourished. If the Berlin Conference sealed her fate, then the amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates inextricably complicated Nigerias destiny. Animists, Muslims, and Christians alike were held together by a delicate, some say artificial, lattice.

Britains indirect rule was a great success in northern and western Nigeria, where affairs of state within this new dispensation continued as had been the case for centuries, with one exceptionthere was a new sovereign, Great Britain, to whom all vassals pledged fealty and into whose coffers all taxes were paid.

Africas postcolonial disposition is the result of a people who have lost the habit of ruling themselves. We have also had difficulty running the new systems foisted upon us at the dawn of independence by our colonial masters. Because the West has had a long but uneven engagement with the continent, it is imperative that it understand what happened to Africa. It must also play a part in the solution. A meaningful solution will require the goodwill and concerted efforts on the part of all those who share the weight of Africas historical burden.

Most members of my generation, who were born before Nigerias independence, remember a time when things were very different. Nigeria was once a land of great hope and progress, a nation with immense resources at its disposalnatural resources, yes, but even more so, human resources. But the Biafran war changed the course of Nigeria. In my view it was a cataclysmic experience that changed the history of Africa.

There is some connection between the particular distress of war, the particular tension of war, and the kind of literary response it inspires. I chose to express myself in that period through poetry, as opposed to other genres. My Biafran poems and other poetry are collected in two volumesBeware, Soul Brother, Poems (which was published as Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems in America) in 1971 and Collected Poems in 2004. As a group these poems tell the story of Biafras struggle and suffering. I have made the conscious choice to juxtapose poetry and prose in this book to tell complementary stories, in two art forms.

It is for the sake of the future of Nigeria, for our children and grandchildren, that I feel it is important to tell Nigerias story, Biafras story, our story, my story.