The Magical Years
On November 16, 1930, in Nnobi, near my hometown of
Ogidi, providence ushered me into a world at a cultural crossroads. By then, a
longstanding clash of Western and African civilizations had generated deep
conversations and struggles between their respective languages, religions, and
cultures.
Crossroads possess a certain dangerous potency.
Anyone born there must wrestle with their multiheaded spirits and return to his
or her people with the boon of prophetic vision; or accept, as I have, life’s
interminable mysteries.
My initiation into the complicated world of Ndi Igbo
was at the hands of my mother and my older sister, Zinobia, who furnished me
with a number of wonderful stories from our ancient Igbo tradition. The tales
were steeped in intrigue, spiced with oral acrobatics and song, but always
resolute in their moral message. My favorite stories starred the tortoise mbe,
and celebrated his mischievous escapades. As a child, sitting quietly,
mesmerized, story time took on a whole new world of meaning and importance. I
realize, reminiscing about these events, that it is little wonder I decided to
become a storyteller. Later in my literary career I traveled back to the magic
of the storytelling of my youth to write my children’s books: How the Leopard
Got His Claws, Chike and the
River, The Drum,
and The Flute: A
Children’s Story (Tortoise books).
When I think about my mother the first thing that
comes to my mind is how clearly the description “the strong, silent type” fit
her. Mother was neither talkative nor timid but seemed to exist on several
planes—often quietly escaping into the inner casements of her mind, where she
engaged in deep, reflective thought. It was from her that I learned to appreciate
the power and solace in silence.
Mother’s education prepared her for leadership, and
she distinguished herself in the church and as the head of a group of
expatriate women from the ancient town of Awka who were married in Ogidi. She
always treated others with respect and exuded a calm self-confidence. Mother
brought a remarkable, understated elegance to every activity in which she
engaged. She had a particularly attractive way of making sure she got her point
across without being overbearing or intimidating. It is her peaceful
determination to tackle barriers in her world that nailed down a very important
element of my development—the willingness to bring about change gently.
We were Christians, though the inter-religious
struggle was still evident in our time. There were occasions when one would
suddenly realize there were sides, and one was on one or another. Perhaps the
most important event that illustrates this was what has come to be known in my
family as “the kola nut incident.”
The story came out that a neighbor who was a relative
of mine and someone the Christians would refer to as “a heathen,” was passing
on the road one day and watched quietly as my mother pulled down a small kola
nut branch from a tree in her compound and picked a ripe fruit. Now one often
forgot that there were taboos about picking kola nuts. Traditionally no one was
allowed to pick them from the tree; they were supposed to ripen, fall, and then
be collected from the ground, and by men—not by women. The Kola nut was a
sacred fruit and had a very distinct and distinguished role to play in Igbo
life and culture.
The neighbor reported this incident to the menfolk,
who then exaggerated the “insult to our traditions.” But Mother insisted that
she had every right to pick the fruit, particularly from a tree in her own
compound.
I did not think up to that moment that my mother was
a fighter. There was pressure to punish my mother, though it did not go
anywhere in the end. Looking back, one can appreciate the fact that she had won
a battle for Christianity, women’s rights, and freedom.
The most powerful memories of my father are the ones
of him working as a catechist and a teacher. He read constantly and had a small
library. My father also had a number of collages and maps hanging on the walls,
and books that he encouraged his children to read. He would often walk us
through the house telling stories linked to each prized possession.
It was from him that I was exposed to the magic in
the mere title of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and to an Igbo translation of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress. The Bible played an important role in my education. My
parents often read passages out loud to us during prayer time and encouraged
us, when we were all able, to read and memorize several passages. Sunday school
continued this tradition of Christian evangelical education, this time with
several other children from the village. Education was so important to my
father that he often would sponsor a bright child from an underprivileged
background, reminding us that he too, as an orphan, had received providence’s
benefaction.
The center of our family’s activities was St. Philip’s
Church in Ogidi, a large Gothic-style parish church that my father helped
establish. It was constructed on an impressive, open ilo, or piece of
open grass, on the outskirts of Ogidi. It was an imposing structure for its
time, built with wood, cement, mud, and stone. Local lore holds that my father
took part in the building of the church from its foundations. My father also
helped conduct Sunday service, translate sermons into Igbo, and arrange the
sanctuary and vestry. I remember waking up early to help out, carrying his bag
for him as we set out at cockcrow for the parish church.
Eucharist on Sundays often lasted more than two
hours. For those who were not asleep by the end of the proceedings, the fire
and brimstone sermons from the pulpit made attendance worthwhile. There was an
occasional outburst of uncontrollable laughter, when the rector, an Englishman,
enthusiastically drank all the remaining wine at the end of communion, wiping
his mouth with the back of his hand. A crowd favorite was the inaccurate
translations of Igbo words into English, such as the word ike, which is
an Igbo word that can mean “strength” or “buttocks” depending on the skill or
mischief of the translator!
I can say that my whole artistic career was probably
sparked by this tension between the Christian religion of my parents, which we
followed in our home, and the retreating, older religion of my ancestors, which
fortunately for me was still active outside my home. I still had access to a
number of relatives who had not converted to Christianity and were called
heathens by the new converts. When my parents were not watching I would often
sneak off in the evenings to visit some of these relatives.
They seemed so very content in their traditional way
of life and worship. Why would they refuse to become Christians, like everyone
else around them? I was intent on finding out.
My great-uncle, Udoh Osinyi, was able to bestride
both worlds with great comfort. He held one of the highest titles in all of
Igbo land–ozo. I was very interested in my great-uncle’s religion, and
talking to him was an enriching experience. I wouldn’t give that up for
anything, including my own narrow, if you like, Christian background.
In Igbo cosmology there are many gods. A person could
be in good stead with one god and not the other—Ogwugwu could kill a person
despite an excellent relationship with Udo. As a young person that sort of
complexity meant little to me. A later understanding would reveal the humility
of the traditional religion with greater clarity. Igbo sayings and proverbs are
far more valuable to me as a human being in understanding the complexity of the
world than the doctrinaire, self-righteous strain of the Christian faith I was
taught. This other religion is also far more artistically satisfying to me.
However, as a catechist’s son I had to suppress this interest in our traditions
to some extent, at least the religious component. We were church people after
all, helping the local church spread Christianity.
The relationship between my father and his uncle Udoh
was instructive to me. There was something deep and mystical about it, judging
from the reverence I heard in my father’s voice whenever he spoke about his old
uncle.
My father was a man of few words, and I have always
regretted that I did not ask him more questions. But he took pains to tell me
what he thought I needed to know. He told me, for instance, in a rather oblique
way of his one attempt to convert his uncle Udoh. It must have been in my
father’s youthful, heady, proselytizing days! His uncle pointed to the awesome
row of insignia of his three titles—ichi ozo, ido idemili, ime omaalor. “What
shall I do to these?” he asked my father. It was an awesome question. He had
essentially asked: “What do I do to who I am? What do I do to history?”
An orphan child born into adversity, heir to
commotions, barbarities, and rampant upheavals of a continent in disarray—it
was not at all surprising that my father would welcome the remedy proffered by diviners
and interpreters of a new word. But my great-uncle, a leader in his community,
a moral, open-minded man, a prosperous man who had prepared such a great feast
when he took the ozo title that his people gave him a praise name for it—was he
to throw all that away because some strangers from afar had said so?
At first glance it seemed to me that my father, a
deeply religious man, was not tolerant of our ancient traditions and religion.
As he got older, however, I noticed that he became more openly accommodating of
the old ways of doing things. By this time he had developed quite a reputation
as a pious, disciplined, honest catechist. He was widely known as onye nkuzi (“the
teacher”), and the villagers found him very trustworthy. Strangers would often
drop off valuables at our house for Father’s safe keeping.
______________________
Does it matter, I ask myself, that centuries before European
Christians sailed down to us in ships to deliver the Gospel and save us from
darkness, other European Christians, also sailing in ships, delivered us to the
transatlantic slave trade and unleashed darkness in our world?
_______________________
Those two—my father and his uncle—formed the
dialectic that I inherited. Udoh stood fast in what he knew, but he also left
room for my father to seek other answers. The answer my father found in the
Christian faith solved many problems, but by no means all.
As a young person my perspective of the world
benefited, I think, from this dichotomy. I wasn’t questioning in an
intellectual way which way was right, or better. I was simply more interested
in exploring the essence, the meaning, the worldview of both religions. By
approaching the issues of tradition, culture, literature, language of our
ancient civilization in that manner, without judging but scrutinizing, a
treasure trove of discovery was opened up to me.
I often had periods of oscillating faith as I grew
older, periods of doubt, when I quietly pondered, and deeply questioned, the
absolutist teachings or the interpretations of religion. I struggled with the
certitude of Christianity—“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”—not its
accuracy, because as a writer one understands that there should be such
latitude, but the desolation, the acerbity of its meaning, the lack of options
for the outsider, the other. I believe that this question has subconsciously
deeply influenced my writing. This is not peculiar or particularly unique, as
many writers, from Du Bois to Camus, Sartre and Baldwin to Morrison, have also
struggled with this conundrum of the outsider, the other, in other ways, in
their respective locales.
My father had a lot of praise for the missionaries
and their message, and so do I. I am a prime beneficiary of the education that
the missionaries made a major component of their enterprise. But I have also
learned a little more skepticism about them than my father had any need for.
Does it matter, I ask myself, that centuries before European Christians sailed
down to us in ships to deliver the Gospel and save us from darkness, other
European Christians, also sailing in ships, delivered us to the transatlantic
slave trade and unleashed darkness in our world?
Meeting Christie and Her Family
In 1954, I was notified of a job opening in the
Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) in Enugu. I was offered a choice by the
search committee of coming to Enugu to interview or having them come to me. I
remember feeling quite entitled by this choice and proceeded to enjoy the
privilege by asking them to come to me, which they did. The team of mainly
Britons left to return to Enugu after an hour or so of interview questions.
About a week or so later I received a letter in the mail offering me a job, so
I moved to Enugu. I enjoyed my stint at the broadcasting house. Promotions came
rapidly, and within a very short period of time I had become the controller of
the Nigerian Broadcasting Service, Eastern Region.
At the end of the academic year, during the long
vacation, the NBS offered summer jobs to college students on vacation. They did
not pay very well but provided young people with exposure to the world of
journalism, broadcasting, and news reporting.
NBS was inundated with a large number of applicants
during this particular long vacation—not only students from my alma mater,
University College, Ibadan, but from those returning from studies abroad. A few
weeks later one could hear the unmistakable banter of young people as they
milled about the normally quiet halls of the Nigerian Broadcasting Service. As
the controller I had very little interaction with the students.
I found all this excited commotion amusing and got on
with my work. But soon after I was told by my secretary that a delegation of
university students wanted to speak with me about a matter of great importance.
The students trooped into my office led by their
leader, Christie Okoli. She was a beautiful young woman and very articulate,
and when she spoke she caught my attention. I was spellbound. In grave tones
she announced the complaint of the students: There was one student whose salary
was higher than all the others, and they wanted “equal pay for equal time.” I
was kindly disposed toward them and made sure that all of the students received
the same remuneration for the work that they did.
My interest in Christie grew rapidly into a desire to
get to know her better. I discovered, for instance, that she was from the
ancient town of Awka, the present-day capital of Anambra state. Awka held a
soft spot in my heart because it was my mother’s hometown, and it was known
throughout Igbo land and beyond for its skilled artisans and blacksmiths, who
fashioned bronze, wood, and metal carvings of a bold and haunting beauty.
Two years into our friendship, Christie and I were
engaged. Christie was from a very prominent Awka family. She was the daughter
of one of the most formidable Igbo men of the early twentieth century, Timothy
Chukwukadibia Okoli, and Mgboye Matilda Mmuo, who unfortunately died not long
after Christie was born.
“T. C. Okoli,” as he was widely known, was the son of
a famous dibia, or traditional medicine man, known from Arochukwu to Nri and
from Onitsha to Ogoja for skills that encompassed herbal medicine, mysticism,
divination, and magic. After a lifetime in the service of the ancient medical
practice, Okoli gave his son the name Chukwukadibia, which means “God is
greater than a traditional medicine man.” He encouraged his newborn son to seek
a Christian life.
An early convert to Christianity in Igbo land, T. C.
Okoli was one of the few educated men of his time to attain the position of
senior post master in the colonial Posts and Telecommunications (P & T)
Department.
He was a profoundly generous man, and used his
resources—which were quite outstanding for a Nigerian at that time—to sponsor
the education of gifted children from scores of families in Awka. When he died
at 102, in the mid-1980s, all thirteen villages of the town celebrated his life
for several days, through both traditional and Christian rites and festivities.
Meeting Christie’s father for the first time was a
great thrill for me. His compound in Awka was always full of laughter. People
visited constantly, some to drink and make merry, others for favors and to pay
their respects. I belonged to the latter category.
We arrived, and Christie promptly took me to meet her
dad.
“Papa,” she said, “meet Chinua Achebe.”
We shook hands, and then the pleasantries gave way to
a brief interview: “Where are you from, young man?” “What do you do?” “Where
did you go to school?” “Who are your parents?”
I quickly discovered that T. C. Okoli was an
Anglophile: He took pleasure in reciting passages in English from scripture,
Shakespeare, and poetry; and he had sent several of his children off to England
to advance their education. He was also a deeply respectful and kind man who
left me with a lasting lesson that I have never forgotten.
Christie and I were talking one evening when Okoli
walked into the living room. We exchanged greetings. He sat down and listened
to our conversation while sipping wine, watching the two of us talk. By this
time I could say confidently that he liked me. We got along very well. But in
the course of the conversation he missed something Christie said and asked for
clarification. At this prompting I responded by saying jestingly in Igbo: “Rapia
ka ona aghaigha agba,” or in English, “Don’t mind her… wagging her jaw… ”
T. C. Okoli sat up and rebuked me. He said: “Don’t
say or imply that what someone else has to say, or is saying is not worth
attending or listening to.” It immediately struck me that I had to be careful
about the way I handled someone else’s words or opinions, especially Christie’s.
Even when there was strong disagreement, one had to remember to be discordant
with respect.
Discovering Things Fall Apart
Soon after this educational encounter with my
father-in-law I moved to Lagos to interview for a new position at the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) headquarters. The Talks Department hired me to
mull over scripts and prepare them for broadcast. A tedious job, it
nevertheless honed my skill for writing realistic dialogue, a gift that I
gratefully tapped into when writing my novels.
__________________________
And it dawned on me that despite her excellent mind and
background, she was not capable of teaching across cultures, from her English
culture to mine.
_____________________
In my second or third year at University College,
Ibadan, I had offered one or two short stories “Polar Undergraduate,” and “Marriage
Is a Private Affair” to the University Herald, the campus magazine. They were
accepted and published. I published other stories during that time, including “The
Old Order in Conflict with the New” and “Dead Men’s Path.” In my third year I
was invited to join the editorial committee of the journal. A bit later I
became the magazine’s editor.
At the University College, Ibadan, I was in contact
with instructors of literature, of religion, and of history who had spent
several years teaching in England. Studying religion was new to me and
interesting because the focus went beyond Christian theology to encompass wider
scholarship—West African religions. One of my professors in the department of
religion, Dr. Parrinder, was a pioneer in the area. He had done extensive
research in West African religions and cosmology, particularly in Dahomey,
present-day Republic of Benin. For the first time I was able to see the systems—including
my own—compared and placed side by side, which was really exciting. I also
encountered another professor, James Welch, in that department, an
extraordinary man, who had been chaplain to King George VI, chaplain to the
BBC, and all kinds of high-powered things before he came to University College,
Ibadan.
My professors were excellent people and excellent
teachers, but they were not always the ones I needed. It was James Welch who said
to me, “We may not be able to teach you what you need or what you want. We can
only teach you what we know.” I thought that was wonderful. Welch helped me
understand that they were not sent there to translate their knowledge to me in
a way that would help me channel my creative energies to tell my story of
Africa, my story of Nigeria, the story of myself. I learned, if I may put it
simply, that my story had to come from within me. Finding that inner creative
spark required introspection, deep personal scrutiny, and connection, and this
was not something anybody could really teach me.
I have written elsewhere of how I fared when I
entered a short story competition in the Department of English, and how my
teacher, who supervised this competition, announced the result, which was that
nobody who entered the competition was good enough. I was more or less singled
out as someone with some promise, but the story I submitted lacked “form.”
Understandably, I wanted to find out more about what the professor meant by
form. It seemed to me that here was some secret competence that I needed to be
taught. But when I then applied some pressure on this professor to explain to
me what form was, it was clear that she was not prepared—that she could not
explain it to me. And it dawned on me that despite her excellent mind and
background, she was not capable of teaching across cultures, from her English
culture to mine.
It was in these circumstances that I was moved to put
down on paper the story that became Things Fall
Apart. I was conscripted by the story, and I was writing it at
all times—whenever there was any opening. It felt like a sentence, an
imprisonment of creativity. Through it all I did not neglect the employment for
which I earned a salary. Additional promotions came at NBC, and very swiftly,
particularly after most of the British returned to England, I was appointed
director of external broadcasting.
I worked on my writing mostly at night. I was seized
by the story and I found myself totally ensconced in it. It was almost like
living in a parallel realm, a dual existence; not in any negative sense, but in
the way a hand has two surfaces, united in purpose but very different in tone,
appearance, character, and structure. I had in essence discovered the writer’s
life, one that exists in the world of the pages of his or her story and then
seamlessly steps into the realities of everyday life.
The scribbling finally grew into a manuscript. I
wanted to have not just a good manuscript but a good-looking manuscript,
because it seemed to me that that would help to draw readers’ and publishers’
attention to the work. So I decided, on the strength of a recommendation of an
advertisement in a British magazine or journal that described a company’s
ability to transform a manuscript through typing into an attractive document,
to send it off for “polishing.”
What I did next, in retrospect, was quite naïve, even
foolish. I put my handwritten documents together, went to the post office, and
had them parcel the only copy of the manuscript I had to the London address of
the highly recommended typing agency that was in the business of manuscript
preparation. A letter came from this agency after a few weeks.
They confirmed that they had received my document and
wrote that the next thing I should do was send them thirty-two pounds, which
was the cost of producing my manuscript. Now, thirty-two pounds was a lot of
money in 1956, and a significant slice of my salary, but I was encouraged by
the fact that I had received this information, this feedback, and that the
people sounded as if they were going to be of great value to me. So, I sent off
the payment as instructed.
What happened next was a near catastrophe. The typing
agency, obviously having received the money I sent, went silent. One week
passed, then two, three, four, five, six weeks, and I began to panic.
I wrote two letters inquiring about the status of the
manuscript preparation and I got no answer.
One had a great deal of confidence and faith in the
British system that we had grown up in, a confidence and faith in British
institutions. One trusted that things would get where they were sent; postal
theft, tampering or loss of documents were unheard-of. Today one would not even
contemplate sending off materials of importance so readily, either abroad or
even locally, by mail.
_________________________
I look back now at those events and state categorically that had
the manuscript been lost I most certainly would have been irreversibly
discouraged from continuing my writing career.
_____________________
The good luck was that at that point in my career I
was working very closely with a British former BBC Talks producer, Angela
Beattie. Beattie was seconded to the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, for
which she served as head of our two-person department. She was the head of
Talks and I was the Talks producer, and we had a secretary, I believe, also
from the BBC. It was to Beattie that I now went to and told my story about the
British typing agency. Ms. Angela Beattie was shocked—she was a no-nonsense
person.
“Give me their name and address,” she insisted.
Fortunately, she was about to go to England on leave,
so she became the perfect vehicle to carry my anguish to the typists in London.
And she did it in her distinctive way. She arrived at the offices of the typing
agency and asked to speak to the manager, who showed up swiftly. Angela Beattie
asked the manager sternly what she had done with the manuscript that her
colleague in Lagos, Nigeria, had sent. Here, right before them, armed with a
threat, was a well-connected woman who could really make trouble for them.
The people there were surprised and shaken. “Now, I
am going back to Nigeria in three weeks,” Angela Beattie said as she left the
agency’s office, “and when I get there, let us hope that the manuscript you
took money to prepare has been received by its owner, or else you will hear
more about it.” A few weeks later I received a handsome package in the mail. It
was my manuscript. I look back now at those events and state categorically that
had the manuscript been lost I most certainly would have been irreversibly
discouraged from continuing my writing career.
Later that year, in the fall of 1956 or thereabouts,
I was selected to travel to the British Broadcasting Corporation school in
London where its staff were trained. Bisi Onabanjo, a good friend of mine and
the future governor of Ogun state, was also among the small group of Nigerians
attending this course. I had not up to this time traveled outside Nigeria.
In those days such trips were done by boat, as
commercial air flights from Lagos were not commonplace. London was a brand-new
and pleasant experience. I took advanced technical production skills courses
during my time at the BBC staff school, and in between my classes was able to
take in the sights and sounds of London, a city that remains one of my favorite
international capitals.
I took along my typed manuscript, hoping to bump into
a number of writers and publishers who could provide me with some advice about
how best to get the book published. I was fortunate to meet and make the
acquaintance of Gilbert Phelps, a British writer, who read the manuscript and
was quite enthusiastic about its literary merit and prospects for publication.
When Mr. Phelps kindly suggested that I hand over the manuscript to him to pass
on to some publishers he knew I hesitated and told him that I needed some more
time to work on the novel. I was still wondering whether to publish it in three
parts or divide the work into three separate books.
About a year later I wrote Gilbert Phelps and
informed him that my novel, Things Fall Apart, was ready, and he happily
sent the manuscript off to a number of publishers. There were a number of
instant rejections.
Some did not even bother to read it, jaundiced by
their impression that a book with an African backdrop had no “marketability.”
Some of the responders found the very concept of an African novel amusing. The
book’s fortunes changed when it got into the hands of Alan Hill and Donald
McRae, executives of Heinemann. McRae had extensive experience traveling
throughout Africa and encouraged Heinemann to publish the novel with a powerful
recommendation: “This is the best first novel I have read since the war.”
It was under Alan Hill’s guidance that Things Fall
Apart received immediate and consistent support. The initial publication
run from Heinemann was two thousand hardcover copies. Things Fall Apart
got some of its earliest endorsements and positive reviews from Canada, where
critics such as G. D. Killam and the novelist Jean Margaret Laurence embraced
it. Later the postcolonial literary critics Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths,
and Helen Tiffin helped introduce the book into the Australian and British
literary establishment. Michael Thelwell, Bernth Lindfors, Priscilla Tyler,
Charles Larson, and Catherine Lynnette Innes were some of the first
intellectuals in America to pick up the novel and present it to an American
audience.
In England the book received positive reviews from
the Observer, Time and Tide, and The Times Literary Supplement,
among other publications. But not all the reviews were as kind or positive.
Some failed to understand “the point of African Literature” and what I and
others were trying to achieve by telling our own story. It did the work a great
deal of good, however, that the distinguished novelist Angus Wilson and the
well-respected literary critic Walter Allen wrote positively about my first
novel.
In Nigeria there was a mixed bag of responses. Some
of my old teachers at Ibadan found the idea of my publishing a novel “charming,”
but many African intellectuals saw both literary and political merit in the
work.
When I wrote Things Fall Apart I began to
understand and value my traditional Igbo history even more. I am not suggesting
that I was an expert in the history of the world. I was a very young man. I
knew I had a story, but how it fit into the story of the world—I really had no
sense of that.
After a while I began to understand why the book had
resonance. Its meaning for my Igbo people was clear to me, but I didn’t know
how other people elsewhere would respond to it. Did it have any meaning or
relevance for them? I realized that it did when, to give just one example, the
whole class of a girls’ college in South Korea wrote to me, and each one
expressed an opinion about the book. And then I learned something: They had a
history that was similar to the story of Things Fall Apart—the history of
colonization. This I didn’t know before. Their colonizer was Japan. So these
people across the waters were able to relate to the story of dispossession in
Africa. People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story
if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.
A Lucky Generation
It has often been said that my generation was a very
lucky one. And I agree. My luck was actually quite extraordinary. And it began
quite early.
The pace of change in Nigeria from the 1940s was
incredible. I am not just talking about the rate of development, with villages
transforming into towns, or the coming of modern comforts, such as electricity
or running water or modes of transportation, but more of a sense that we were standing
figuratively and literally at the dawn of a new era.
My generation was summoned, as it were, to bear
witness to two remarkable transitions—the first the aforementioned impressive
economic, social, and political transformation of Nigeria into a midrange
country, at least by third world standards. But, more profoundly, barely two
decades later we were thrust into the throes of perhaps Nigeria’s greatest
twentieth-century moment—our elevation from a colonized country to an
independent nation.
The March to Independence
The general feeling in the air as independence
approached was extraordinary, like the building anticipation of the relief of
torrential rains after a season of scorching hot Harmattan winds and bush
fires.
We were all looking forward to feeling the joy that
India—the great jewel of the British Empire—must have felt in 1947, the joy
that Ghana must have felt years later, in 1957.
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, at least so it seemed at the time. Nigeria was enveloped by a certain
assurance of an unbridled destiny, of an overwhelming excitement about life’s
promise, unburdened by any knowledge of providence’s intended destination.
Ghana was a particularly relevant example for us
subjects in the remaining colonies and dominions of the British Empire. There
was a growing confidence, not just a feeling, that we would do just as well
parting ways with Her Majesty’s empire. If Ghana seemed more effective, as some
of our people like to say, perhaps it was because she was smaller in size and
neat, as if it was tied together more delicately by well-groomed, expert hands.
So we had in 1957 an extraordinary event. I remember
it vividly. It was not a Nigerian event. Ghana is three hundred or more miles
away from us, but we saw her success as ours as well. I remember celebrating
with Ghanaian and Nigerian friends in Lagos all night on the eve of Ghana’s
independence from Britain, ecstatic for our fellow Africans, only to wake up
the next morning to find that we were still in Nigeria. Ghana had made it,
leaving us all behind. But our day came, finally, three years after hers.
The father of African independence was Nnamdi
Azikiwe. There is no question at all about that. Azikiwe, fondly referred to by
his admirers as “Zik,” was the preeminent political figure of my youth and a
man who was endowed with the political pan-Africanist vision. He had help no
doubt, from several eminent sons and daughters of the soil.
When Azikiwe came back from his university studies in
the United States of America, in 1934 or thereabout, he did not return to
Onitsha, his hometown. He settled at first in Accra, in the Gold Coast
(present-day Ghana), where he worked as the editor of the African Morning Post,
a new daily newspaper. There were stories of interethnic friction in the Gold
Coast, so he moved to Lagos. Despite initial problems in Ghana, Azikiwe had
acquired admirers, especially young aspiring freedom fighters, including Kwame Nkrumah,
the greatest of them all. Nkrumah was still a student in Ghana, but he was
motivated to go to America to study largely as a result of Azikiwe’s influence.
Zik opened the historically black college in the United States that he attended—Lincoln
University—to other West Africans and Nigerians. Quite a number of young
Africans who left the country for America did so because of Azikiwe. It didn’t
hurt that Azikiwe wrote glowingly about America in his newspaper articles on
almost a daily basis. America, you see, seemed to a number of those young
people to provide an escape from the chains of colonialism.
Soon after Azikiwe arrived in Lagos he established
his own paper, the West African Pilot. At this time there were two or
three families of newspapers: Azikiwe’s and an even older group from Freetown,
Sierra Leone; the Accra Herald from the Gold Coast; the Anglo African;
Iwe Ihorin (a prominent Yoruba newspaper) in Lagos; and Herbert Macaulay’s
the Daily News. These newspapers had different traditions. There used to
be a joke about the quality of newspapers that were founded by aristocratic
Lagosians. Some of these papers went out of their way to be highbrow; it was
said that occasionally large chunks of the editorials of some were written in
Latin.
In contrast to his competition Azikiwe’s newspaper
was written in accessible, stripped-down English—the type of prose educated
members of society often snickered at. And that was Azikiwe’s intention, to
speak directly to the masses. His strategy was an incredible success. The West
African Pilot’s anticolonial message was spread very quickly, widely, and
effectively. From the time of its establishment through the 1940s and 1950s,
the West African Pilot was the most influential publication of its type
throughout British West Africa—from Sierra Leone through Ghana to Nigeria.
Azikiwe wanted to remain financially autonomous from
the British, so he established the African Continental Bank in 1944 and invited
wealthy and influential Nigerians such as Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu to join the
board. Azikiwe also started newspaper outposts in Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Port
Harcourt, and the market town of Onitsha. I remember in particular that traders
in Onitsha and other markets throughout Nigeria relished the West African
Pilot’s daily political analysis and editorials.
Many learned to read with the help of the Pilot.
The traders, in their eagerness to read Azikiwe’s paper, often ignored
early-morning customers who visited their stalls. The West African Pilot
served other purposes. It became the nurturing ground for top journalistic and
future political talent. Anthony Enahoro, who became the paper’s editor, and
Akinola Lasekan, the legendary political cartoonist, are just two examples that
come to mind. The West African Pilot enjoyed an exponential level of
commercial as well as critical success after it supported striking Nigerian
workers against the British government in the 1940s. Its circulation was in the
tens of thousands. That was an outstanding achievement for its time.
The Cradle of Nigerian Nationalism
Here is a piece of heresy: The British governed their
colony of Nigeria with considerable care. There was a very highly competent
cadre of government officials imbued with a high level of knowledge of how to
run a country. This was not something that the British achieved only in
Nigeria; they were able to manage this on a bigger scale in India and
Australia. The British had the experience of governing and doing it
competently. I am not justifying colonialism. But it is important to face the
fact that British colonies, more or less, were expertly run.
There was a distinct order during this time. I recall
the day I traveled from Lagos to Ibadan and stayed with Christopher Okigbo that
evening. I took off again the next morning, driving alone, going all the way
from Lagos to Asaba, crossing the River Niger, to visit my relatives in the
east. That was how it was done in those days. One was not consumed by fear of
abduction or armed robbery. There was a certain preparation that the British
had undertaken in her colonies. So as the handover time came, it was done with
great precision.
As we praise the British, let us also remember the
Nigerian nationalists—those who had a burning desire for independence and
fought for it. There was a body of young and old people that my parents’
generation admired greatly, and that we later learned about and deeply
appreciated. Herbert Macaulay, for instance, often referred to as “the father
of Nigerian nationalism,” was a very distinguished Nigerian born during the
nineteenth century and the first president of the Nigerian National Democratic
Party (NNDP), which was founded in 1922.
The dawn of World War II caused a bit of a lull in
the organized independence struggles that had been centered mainly in the
western region of the country up to that time. Across the River Niger, in
Eastern Nigeria, I was entering my teenage years, bright-eyed and beginning to
grapple with my colonial environment. At this time most of the world’s
attention, including Nigeria’s, was turned to the war. Schools and other
institutions were converted into makeshift camps for soldiers from the empire,
and there was a great deal of local military recruitment. A number of my
relatives quickly volunteered their services to His Majesty’s regiments. The
colonies became increasingly important to Great Britain’s war effort by
providing a steady stream of revenue from the export of agricultural products—palm
oil, groundnuts, cocoa, rubber, etc. I remember hearing stories of valiant
fighting by a number of African soldiers in faraway places, such as Abyssinia
(today’s Ethiopia), North Africa, and Burma.
The postwar era saw an explosion of political
organization. Newspapers, newsreels, and radio programs were full of the
exploits of Nnamdi Azikiwe and the National Council of Nigeria and the
Cameroons (NCNC) (which later became the National Council of Nigerian Citizens)
that was founded in 1944. Azikiwe built upon lessons he had learned from
earlier forays in political activism and successfully persuaded several active
members of the Nigerian Youth Movement to form an umbrella group of all the
major Nigerian organizations.
By the time I became a young adult, Obafemi Awolowo
had emerged as one of Nigeria’s dominant political figures. He was an erudite
and accomplished lawyer who had been educated at the University of London. When
he returned to the Nigerian political scene from England in 1947, Awolowo found
the once powerful political establishment of Western Nigeria in disarray—sidetracked
by partisan and intra-ethnic squabbles. Chief Awolowo and close associates
reunited his ancient Yoruba people with powerful glue—resuscitated ethnic pride—
and created the political party, the Action group from an amalgamation of the
Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the Nigerian Produce Traders’ Association and a few other
factions.
Over the years Awolowo had become increasingly
concerned about what he saw as the domination of the NCNC by the Igbo elite,
led by Azikiwe. Some cynics believe the formation of the Action Group was not
influenced by tribal loyalties, but a purely tactical political move to regain
regional and southern political power and influence from the dominant NCNC.
Initially Chief Obafemi Awolowo struggled to woo
support from the Ibadan-based (and other non-Ijebu) Yoruba leaders who
considered him a radical and a bit of an upstart. However, despite some initial
difficulty, Awolowo transformed the Action Group into a formidable, highly
disciplined political machine that often outperformed the NCNC in regional elections.
It did so by meticulously galvanizing political support in Yoruba land and
among the riverine and minority groups in the Niger Delta who shared a similar
dread of the prospects of Igbo political domination.
When Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto decided
to create the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) in the late 1940s, he knew that
the educationally disadvantaged North did not have as rich a source of
Western-educated politicians to choose from as the South did. He overcame this “shortcoming”
by pulling together an assortment of leaders from the Islamic territories under
his influence and a few Western-educated intellectuals—the most prominent in my
opinion being Aminu Kano and Alhaji Tafewa Balewa, Nigeria’s first prime
minister.
Frustrated by what he saw as “Ahmadu Bello’s limited
political vision,” the incomparable Aminu Kano, under whom I would serve as the
deputy national president of the Peoples Redemption Party decades later, would
leave the NPC in 1950, to form the left-of-center political party the Northern
Elements Progressive Union (NEPU).
Sir Ahmadu Bello was a schoolteacher by training. He
was a contentious and ardently ambitious figure who claimed direct lineage from
one of the founders of the Islamic Sokoto Caliphate—Usman dan Fodio. It was
also widely known that he had aspired to the throne of the Sultan of Sokoto. By
mid-century, through brilliant political maneuvering among the northern ruling
classes, Sir Ahmadu Bello emerged as the most powerful politician in the Northern
Region, indeed in all of Nigeria.
Sir Ahmadu Bello was able to control northern Nigeria
politically by feeding on the fears of the ruling emirs and a small elite group
of Western-educated northerners. His ever-effective mantra was that in order to
protect the mainly feudal North’s hegemonic interests it was critical to form a
political party capable of resisting the growing power of Southern politicians.
Ahmadu Bello and his henchmen shared little in terms
of ideological or political aspirations with their southern counterparts. With
the South split between Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC)
and Awolowo’s Action Group, his ability to hold the North together meant that
the NPC in essence became Nigeria’s ruling party. A testament to its success is
the fact that the NPC later would not only hold the majority of seats in the
post-independence parliament, but as a consequence would be called upon to name
the first prime minister of Nigeria.
The minorities of the Niger Delta, Mid-West, and the
Middle Belt regions of Nigeria were always uncomfortable with the notion that
they had to fit into the tripod of the largest ethnic groups that was Nigeria—Hausa/
Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo. Many of them—Ijaw, Kanuri, Ibibio, Tiv, Itsekiri,
Isang, Urhobo, Anang, and Efik—were from ancient nation-states in their own
right. Their leaders, however, often had to subsume their own ethnic ambitions
within alliances with one of the big three groups in order to attain greater
political results.
The British were well aware of the inter-ethnic
tensions and posturing for power among the three main ethnic groups. By 1951
they had divided the country into the Northern, Eastern, and Western regions,
with their own respective houses of assembly, to contain this rising threat.
There was also what many thought was an inane house of chiefs—a poor copy of
the House of Lords of the British Parliament.
_____________________
The British clearly had a well-thought-out exit strategy, with
handover plans in place long before we noticed.
________________
Clear-eyed pundits saw this mainly as a political
ploy to appease the Northerners and Westerners who wanted their traditional
rulers to play a greater role in Nigerian affairs. Initially the British
resisted any agitations for independence, often by handing out stiff jail terms
for “sedition” to the “disturbers of the peace.” They knew the value of their
colonies, and the natural resources they possessed—in Nigeria’s case oil, coal,
gold, tin, columbite, cocoa, palm oil, groundnuts, and rubber, as well as the
immense human resources and intellectual capital. Surely Great Britain had no
plans to hand all these riches over without a fight.
Over time, however, it became clear to the colonizers
that they were engaged in a losing battle. By the end of World War II Great
Britain was financially and politically exhausted. This weakness was exploited
by Mohandas Gandhi and his cohorts in India during their own struggle against
British rule. Nigerian veterans from different theaters of the war had acquired
certain skills—important military expertise in organization, movement,
strategy, and combat—during their service to the king. Another proficiency that
came naturally to this group was the skill of protest, which was quickly
absorbed by the Nigerian nationalists.
Post-Independence Nigeria
By the late 1950s the British were rapidly accepting
the inevitability of independence coming to one of their major colonies,
Nigeria. Officers began to retire and return home to England, vacating their
positions in Nigeria’s colonial government. They left in droves, quietly,
amiably, often at night, mainly on ships, but also, particularly the wealthier
ones, on planes. The British clearly had a well-thought-out exit strategy, with
handover plans in place long before we noticed.
Literally all government ministries, public and
privately held firms, corporations, organizations, and schools saw the majority
of their expatriate staff leave. Not everyone left, however; some, particularly
in the commercial sector and the oil businesses, stayed. The civilized behavior
of their brethren made this an acceptable development.
While this quiet transition was happening a number of
internal jobs, especially the senior management positions, began to open up for
Nigerians, particularly for those with a university education. It was into
these positions vacated by the British that a number of people like myself were
placed—a daunting, exhilarating inheritance that was not without its anxieties.
Most of us felt well prepared, because we had received an outstanding education.
This is not to say that there were not those racked with doubt, and sometimes
outright dread. There were. But most of us were ready to take destiny in our
own hands, and for a while at least, it worked quite well.
This “bequest” was much greater than just stepping
into jobs left behind by the British. Members of my generation also moved into
homes in the former British quarters previously occupied by members of the
European senior civil service. These homes often came with servants—
chauffeurs, maids, cooks, gardeners, stewards—whom the British had organized
meticulously to “ease their colonial sojourn.” Now following the departure of
the Europeans, many domestic staff stayed in the same positions and were only
too grateful to continue their designated salaried roles in post-independence
Nigeria. Their masters were no longer European but their own brothers and
sisters. This bequest continued in the form of new club memberships and access
to previously all-white areas of town, restaurants, and theaters.
This account about the handover of power I have just
provided is perhaps too wonderful to be absolutely true. History teaches us
that people who have been oppressed—this is the language of the freedom fight,
and it was a fight—are often too ready to let bygones be bygones. Clearly it
was more complicated than that; it was a long struggle. Having said that, most
who were there would admit that when the moment came, I think it was handled
quite well.
One example that I will give to illustrate the
complexity of that moment of transition occurred at the very highest level of
government.
_________________
Later it was discovered that a courageous English junior civil
servant named Harold Smith had been selected by no other than Sir James
Robertson to oversee the rigging of Nigeria’s first election.
______________
When Britain decided to hand over power to Nigeria,
they also decided to change the governor general. They brought a new governor
general from the Sudan, Sir James Robertson, to take the reins in Nigeria. Now
that Independence Day was approaching a number of onlookers were wondering why
there was a new posting from Britain, and no provision made for a Nigerian
successor. It became clear that Sir James was going to be there on Independence
Day and, as it turned out, wanted to stay on as governor general for a whole
year into the period of freedom. One wondered how he was going to leave. Would
it be in disgrace? Would he be hiding, or something of the sort?
It is now widely known that Sir James Robertson
played an important role in overseeing the elections (or lack thereof) at
independence, throwing his weight behind Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who had been
tapped to become Nigeria’s first prime minister. I remember hearing Azikiwe
comment years later on those events. He was asked in a small gathering: “Why
did Sir James Robertson not go home, like the other people who were leaving?”
Azikiwe made light of the question: “Well, when he
told me that he was going to stay on, I said to him, Go on, stay as long as you
like.” The laughter that followed did not obscure the greater meaning of his
statement.
Later it was discovered that a courageous English
junior civil servant named Harold Smith had been selected by no other than Sir
James Robertson to oversee the rigging of Nigeria’s first election “so that its
compliant friends in [Northern Nigeria] would win power, dominate the country,
and serve British interests after independence.” Despite the enticements of
riches and bribes (even a knighthood, we are told), Smith refused to be part of
this elaborate hoax to fix Nigeria’s elections, and he swiftly became one of
the casualties of this mischief. Smith’s decision was a bold choice that cost
him his job, career, and reputation (at least until recently).
In a sense, Nigerian independence came with a British
governor general in command, and, one might say, popular faith in genuine
democracy was compromised from its birth.
The above is excerpted
from There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra (The Penguin
Press 2012), copyright Chinua Achebe
Source: Chinua Achebe, Guernica
Source: Chinua Achebe, Guernica
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