Travelogue -From the Mountains to the Everglades

The traveller was not visiting the United States for the first time. On several occasions he had been to Uncle Sam’s and visited as many cities and towns as caught his fancy. Washington DC, New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Baltimore, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Flint, Detroit, Little Rock, Macon, Jacksonville and Miami will readily answer the roll call. But each time he had been restricted, as it were, to air transportation, a sort of “take off, touch down” routine devoid of creativity except for occasional sighting of abstract cloud formations and the “Google map” layout of built up areas when the plane was about to land.

Now it’s time to know more of America at close range. Enough of surreal views from the windows of aeroplanes. He opted for a roller-coaster four-wheel drive down the road to explore the fairytale hinterland. The journey from Atlanta, Georgia, to Murfreesboro in Middle Tennessee was an eye-opener and inducer of childhood memories of Uncle Sam. Something struck him. A family of five packed in such a mechanical device on a journey along the “famous” Ibadan–Lagos Expressway back at home is bound to have their hearts in their mouths throughout the barely one-hour journey. It was a different picture here. The smooth roads, the rest places with their surplus restrooms for wayfarers, the over abundant road signs, the orderliness and discipline of motorists, the strategically positioned eagle-eyed, technology-assisted highway patrol police and the polite, ever smiling toll-gate attendants were enough to calm jaded nerves and make road travel a pleasant adventure.

In such a relaxed mood, the mind is bound to wander and wonder in a seeming no man’s land. Signposts showing direction to certain towns instantly brought memories of the past. Nobody, not even a blind man, would miss probably such bold inscriptions pointing the way to “twin towns” like Knoxville and Nashville, Winchester and Manchester and the road that leads to Birmingham and Montgomery in Alabama. Alabama? No, we were not going there!! Was that not the centre point of degradation and denigration of the blacks and subsequently the nexus of civil rights movement in the not-easy-to-forget old America? The name instantly invoked the dark days of American history, the history of slavery, segregation (apartheid, by a different name) and subjugation and the eventual struggle for equality regardless of race or colour. It was a quick reminder of the days of courageous civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jnr, the derring-do of the Rosa Parks and the James Merediths who deliberately challenged the system as a form of protest against injustice and inequality in the land.

However, going back west and deep into midland America did not remind the traveller of only the dark side of America. Setting eyes on the Tennessee for the first time since learning about the great river in high school geography and looking at the range of mountains (the Appalachians, no doubt), and the beautiful countryside that inspired great artistes like Dolly Parton to sing passionately about the pastoral setting of her native Nashville and the adjoining towns and counties in the Tennessee river basin were enough to make the wayfarers remember the evergreen songs of the country music maestro. They slotted CDs into the car’s turntable and played back old favourites like AppleJack, Jolene and Coat of Many Colours. But the song that perfectly fitted the current mood was her plaintive lyrical ballad, In My Tennessee Mountain Home.

The road to Middle Tennessee that second Friday in May, 2013, along with the green pastures on both sides was a confirmation of the sentiments expressed in the song. The shrub and the vine clung to the walls along the road and their fragrance made the approaching summer wind so sweet...and far away on the hilltop, an eagle spread its wings while a songbird perched on a signpost seemed to be singing a melody as our vehicle drove past. The chief traveller, an unapologetic lover of Parton's brand of music, murmured some sweet nothings into the ears of an imaginary Parton. "Dolly, can you hug me just as I always hug you in my mind anytime I listen to your beautiful voice? Sweet songstress, come out of the woods to welcome me to your natural home! Fear not. I’m not an old teasing AppleJack with a banjo to sing a song for you, but just a passerby lover of the countryside and its natural beauty". Unfortunately there was no telepathic response of any kind. Parton was nowhere to be found on the highway. Poor star-struck fan! He had expected Parton to take her tambourine and serenade him to sleep with a spiritual rendition of Jolene or AppleJack in his crouching position in the overloaded vehicle. No luck. "Peter Crouch" (a readily adopted name to portray his precarious sitting position) had no option but to face reality. There would be no Dolly Parton to sing a song for him. But the show must go on.

They continued with their journey, negotiating sharp bends with runaways for trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles that suddenly run amok, cutting through forests, burrowing through mountains and crossing the waters of the great river at intervals to see, observe and smell the unadulterated scent of the countryside. But would it not have been foolhardy to traverse that same road during that better-be-forgotten Jim Crow era? Going back west in search of adventure in an erstwhile hate-filled America? But the country has advanced beyond the turbulent era of legalised hatred and covert execution of the people's will by the Klu Klux Klan, KKK, a white supremacist group and a thorn in the flesh of straying black people like the adventurous family on the Atlanta–Nashville highway. Thanks, though, to those that made it possible for them to take what used to be a risk down South American highways in those days. The gradual acceptance of blacks as equals has finally led to the emergence of a black American, Barack Obama, as President. Good. America finally did what was right, a justification of what Martin Luther King Jnr, the civil rights leader, had envisioned. “...And the time comes when one must take a position that is neither politic or popular or safe but because it is right". America, after years of dilly-dallying and double-speaking, finally did the right thing when, by popular vote, it elected its first black President in 2008. The journey to Obama actually started as far back as the 19th century with Abraham Lincoln's great role in seeing to the abolition of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War, which brought freedom to the black slaves in the Union. Thanks to the 13th amendment to the constitution in 1865 that put paid to the inhuman treatment of Africans in the south.

The entourage finally arrived at their destination after seeing America literally through the woods. The eerie feeling was no longer there. Carriage Lane Inn, Murfreesboro, was a perfect setting for a post-journey rendezvous. A historic place mentioned in the national register of historic places by the US Department of the Interior, the inn is an ideal place for family reunion, meetings, weddings and a rest place of some sort.  Foluso Erogbogbo and his fiancée, Ejiro, aspiring couple and members of the graduation train for Tomiwa, their friend, could not have dreamt of a better place for their honeymoon after their wedding in Austin, Texas, later in the year.

May 11, 2013. And here we were almost two centuries after the blacks regained their freedom, in the middle of nowhere down, down south, witnessing the graduation of students from all races in the same university environment. It took the likes of Meredith who used the instrumentality of the law to force the University of Mississippi to enrol him as a student in 1963, against the segregation law, to make this possible.

By 9am the arena of the Middle Tennessee University was already full of guests and members of the university community. Founded in 1911, it had graduated 117,134 students in various disciplines. This Saturday it was going to release yet another batch of 2,682 fresh graduates to the world in a solemn ceremony in the indoor arena. And when the programme started, the itinerant observer could not help taking mental notes of some unique things in the procedures and presentations. Before the American anthem was sung, guests and graduands were asked to remove their caps, a rare mark of honour when we stand up for the rendition of the Nigerian national anthem. Likewise, everybody was asked to be on their feet with their caps removed during the Moment of Silence, a time for personal reflection when individuals were supposed to pray (or curse?) silently, whichever is applicable! No pastor or Imam or Buddhist or Free Thinker was contracted to come and eat into the precision-timed programmes.

There was special applause for graduating students who were in the armed forces because, according to the compere, “these are the people securing our nation and maintaining peace for us”. It was such a sublime ritual with less funfair, though it's a big deal for every family to have their kids possess higher education. But there was no need to have special dresses or “aso ebi” (uniforms) to mark the occasion. But you can trust the Nigerians, they, as usual, were a pick among the crowd with their richly embroidered “costumes” and (sky-bound), onile gogoro headgears and “Shagari” caps inadvertently blocking the views of others and (they) becoming the centre of attraction for the barely dressed fellow observers from other climes.

Of utmost interest was the peculiar attention paid to certain areas in the dissertations of new PhD graduates, areas the uninitiated could innocently write off as insignificant but which can open doors to more forensic analyses and discoveries. Samples: “Reduce Your Sit and Be More Fit: An Examination of Sedentary Behaviour,” dissertation of a graduating student whose major was Human Performance. Another who majored in Public History has “Gender, Politics and Power: The Development of the Ladies Rest Room and Lounge in Rural America, 1900-1945” as her dissertation. Again, a major in Human Performance had a dissertation that could be of interest to visitors and sojourners in the wild, wild world of cyberspace. “Social Networking Sites Influence on Travellers: A Study of Couch Surfers’ Experience”. On a cursory look, these areas of study may sound innocuous or esoteric but going deeper, one might discover that the mere whisper of an idea may lead one down the corridors of history. Ideas which lead to major scientific discoveries often seem innocuous at the beginning. But in the end, they may herald the beginning of a landmark breakthrough for mankind.

The three-hour graduation ceremony ended precisely at the scheduled time for the afternoon session to begin. While another set of graduating students were waiting to take their turns, cafes, taverns, eateries and restaurants were already filling up with guests for graduation day parties, some of which lasted till the wee hours of Sunday morning.

The morning after.

Guests at the Carriage Lane Inn were still snoring in the rooms, lounges and even in the cellar after dancing themselves lame the previous night. Sooner than expected, it was wake-up time to adore and adorn the Mother figures around for being such wonderful hostesses and for always being there for the children. Gifts in form of ribbons, balloons, cards and candies were exchanged. It was Mothers’ Day! But why Mothers' Day? What's the significance? Why are fellow Africans getting more indulged in Western capitalist values at the expense of their own original, authentic customs and traditions? Nobody was impressed with the questioning. Yet, the hardcore African insisted on knowing, for instance, why the Americans celebrate Halloween Day with revellers masking their faces like African masquerades but it is fetish to have Egungun (Masquerades) Day back at home. Again, no one seemed interested in responding to his tantrums and “primitive” rantings. Mothers' Day is it! But nobody wants to hear of Moremi Day or Queen Amina Day or Emotan Day or Iya Mopo Day or Alagemo Day or Gelede Day... He was in this state of neo-cultural renaissance when checkout alarm sounded and the group had to set for the road again for a 12-hour journey to Florida to see the living wonders of Walt Disney World in Orlando and the standing monuments of space exploration at the Kennedy Space Centre. He quickly did a mental playback of the earlier trip from Atlanta...

A journey down the Tennessee River valley to the mountain home of the music legend is akin to Ulysses' odyssey in Alfred Tennyson's poem, Ulysses in which the hero chose to strive, to learn and to drink nature to the dregs. Opting to travel by road obviously paid off since it triggered memories of the yesterdays and yester years. In the end they remember not the silence of the loudness in the sky but the loudness of the silence in the woods. The turbo charge thrust in the clouds compared with the sublime pressure on the throttle on the well paved and “annotated” highways are two seemingly incomparable experiences, yet the difference is clear. The journey in the sky may be fast but the traveler sees practically nothing. On land, however, he can see, touch and smell the scent of the countryside and communicate with nature with poetic abandon. Such was the beauty of travelling through the Tennessee mountains, and valleys and “wading” through the Florida Everglades to have a better view of America.

The Novel Achebe May Read Again

DISCOURSE

 Arrow of God is so dense in plot, deep in characterisation and profound in narrative technique that even the author once confessed that it is the novel which ‘I am mostly likely to be caught sitting down to read again’ 

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s celebrated classic novel, did not come to being without experiencing the pangs of birth. It literally went through the valley of the shadow of death before seeing the light of day. The original manuscript got misplaced, making the writer develop some goose pimples. And when it was eventually found, no publisher was very eager to put his money on an African story with a strange narrative technique loaded with “native” anecdotes, strange, if not ordinary, characters with “unpronounceable” names and, above all, “native” proverbs that sounded esoteric in the ears of the white-man publishers. The stereotypes were too many. But rose would always smell nice whatever name you call it. Once the manuscript was eventually given the green light, Things Fall Apart instantly became the rave of the moment, enjoying fascinating reviews across the broad spectrum of literary critics in international journals and mainstreet publications. Sooner than expected, it became a novel sans frontiers. The acclamation was unprecedented.

It was morning yet on creation day for Achebe who rode on the crest of the popularity of Things Fall Apart to turn what could have been the concluding part of the novel into another story culminating in the publication of No Longer at Ease. In essence, No Longer at Ease is a sequel to Things Fall Apart. Obi, the hero of No Longer at Ease is the grandson of Okonkwo, the tragic hero of Things Fall Apart. His own father, Nwoye, (baptised Isaac), was one of the early defectors of Umuofia to forsake their traditional African religion to join the missionaries and their new brand of religion. Achebe is not done yet. He recreates a new setting for what may be referred to as another Things Fall Apart called Arrow of God. Sounds strange?

There are both thematic and ancestral affinities among the trilogy. Both Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease have ancestral linkage through their respective heroes who share a common pedigree while Arrow of God shares a similar thematic bond with Things Fall Apart. Though No Longer at Ease is distinct from Things Fall Apart, apart from sharing a common ancestral heritage, the same cannot be said of Arrow of God and Things Fall Apart. The two have similar themes, settings, conflicts, characterisation and narrative techniques. So, why did Achebe write Arrow of God? Is it an overkill or a deliberate creative attempt to deliver the first literary “Siamese twins” to the world? Or what was he thinking?

Achebe’s motive in writing his early novels is well espoused in ‘The Novelist as Teacher’, a paper he delivered at the Leeds Conference on Commonwealth Literature in 1964. He told his audience, among other things, that his writing was an adequate revolution for him to articulate his people’s culture and help the African society regain its belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-denigration. “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past with all its imperfections was not one long night of savagery which the first European acting on God’s behalf delivered them”.

This aim is part of his contributions to the task of giving back to Africa the pride and self-respect it lost during the years of colonialism. Achebe himself reiterated this fact in ‘The Black Writer’s Burden’, a published article of his in 1966, as “the need to repair the disaster brought upon the African psyche in the period of subjection to alien races”. This cultural attitude is well highlighted in his first three novels but most especially in Arrow of God with a seemingly similar theme, setting and characterisation as in Things Fall Apart. Achebe himself admitted that his purpose in doing so was to fill the gaps created in Things Fall Apart which he saw as a necessity before moving to the contemporary scene. This, in part, accounts for the density of the description of the complex but beautiful traditional life enunciated in the novel. In doing this, he is able to portray the Igbo society under stress, a stress which is symbolically represented in the jealousy of Nwafo by Edogo, in the perennial quarrels between Ugoye and Matefi (wives of Ezeulu, the protagonist), in the unhealthy rivalry between Nwaka and Ezeulu, in the long-standing enmity between two of the six villages of Umuaro, in the land dispute between the whole of Umuaro and Okperi, and finally in the confusion brought by the white man. In spotlighting this stress, however, the author does not part company with his avowed aim of giving Africans back their self-respect.

There is a vivid portrayal of the beauty and rhythm of African life represented in he socio-cultural and politico-economic expositions prevalent in Umuaro, the setting of the novel. The organisational set-up of the six villages that make up Umuaro – Umuachala, Umunnaora, Umuagu, Umuezeani, Umuogwugwu and Umuisiuzo – as a clan, the appointment of a chief priest, the relationship between the priest and his people, the high regard placed on men of titles, the various customs e.g funeral ceremony, marriage, New Yam Festival, Feast of the Pumpkin Leaves, all these are wedged in the plot in order to show the values of traditional African life to the reader.

Any person who had read Things Fall Apart before getting hold of Arrow of God may be tempted to think he is watching a re-run of the film of events and characters in Things Fall Apart. To some extent, yes. But he must not be mistaken to believe that both novels can weigh the same on the scale of priority among intellectuals and critics who believe that there is a more profound and significant treatment of characters and situations in Arrow of God than in Things Fall Apart. Hence there is a more sustained character in Ezeulu, the chief priest, in Arrow of God than in Okonkwo, the warrior, in Things Fall Apart. It is in the more elaborate exposition of the character of Ezeulu and the conflicts within the Umuaro clan that the tragic dimension becomes more pronounced, unlike the unidirectional movements that led to the denouement in Things...

There’s no doubt that Arrow of God is a deliberate remix, to use musical entertainment language, of Things Fall Apart. The hero here is a man of superior intelligence imbued with a sense of moderation. Unlike the hero in Things Fall Apart who relies more on exterior strength and sheer bravado than internal wisdom. Though both are destined to end tragically, Achebe makes sure that Ezeulu towers far above Okonkwo in strength of character, especially in his ability to discern the change the white man’s incursion has brought to his domain and the inevitable social disequilibrium it will endanger.

The plot being an open one, Achebe uses occasional digressions via the path of anecdotes and village gossipers. For instance, any time Anosi is mentioned, one is sure of having the latest ‘gist’ in Umuaro clan. It is through his ever mobile tongue that almost all the six villages learnt of the abomination committed by Oduche, the Christianised son of Ezeulu who, out of overzealousness, attempted to kill the sacred python which further aggravated the enmity between the two priests, Ezeulu and Ezidemili whose deity, idemili, owned the python. This episode further advances the plot. Other techniques used in advancing the course of the story include the employment of digression through the use of anecdotes, short stories and oratory.

This method of adopting oral tradition is further used in the characterisation. The characters of Achebe are representatives of their societies. Just as Okonkwo is presented as the strongman of Umuofia, so is Ezeulu portrayed as the representative of his people. In such a situation, it is difficult to separate the individual from the tragedy that befalls the community and vice versa. It will, therefore, be artificial to separate the individual’s course of action from the social drama being enacted. The two movements must be woven into such unity that enhances the profile of the hero.

Examples abound in how Achebe is able to achieve this. In the internal rivalry among the villages, Ezeulu stands in the centre. In the bigger conflict between European and African cultures, he alone understands the nature of the dilemma posed by the presence of the white man in their midst, ushering in an age of new adjustment. No wonder he declares: “The world is like a mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in the same place.” Alas! There are many forces working towards his tragedy – his pride and stubbornness, the internal division among the villages, the loss of his son, Oduche, to the new religion thereby becoming “the lizard that ruined his mother’s funeral” and the incursion of the white man into the erstwhile peaceful life of the Igbo people.

One cannot talk of Achebe’s achievement in Arrow of God without mentioning his language. Like in Things Fall Apart, the twin novel, Achebe uses English in a universally accepted standard and at the same time in a way to carry his purely authentic African experience. His mastery of the English language enables him to make use of a species of language “that is clear and generous which stirs the emotions and drops anchors in the memory.” Critics are not extravagant with such compliments for nothing. Right in chapter 1, page 1, Achebe gives a signal of what to expect in Arrow … “The moon (the chief priest) saw that day was as thin as an orphan fed grudgingly by a cruel foster-mother.” The imagery is scintillating, a sort of literary echo from Thomas Hardy, the English poet and novelist known for his deep-etched descriptions, e.g in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

Examine also Akukalia’s warning to the other emissaries sent to deliver a message to a neighbouring village. “I think I should remind you again to hold your tongue in your hand when we get there and leave the talking to me.” The idea of holding one’s tongue in one’s hands is patently African but its use does not in any way affect the meaning intended in the statement; rather it adds flavour to it. So also is Ezeulu’s praise of the deity of Eru in the presence of Obika after the latter had recounted the experience of his encounter with the spirit. “When he likes a man, wealth flows like a river into his house; his yams grow as big as human beings, his goats produce threes and his hens hatch nines.” In the background of this statement is the indulgence of Africans in the use of hyperboles which add flavours to their descriptive renditions.

Euphemism, too, readily comes handy. Obika marries Okuata and the narrator has this to say. “When he took his wife to his hut after the sacrifice, would he find her at home – as the saying was – or would he learn with angry humiliation that another man has broken in and gone off with his prize?”

Euphemism, in the description of sensitive or behind-the-door matters, is a common device in traditional African life and is effectively used in Achebe’s novels. He himself holds that the African writer should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.

As a corollary to this, there is a skilful handling and infusion of local proverbs and idioms. The aim of Achebe’s intensive use of these proverbs and wise sayings is to meet the didactic function which he is concerned with. It is also aimed to reveal their place in African traditional life. To him, proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten and he lays them bare on the table as a delicious buffet for all readers. But as a literary artist he does not just present a collage of proverbs for art’s sake. They have their functional relevance as they help bring into focus and sustain the themes the writer is exploring. After the judgement on the land dispute, Ezeulu’s friend, Akuebue, has to rebuke him for turning himself into a traitor in the eyes of his people because of his outspokenness. Hear him: “A man cannot win judgement against the clan.” The message in this wise saying is carried through the novel as Ezeulu fails in the fight against the clan over his detention in Okperi and Umuaro’s lukewarm attitude to avenge his humiliation. Ezeulu’s response as contained in the proverb – “when brothers fight to death a stranger inherits their father’s estate’ – is both prophetic and ironic because when he fights the clan to near-death it is the white man who inherits “the estate” when Christianity is accepted by the people.

Through the proverbs and idioms, traditions are received and handed on, and when they disappear or fall into disuse it is a sign that a particular life is passing away. This is why Achebe lamented in a foreword to “A Selection of African Prose” by W. H. Whiteley (Oxford, 1964) that this aspect of traditional life, often evident in oratory and even in the art of good conversation, is dying down fast and there seems to be no way of preventing it. There is no doubt that the proverb – laden narrative of Arrow of God (and, indeed, all Achebe’s works) is a deliberate effort to retain traditional African prose and consequently to show Africa’s cultural continuity.

His early novels, especially Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, are literary chronicles of traditional African life in Igboland before the advent of the white man who came carrying a Bible in one hand and a pistol in the other to pacify the “primitive tribes” of the Lower Niger. But Arrow of God is so dense in plot, deep in characterisation and profound in narrative technique that even the author once confessed that it is the novel which “I am most likely to be caught sitting down to read again” because of its “peculiar quality”.

Arrow of Proverbs

As soon as these words left his mouth, Ogbazulobodo swung round and cried: Ewo okuo! Ewo okuo! The drummer threw down his sticks and hastily blew out the offending light. The spirit planted the staff into the earth and it reverberated. He pulled it out again and vanished like the wind in the direction of Nkwo, leaving potent words in the air behind.

The fly that struts around on a mound of excrement wastes his time; the mound will always be greater than the fly. The thing that beats the drum for ngwesi is inside the ground. Darkness is so great it gives horns to a dog. He who builds a homestead before another can boast more broken pots. It is ofo that gives rainwater power to cut dry earth. The man who walks ahead of his fellows spots spirits on the way. Bat said he knew his ugliness and chose to fly by night. When the air is fouled by a man on top of a palm tree, the fly is confused. An ill-fated man drinks water and it catches in his teeth…’

He was at once blind and full of sight. He did not see any of the landmarks like trees and huts but his feet knew perfectly where they were going; he did not leave out even one small path from the accustomed route. He knew it without the use of eyes. He only stopped once when he smelt light… ‘Even while people are still talking about the man Rat bit to death, Lizard takes money to have his teeth filed. He who sees an old hag squatting should leave her alone; who knows how she breathes? White Ant chews igbedulu because it is lying on the ground; let him climb the palm trees and chew. He who will swallow udala seeds must consider the size of his anus. The fly that has no one to advise him follows the corpse into the ground….

A fire began to rage inside his chest and to push a dry bitterness up his mouth. But he tasted if from a distance or from a mouth within his mouth. He felt like two separate persons, one running above the other.

…When a handshake passes the elbow, it becomes another thing. The sleep that lasts from one market day to another has become death. The man who likes the meat of the funeral ram, why does he recover when sickness visits him? The mighty tree falls and the little birds scatter in the bush… The little bird which hops off the ground and lands on an anthill may not know it but is still on the ground… A common snake which a man sees all alone may become a python in his eyes… The very Thing which kills Mother Rat is always there to make sure that its young ones never open their eyes… The boy who persists in asking what happened to his father before he has enough strength to avenge him is asking for his father’s fate… The man who belittles the sickness which Monkey has suffered should ask to see the eyes which his nurse got from blowing the sick fire… When death wants to take a little dog, it prevents it from smelling even excrement…

The eight men who would sing the ayaka chorus were still talking where Obika left them. Ozumba had come to sit with them to await his return. They were talking about the big bull which Amalu’s children had bought for his funeral when they heard the voice already coming back. The ayaka men scrambled to their feet and got ready to break into song as soon as Ogbazulobodo re-entered the ilo. They were all amazed that he was already returning. Had he left out any of the paths?

‘Not Obika,’ said Ozumba proudly. ‘He is a sharp one. Give me a sharp boy even though he breaks utensils in his haste.’ This was hardly out of his mouth when Ogbazulobodo raced in and fell down at the foot of the okwolo. Ozumba removed the necklace from his neck and called his name. But Obika did not answer. He called again and touched his chest.

They poured some of the cold water which was always kept handy over his face and body. The song of the ayaka had stopped as abruptly as it had started. They all stood around unable yet to talk.’

“Arrows of Proverbs” is an extract from Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe, Heinemann, 1974; Pages 225 – 227

Weighing the Mind of Boko Haram

The Boko Haram video of the bombing of ThisDay on April 26, 2012 is a gory one. The question that comes to mind is: “How did we arrive here?” A man in white dress drives a black SUV into the premises of a newspaper house and detonates a bomb that explodes in a fiery ball. And the very moment of impact is captured on video. Incredible! Again, how did we arrive here in the premier league of terrorism? The question has since refused to vacate many a viewer’s subconscious. The more we look, the less we see of the rationale for descending to this level of animality in modern-day Nigeria.  

That is no good news for a nation that has been sitting on the edge of a knife since Independence. Boko Haram seems not to care a hoot, though, about national integration or cohesion. It has a mission, whether holy or unholy, to carry out. Showing mercy or respecting humanity is, therefore, out of the question. In Boko Haram’s jurisprudence, offence is offence, whether deliberate or inadvertent. And in its own peculiar nature, time does not heal. It does not change anything. Hence its decision to bomb ThisDay and other media houses. 

“Some of the reasons we decided to attack some media houses, especially ThisDay, is because the paper was used in dishonouring our prophet, Muhammed (SAW) during a beauty pageant in Kaduna in November 2002,” the Boko Haram “Public Awareness Department” explains in the video. It will be recalled that the bone of contention was a seemingly harmless write-up by a ThisDay reporter as part of the media hype for the first Miss World Beauty pageant to be held in Nigeria. A somewhat naive reference to the Holy Prophet by the inexperienced reporter was more than enough spark to ignite the dynamite of opposition that eventually led to the cancellation of the event. ThisDay duly apologised for the uproar inadvertently generated by the publication, and now the media house is being bombed for the mistake committed ten years ago! They try to justify this in the video: “No one has the power to forgive anyone for an offence that God himself has given judgement, especially on an offence that has to do with dishonouring Prophet Muhammed (SAW)... This lady that committed this crime, the judgement on her is to be killed at any opportunity, and the media house is also supposed to be driven out of existence...” Chilling?

That’s not all. For allegedly not being accurately reported, all media houses are now under threat of demolition. “These media houses have committed a lot of offences that are detrimental to Islam, and we don’t have the power to forgive them. We will take revenge on them by God’s grace...” Surprisingly, VOA (Hausa service) is included, too, for having recently “started campaigning for people to support the government against us by exposing us.” There is no doubting the fact that Boko Haram means business. In the process of doing this, it wants the media out of the way. How realistic is this? The press (media) is the barometer by which you gauge the pressure in the polity. Through the press, you are able to feel the prevailing mood among the people. It is a two-way traffic. You need it to know what is going on and what is coming in. A society without a press is a society in darkness. In every democracy, the press has a formidable, constitution-assigned role to play as the Fourth Estate of the Realm.

Hear what Thomas Jefferson, a former US President, said about the press: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” But Boko Haram wants a society without the press. It does not want criticism of its apocalyptic mission even if it debases and denigrates our humanity. That’s missing the point. You cannot afford to antagonise the press no matter the level of mutual distrust. Osama bin Laden, as hateful of the Western world as he was, he never downplayed the role of the media in propagating his self-appointed mission of confronting the West.

There is no doubt that Boko Haram has got it completely wrong. By declaring it is fighting a jihad in the video, it has laid bare its lack of adequate understanding or deliberate misinterpretation of what jihad is all about. A jihad, in the literal sense, means “a struggle,” just as Islam, in its literal sense, means “surrender,” but over the years, these meanings have been subjected to different interpretations and have suffered from the usual “wear and tear” in the hands of various moderate adherents and radical imams. In a jihad there are three different types of struggle. The first deals with the individual believer’s internal struggle to live out the Muslim Faith as well as he can. The second is the struggle to build a good Muslim society. The third refers to holy war, which is the struggle to defend Islam, with force if necessary. It is in this third struggle (holy war) that Islam assumes a more pungent meaning. In the beginning, it connoted “surrender to the will of Allah” but in the quest to expand the frontiers of the religion, surrender has come to denote “conquest.” This is what today’s radicalised, militant Muslims have interpreted to mean physical conquest of land and people “until the sword is finally dipped in its sheath.” Further interpretations seem to vary from one group to the other and from one clime to another.

Boko Haram has borrowed a wandering leaf from latter-day groups like al Qaeda to spread the influence of Islam in Nigeria through its home brewed jihad, a jihad in which anybody, including a fellow Muslim, is target for slaughter. What kind of religious extremism is this? As it is usual in a copycat game, suicide bombers are today queuing up to take part in the “holy war,” ready to die as martyrs and go to heaven to marry virgins. Unknown to Boko Haram, and its followers, the reward of suicide bombers is no longer in heaven but right here on earth.

Recent revelations as to how Osama bin Laden lived his secretive life in Pakistan before being found out and killed by the Americans last year show that some fundamentalists do not really live what they preach. Bin Laden reportedly never encouraged his children, and they are many, to become suicide bombers. He apparently believed life is too precious to be blown away in a backpack. Until death came calling last May, he had three women in his harem in Abbottabad, his Pakistani hiding place. The youngest is 29. The two more elderly ones, 55 and 62 respectively, are PhD holders. For Boko Haram, education is anathema! One day the people would ask: Who are you deceiving? And Boko Haram would need the media to pass their reaction back to them, which is what they tried to do with their video.

Oteh’s Magic and the Paradox of a Faux Pas

The encounter between Arunma Oteh, Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, and Herma Hembe, erstwhile chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on the Capital Market and other Institutions, continues to generate comments and analyses both at home and abroad. Some describe it as a political fiasco while others say it was a collision foretold and, therefore, not unexpected, judging by the antecedents in both arms of the legislature. Indeed, it is not an unusual development. The encounter goes beyond a drama enacted on the floor of the National Assembly. It’s a kind of literary tour de force that draws anchor in Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge.

For students of literature the circumstance, the dramatis personae and the ingredients are virtually of the same stock. To put it more succinctly, it is too much of a coincidence that something that “happened” in the fiction world of Wessex, England, a couple of centuries ago was being played back on reality television in the Nigeria of 2012. Perhaps this goes to lend credence to the argument that while art truly mirrors life, life can also, through some kind of mystical or divine machinations, mirror art. In journalistic parlance, this is a case of man biting a dog. By all ramifications, this is hot news. And this is the literary dimension of the Oteh-Hembe clash on the floor of the Green Chambers on March 15. At the risk of being mischievous, the writer is tempted to believe that Oteh was already aware of this literary episode or had probably scanned through Hardy’s novel before she came out smoking on that fateful day, and almost choked the daylight out of her cross-examiner-in-chief.

In The Mayor of Casterbridge, a seemingly normal court process was turned into a nightmare for the chief judge, Henchard, by the accused, an old woman, a beer (furmity) seller who was being tried for disorderly conduct in public after getting drunk. Her defence was way out of this world. It was a bomb! She literally scattered the Town Hall, venue of the court hearing. She narrated how some time ago, a man, drunk like herself, behaved in a disorderly and unethical manner by selling his wife and child to a sailor for five guineas (five pounds, five shillings). And who could have done such an evil, something akin to a deliberate violation of the moral order? The woman did not leave that question hanging as she pointed in the direction of the judge himself, the mayor! Then came the clincher. “It proves he’s no better than I, and has no right to sit there in judgment upon me.” It was a damning vote of no confidence in the judge and the legal process. The judge had no choice but to voluntarily step down from his Olympian height and go down the dale of ignominy.

Oteh did no less. Accused of not running SEC very well and piling up a Mount Kilimanjaro bill in the hotel, she stayed in for eight months, while awaiting government accommodation, she looked like a piece of cake ready to be devoured by the hungry lions in the lower arm of the legislative assembly. The implication was pretty obvious – a spendthrift and incompetent person is not fit to head SEC. Like the woman in The Mayor... who took the mayor to the cleaners, Oteh screwed up courage to question the integrity of the chairman of the committee probing the affairs of SEC of which she is the DG. She rose up to stoutly defend her integrity, or what remained of it, after the battering she had had the previous day when her competence was called to question. She accused the chairman of unethical conduct by demanding money from SEC and collecting flight ticket and travelling allowance for an official journey he never undertook. She made it clear to the world that the committee was too compromised and not fit to question her or sit in judgment over her integrity. Hembe, like Henchard, his co-traveller in the temple of “justice,” had to abandon his post as chairman of what she described as a “kangaroo court.” It was a blow barely above the belt but its effect was nevertheless devastating to the committee and its members.



It was not the best way to end a hitherto noble assignment in the supposedly hallowed chambers of the legislative arm of government. By now, Hembe may still be wondering what hit him. Did he see it coming? Did anybody ever warn him to beware of the “Ides of Woman”? Hembe fell foul of the much dreaded feminine mystique and had his nose rubbed against a jagged rock. You don’t toy with an angry woman because heaven knows no fury like a woman scorned. An angry woman fights with anything she can lay her hand or head on. She can pour hot water on you, drown you in a pot of hot soup or take razor blade and redraw the contour map on your body. Check the evening papers or soft-sell magazines to see angry women in action.

In more extreme cases, a woman can manhandle her man’s manhood, bite it or sever it from its root, all in a fit of anger which goes to prove that a woman provoked to anger is like a time bomb ready to explode. Perhaps Hembe might not have run into this cul de sac if he had ample knowledge of the feminine mystique. Women may be perceived as the weaker sex but that is just on the surface. They have a fascinating aura of mystery and power that only the uninitiated would toy with. Hembe could have scored a victory, a pyrrhic one at that, the previous day but little did he realise that when a ram gives a head butt and retreats, it’s not out of cowardice but a tactical move to regain its energy and plan a new strategy. He had Oteh pinned down to a corner, March 14, but let go of her to recoup and regroup for the mother of all battles the following day. It was a tactical error or what a Malawian critic is wont to call “blunder in Blantyre”! He virtually succumbed to what students of oral literature would also describe as the “osoronga syndrome,” a kind of feminine mystique, not in the negative, demonic, cultic form but in its positive, affirmative, dynamic, revolutionary sense. They can be decisive and deadly if unjustly and disgustingly provoked, especially in public.

By now, Hembe would have learnt that women are not objects to play yo-yo with in public but who should be adored and respected for their own contributions for the advancement of the country. In whatever position politicians find themselves, they should learn to be humble. Having the power to summon people before committees should not be equated with having superiority over everybody. They are and should remain servants of the people who braved the elements and all man-made obstacles to cast their votes for them. And like in The Mayor... every public officer should always remember the day the past may walk in to question the present and spray his coffee with granulated sand. That will be quite unpalatable.

And for Oteh, it is not yet Uhuru despite her “disrobing” of the young and inexperienced committee chairman, the 2005 graduate of law from the Benue State University. She still has many crocodile-infested rivers to cross. Yes, she has an outstanding academic record and a glittering working experience both at home and abroad but her filibustering style of defence may not survive any form of legal scrutiny. “I’m-not-the-only-thief, you-are-also-a-thief” kind of argument is not, cannot and will never be a necessary or sufficient defence in any theft case. The furmity woman admits her guilt but her argument is that the mayor is equally guilty of a similar offence and should not sit in judgment over her case. Is that Oteh’s argument, too? If it is, then we don’t need a WAEC examiner to return her script with a score of F9. That goes beyond any feminine mystique.

O My God! Where’s Radio Biafra?

By FIDEL BAM

The Nigerian crisis and the Biafra war (1966-1970). Just like yesterday.

Those were horrible days, days that one would not want to remember again. I mean days of headless bodies, decapitated limbs, naked torsos, blood-stained bags, torn sacks and tattered cartons containing what remained of the belongings of those lucky to survive the massacre in the North. They just kept arriving in quick successions in the East. South-bound trains were always full of bloody cargoes to be delivered at the doorstep of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military governor of Eastern Region, as gory mementos of a bloody saga. The newspapers did not shy away from publishing these gory pictures to the chagrin of whoever had the courage or misfortune to take a glimpse. Almost on a daily basis, the town crier would beat the gong for Ojukwu to address Easterners via radio wherever they were to pack their belongings and head home. At the same time he would advise settlers and strangers in the East to go to their respective homes because he could no longer guarantee their safety. That was the time brothers did not know brothers again and Nigerians became strangers, nay, expatriates in their own land. Everybody listened with rapt attention.

It was Ojukwu’s delivery of his messages and addresses that attracted many people on the “other side” to have sympathy and “undying love” for him. He was a good speaker, nay, an orator. He knew when to stress his syllables, when to pause, inhale and raise his pitch and when to lower it. He used this power of eloquence to capture the minds of his listeners, whether on the main street or in the diplomatic suite. ‘Uncle Bola’, a banker living in Inalende, Alawo (close to Abebi), Ibadan, was one of Ojukwu’s greatest fans in those days. His house was a sort of rendezvous for clandestinely listening to Radio Biafra every evening, clandestinely because if caught one might be accused of collaborating with the rebels, as the Biafrans were referred to then. But that did not deter Uncle Bola. He knew when the external service of Radio Biafra would start each day’s broadcast and what their programme schedule was. Before his arrival from his workplace in Bank Road, Dugbe, his younger brother, Supo, and I and other youths would have been waiting in front of his Grundig radio, the magic box that brought into the living room the voice of Okonkon Ndem or whoever was the Radio Biafra continuity announcer. And it was a herculean task trying every day to know the exact spot to pin down the somewhat elusive radio station. That was the era of analogue shortwave radio, no satellite digital receiver facility or other forms of precision tuning. Despite the daily hassle of finding Radio Biafra to hear the latest news from the other side, we all persevered because we believed so much in the eloquent Ojukwu and the big, big grammar he was belching out. We always had our notebooks and other writing materials to jot down new words like “massacre,” “genocide,” “pogrom,” “ambush” and “brinksmanship.”



One day we were too eager to hear the latest from “the owner of words,” as we used to call him, and we could not wait for the owner of the Grundig radio to arrive as we tried to tune the radio ourselves. We thought we could do it, after all we had been watching Uncle Bola do it for months. It was a disaster! For every tuning it was a strange radio station we ran into. “This is Radio Tirana transmitting from the People’s Republic of Albania.” No way. Next. “This is Radio Moscow.” Jesus! Where is Radio Biafra? We tried again and what did we get? “This is Radio Equatorial Guinea transmitting from Malabo.” Trouble! We fiddled with the dial again. “This is Radio Ghana transmitting from Accra.” O my God! We must be moving close. Then we tried to “fine tune” and what did we get? Radio Peking, China! Over the bar! That was it! Immediately we heard footsteps downstairs we just vamoosed. We knew what to expect from Uncle Bola after tampering with his “Radio Biafra.”

Thereafter we took solace in pulling resources together to buy Daily Times and New Nigerian newspapers for news reports about the war. We enjoyed the Times’ day-to-day coverage while New Nigerian supplied the photo album with the clearest war photographs any one could get from a newspaper in those days. Occasionally Radio Nigeria would dish out its own jingles to whip up national sentiments. “To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done,” this was followed by some kind of gobbledegook in Hausa or what we later got to know as the lingua franca of the Nigerian Army. And there was “Go on with one Nigeria,” derived from GOWON, the name of the then head of state.

The lack of creativity in propaganda and the apparent lack of intellectual touch in the articulation of the federal cause deprived the government much sympathy at home and understanding abroad. Perhaps this explains why up till today Nigeria is still craving for the understanding of the international community whenever there’s need to articulate a government policy or when a new government comes to power.

One jingle, however, reechoes till today: “The soul of liberty is eternal vigilance.” It is a jingle worth exhuming and playing again in view of the Boko Haram menace, a seeming precursor of yet another political conflagration. To keep Nigeria one, from the look of things, has become a cliché for the new generation of ethnic nationalities. But, honestly, I don’t want to listen to another Radio Biafra without an Ojukwu. It’s like eating hamburger without the beef.

That was the time brothers did not know brothers again and Nigerians became strangers, nay, expatriates in their own land. Everybody listened with rapt attention.


Relying only on radio and Daily Times (newspapers) for news from the war front

Ojukwu the “owner of words” at the microphone in Radio Biafra

Ojukwu, the Okonkwo of Biafra

There is no celebrating the life and times of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu that mention would not be made of Biafra, for the name, Ojukwu, was and is synonymous with the former secessionist enclave and ambition. There is no argument about that. It is providence that brought about the Siamese-twins relationship which has unwittingly turned Ojukwu into a generic and iconic name for Biafra. Some will relish in this development while others may frown at it as an inevitable reminder of the Nigerian Civil War that culminated in untold hardships, loss of lives and properties.

Historians don’t give a damn about that. Their job is to chronicle, interpret and analyse past events. They are quick to point out that Biafra was an unmitigated African tragedy in which more than one million people perished in an unnecessary fratricidal war. Saying the war was unnecessary is, however, debatable. The extent of the human toll absolutely makes it an undesirable war but in terms of its purgative effect for the angry Igbo of the 1960s, it was a war worth fighting. It was a kind of diabolical catharsis and, no doubt, a just struggle for survival and self-preservation in the face of the wanton killings of the Igbo in the North following the January 15, 1966 coup that instantly but negatively changed the complexion and configuration of the Nigerian polity.

For the 30 months that the war lasted, Biafra was a tragic drama in motion or what the novelist, Zainab Alkali, would describe as a drama of pain in which happiness is just an occasional interlude. It was a tragedy of such magnitude that Biafra became another focal point to the rest of mankind, shortly after the bloodshed in the Congo. The chief protagonist of the ensuing drama was, of course, Ojukwu, a thoroughbred, well-educated and polished military officer who, by virtue of his bourgeois background and military training leaned more to the right of the centre than to the left. Yet an unusual kind of political leadership was thrust on his hitherto conservative shoulders, turning him into an accidental hero of an ideological struggle he least prepared for, a struggle to sustain the newly created Republic of Biafra.

However, since the once risen Biafran sun set in 1970 with the end of the war, many chroniclers of history, playwrights, writers and critics have made a kill of the Biafran tragedy in history books, plays, novels and analyses. It is a natural tendency, though, because it is from life that man draws inspiration and materials for building a corpus of literature. The critic can also, through an indiscernible aperture, peep through the prism of art to have a glimpse of the possible, the impossible, the congruous, the incongruous, the real and the unreal, to contribute to the mounting materials on Biafra and its dramatis personae. This write-up is equally an attempt to do the “uncommon,” nay, the unusual but, perhaps, the imaginable, to do a surreal, comparative analysis of Ojukwu, the Biafran hero, and Okonkwo, the strong man in the famous novel, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe.

But before we go into that, let’s take a look at the rationale for doing this. Both Umuofia, the setting of Things Fall Apart, and Biafra can be used to examine the tragedy in the two seemingly diametrically opposing worlds of fiction and reality. By the way, is the writer not over-stretching the elastic band of imagination? From where should playwrights draw their materials for tragedy? Should it not be purely from reality? Not exactly. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, believes tragedy should be built more on myth (i.e. a fantasised reality) than on history (i.e. a factual reality) as the basis for tragedy. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels seem to disagree with this Aristotlean postulate. They will rather opt for tragedy based on historical events such as we have in Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi or Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman. The Biafra and Umuofia tragic dramas oscillate between the two extremes. While the tragedy of Things Fall Apart is based on fantasised reality, that of Biafra is hinged on historical, factual reality. The two characters can, therefore, be easily accommodated under a common literary microscope for a forensic analysis. In doing so, we can see similarities and draw some parallels between the two.

The story of Biafra is the story of the Igbo people in the larger Nigerian society. They belong to a special breed – hardworking, daring, adventurous, enterprising, religious and ambitious. Before Biafra came into being, the Igbo were everywhere in the West, Midwest and the North, planting and hoisting the flag of their proud heritage to the admiration or envy of fellow Nigerians. Then came the military coup of January 15,1966, and hell was let loose. The centre could no longer hold... Umuofia was no different.

Hitherto, it was a clan which once thought like one, spoke like one, shared a common awareness and acted like one. Then came the white man and his confusing religion and the people could no longer act like one. “He (the white man) has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart,” Obierika, a leader of the clan, sums up the tragedy of Umuofia in Things Fall Apart, both depicting similar settings, similar moods, similar characters with dominant roles within their universe of influence.

The character of Okonkwo is so strong and all-pervasive that the title of the German edition of Things Fall Apart is Okonkwo, a reflection of his central role in the Umuofian tragedy. It’s the same in the world of reality. Ojukwu was Biafra. Biafra was Ojukwu. With his Che Guevara-like beard, he became so much a mythical figure that his face became a robust advertisement for African rebellion and war of self-determination to the rest of the world like Guevara’s in the South American jungle.

The Ojukwu story opens to the world at the height of his military career in 1966 when as a 33-year-old officer he became the first military governor of Eastern Region. He had everything going for him, an aristocratic background and a good education. Okonkwo’s story also opens at the height of his professional and sporting (wrestling) career when, at 18, he dethroned Amalinze, the hitherto undefeated wrestling champion of the time. His fame rose beyond his village and the entire Umuofia clan, not only on account of his wrestling prowess, but also for being a successful farmer and a respected warrior.

His fame and wealth notwithstanding, he was not a happy man. The source of his unhappiness and anger was his father. Unoka was an unsuccessful farmer, a debtor, a weakling and an agbala, a derogatory name for a title-less man. He was regarded as a failure by his contemporaries. It was fear of failure that made Okonkwo steel himself against an open display of any emotion except that of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness, the only thing worth demonstrating was strength, even at the wrong time. He shot at Ojiugo, his second wife, during the Week of Peace. It was his machete blow that finally felled Ikemefuna, the boy who grew to know him as “my father.” It was an unnecessary display of bravery. Ojukwu also had such a steely mien. He hardly laughed in public but he was wont to display grimaces to reflect the ugliness of human nature that warranted the mass killings of his kinsmen and women in the 1960s.

He had smelled the blood of his fellow Igbo, victims of revenge killings in the barracks and other slaughter slabs in the North, and was not afraid to shed some too to water the seed of rebellion. Suspected renegades and saboteurs must be hanged while those with dissenting voices like Victor Banjo, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Phillip Alale and Sam Agbam had to face the firing squad. The price of liberty was not only vigilance in Biafra but also the systematic elimination of opposition. Anger and fear of failure seemed to be controlling his inner being and pushing him into a tragic denouement, despite his enviable pedigree.

Louis Phillipè Odumegwu Ojukwu, his father, a knight, was not like Unoka, the fantasised father of Okonkwo. He was a wealthy businessman, one of the richest of his time, hardworking, urbane, savvy and suave. Ojukwu only took advantage of his family pedigree to acquire high quality education both at home and abroad. He was to later sacrifice a life of opulence to join the army as a private when there were better options! He did not stop there; he also sacrificed his military career to lead his people in a secession bid against the federation, a federation that was justly or unjustly perceived to be bent on annihilating the Igbo race. It was a disastrous miscalculation. The badly equipped and hurriedly trained young troops of Biafra had a daunting task facing a better trained, better equipped federal army at the war front. Soon the cookie crumbled and Ojukwu had to flee into exile “in search of peace” in Ivory Coast, abandoning his lieutenants.

Okonkwo, too, had to go into exile through the barrel of the gun. His gun had misfired during the funeral rites for Ezeudu, killing the deceased’s son. Though it was an inadvertent killing, he had to be banished into exile and off he went to Mbanta, his mother’s hometown. In exile, the virile strongman of Umuofia was literally reduced to a eunuch, an impotent, helpless, toothless bulldog who could only bark but not bite. He heard stories of the new changes taking place in Umuofia and he felt like going back to knock some sense into the white man’s head. His rantings were just like those of a column of ants, calling his people back at home weaklings and effeminate men “clucking like old hens.” Those who had decamped to join the missionaries were nothing but degenerate, gutless and “ball-less” (effeminate), efulefu (worthless) men.

The unsavoury changes taking place around him notwithstanding, Okonkwo, true to his character, made the best of his sojourn. He continued his farming business and prospered. Ojukwu also went into business to while away time in Ivory Coast. He started with transport business and later veered into interior decoration, using his connection with the powers that be to obtain rosy government contracts. Despite their success and prosperity, both still yearned for a return home. Okonkwo had heard a lot about the havoc being perpetrated by the white man on his people’s culture and wanted to return as soon as his seven-year banishment was over. Ojukwu, too, though in a safe haven, was like fish out of the Bight of Biafra. He wanted to go back home where he too could have a piece of the proverbial national cake that politicians were already scrambling for.

Okonkwo returned from exile with great hopes to lead the fight against the white man and his new religion. He could not comprehend the fact that “even titled men like Ogbuefi Ugonna had joined the missionaries.” He was eager to mobilise and rouse his people from slumber for the great fight against the new “usurper” religion. It was a new Umuofia that he met, an Umuofia that had lost its “balls” and the will to fight. Obierika captured the dilemma in a private discussion with Okonkwo. “How do you think we can fight when our brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”

By the time Ojukwu came back to Nigeria from exile in 1982, the falcon could no longer hear the falconer. The old “Igbo party,” NCNC, – long dead, like others –had also given way to new parties like NPP, GNPP, NPN, and UPN into which the Igbo had scattered and sought political relevance. The entity that used to be Biafra had been balkanised into the four states of Imo, Anambra, Cross River and Rivers (in the 19-state structure). His attempt to rally the Igbo into a common front on the political level did not come to much. Personal ambitions seemed to have overtaken the old communal interest. For the second time, the “people’s General” voted with his feet by going into internal self exile in NPN, a party that symbolised the establishment that provoked the birth of Biafra. And he paid a price for his “indiscretion” as he was detained along with fellow politicians when the military struck again in 1983.

If Ojukwu chose to join “them” if he could not beat “them,” Okonkwo stubbornly refused to be like the Joneses. Even at gunpoint, he would not join the motley crowd of those who had desecrated Igbo customs and traditions. He vented his frustration on the white man’s messenger and, in anger, murdered him. It is his inability to recognise change that in the end forced him to commit suicide, an abomination. Obierika, his friend, looked at his dangling body and literally wrote a verbal epitaph: “That man was one of the greatest men in our community. It’s Okonkwo’s personal tragedy that he will be buried like a dog.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Eze Igbo Gburugburu, was no doubt one of the greatest men of Igboland. Unlike the tragic hero of Umuofia, Ojukwu, the Biafran hero, will be buried as a god, not as a dog. And were there a real Obierika, he is wont to write a more befitting epitaph: “Here goes a true born Igbo man who sacrificed his silver spoon for the gun for the advancement of his people’s cause.”

In the realm of imagination, the mythical hero of Things Fall Apart probably lives on in the minds of the equally mythical “Ibo men” of Umuofia. There’s no obliterating Biafra also from the subconscious of the average Igbo man. The conditions that warranted it in the first instance are still present. Ojukwu was more of an accidental hero than an opportunist, as some of his critics are quick to label him, and he rose to the occasion to lead his people literally through the Red Sea, a very herculean task. In spite of the land and sea blockage, his besieged Biafra looked inward through improvisation. It was a vast workshop of native ingenuity. It produced guns, tanks, bombs and anti-aircraft guns to counter the enemy’s menacing arsenal westward even as far as Ore, in present-day Ondo State, where the mother of all battles was fought. The Biafran soldiers were ready to follow Ojukwu to war blindfolded. His charisma was magnetic and infectious. “Ojukwu led people with dignity,” wrote Obi Nwakama, an Ojukwu fan, in a tribute to the memory of the Biafran leader. “Biafra’s grassroots democracy thrived; men and women of ability were inspired to work; young men stood before their General and vowed to give their life to him… He earned their trust. He inspired them by his own sacrifice. He led them – with the flag of the rising sun fluttering – to believe that they were that sun rising.” Okonkwo did not have that kind of following. A man who fought and killed for Umuofia had nobody to fight and kill for him at the time he needed them most. The sun does not rise twice to wake a man. Unknown to Okonkwo, time had moved on without him. Therein lies his personal tragedy.

It could be sunset for Biafra of the 1960s but today, the sun is rising again and blazing for a new Biafra. If Arrow of God (not No Longer at Ease) can be regarded as the real natural “sequel” to Things Fall Apart, the emergence of a new Biafra (Ojukwu called it Biafra of the Mind) cannot be wiped away with just a wave of the hand.

History has a way of repeating itself either in mythical terms or in the reality of human circumstance. Meanwhile it’s adieu to the Ikemba of Nnewi, Eze Igbo Gburugburu of Nigeria and, of course, the “Okonkwo of Biafra.”
domotunde@tellng.com