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Imagined Biafras: Fabricating Nation in Nigerian Civil War Writing

2005; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 36; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1920-1222

Jago Morrison,

Race, History, and American Society

The Biafran war of 1967-1970 was most violent phase in a complex series of convulsions shook in wake of decolonization. Facilitated by British arms supplies from Wilson Labour government, conflict centred on suppression of break-away Republic of Biafra by Federal Military Government of That Nigeria was, from outset, a pragmatic and ambivalent construction is hardly a matter of debate. As is well known, current geopolitical divisions of West Africa were negotiated between Western European powers in 1890s, and emergence of Nigeria itself as a national idea can be traced to London Times in 1897, when it is first proposed by girlfriend of Frederick (later Lord) Lugard, Flora Shaw (Times 6). In a letter sketching out Royal Niger Company's West African territories, Shaw's text conjures an exotic scene, populated by characters ranging from natives of low type who ... had not risen above cannibal stage to the pure bred Hausa [who] is perfectly black, but is, of course, of a far higher type than ordinary negro (6), unabashedly recapitulating terms of mid-nineteenth century racial theory. Her text is replete with cultural, demographic and ethnographic misconceptions and inaccuracies which it would be too time-consuming to unravel here. What it does usefully provide, however, is a sense of imagined entity term Nigeria is called forth to at close of nineteenth century. It emerges from Flora Shaw's pen in 1897 as a for a loose, half-formed colonial construct which, for sake of better understanding in London, now needs to be described by general name (6). In this way Nigeria wins out over Goldesia as common label for the agglomeration of pagan and Mahomedan states which have been brought by exertions of Royal Niger Company (6). The purpose of this article is to explore some of ways in which writings of Biafran war attempt to see beyond idea of Nigeria. If Nigeria's institutionalization as a national idea proved resilient during period of formal colonization, it had also survived without serious challenge at transition to independence. Although alternative formulations of ethnic separatism, regional nationalism and socialist pan-Africanism were vigorously debated across Black Atlantic during 1950s in particular, by time of independence popular anti-colonial sentiment in region had strongly coalesced around aspiration for an independent nationhood. A decade later, however, civil war period is one of much greater flux, in which consensus has substantially unravelled, and in which several radically divergent notions of community are struggling to establish themselves. One of key parchments on which those struggles are inscribed is genre of Nigerian Civil War writing. In an important way, it is to novel and autobiography task has fallen of untangling entire painful civil war experience, and of facing what Wole Soyinka calls this lacuna that dogs our conscience and collective memory (32). This is a literature within which we can see many subsequently influential thinkers and writers finding voice, from president Olusegun Obasanjo to novelist and critic Chinua Achebe. Yet outside itself, diversity of writing flowed out of Biafran war has been largely neglected. Here I will focus on three texts in particular, emerging from three quite different locations and perspectives. Emeke Ojukwu's Ahiara Declaration, first, is a political tract penned by revolutionary leader at a fatal turning point in Biafran struggle. In contrast, Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra is a postmodernist fiction written retrospectively and in exile from United Kingdom. Finally I will look at Sozaboy, a novel by Ogoni dissident Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose later struggles with Nigerian military establishment ultimately led to his execution in 1995. …