The Achebean Restoration

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

(paper presented at the Conference on Things Fall Apart at 50, School of Advanced Study, Institute of English Studies, University of London, Friday 10 October 2008)

“Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond”

This 11-worded dramatic opening sentence in Things Fall Apart on the life and times of Okonkwo is as defiant as it is engaging in establishing the African presence and interests in history right from the outset in the novel. For Chinua Achebe, the restoration of the African as the central focus of deliberation and agency is a crucial task of the African narrative on the morrow of the European conquest and occupation of Africa. As a result, Achebe accomplishes two crucial goals in this endeavour. First, he ensures that there is no universal loss of memory of the historic realities of African sovereignty and independence, prior to the conquest, nor on the regenerative seeds of African freedom which survive the occupation. The germination of these seeds, subsequently, would radically define the parameters of the African struggle for the re-establishment of its sovereignty. Secondly, Achebe counters the conquest literature of the aftermath. The latter achievement cannot be exaggerated because in its totalising quest to “rationalise” or indeed “justify” the conquest and its devastating aftermath, the European World’s pervading historiography on Africa (in the arts, science, technology, philosophy, etc., etc) expunges or at best marginalises the creative and driving force of the African humanity in the historical process. The apogee of this project was of course the historiography’s construction of the fallacy that “Africa had no history”, epitomised most outrageously in what Basil Davison has categorised, quite succinctly, as “Hegel’s nonsense” of the 19th century. Achebe’s own careful choice of the wordings of the title of the District Commissioner’s book of conquest at the very end of his novel is a deft reference to this development. Yet, this choice of the towering title of imperial self-conceit was in itself a devastating parody of eurocentric ahistoricity. Even though it appears that the District Commissioner has the last word in Things Fall Apart with the commanding space of the title of his text, the groundings of his conquest architecture of control and consolidation are at best tenuous. So, contrary to the bombastic title of an anthropological treatise, the future of history is not in fact dependent on the District Commissioner nor his nascent occupation regime nor indeed the headquarters of his imperial state back home in Europe. Unquestionably, Umuofia, Africa, still lays claims to this initiative, despite the conquest of the era.

A number of critics have stated over the years that Achebe’s desire to become a writer acquired some urgency following his confrontation with Joyce Carey’s Mister Johnson, whilst at university in the 1950s. It should be recalled that Time magazine had in October 1952 described Mr Johnson most ecstatically as the “best novel ever written about Africa”. There is evidence of Mr Johnson’s impact on Achebe’s mission but this is far less sentimental than some have observed. It is the case that the importance of Mr Johnson, for Achebe, was that the underlying philosophical and historical assumptions of the novel and the techniques employed in its execution, were part of the composite portrait of the eurocentric conquest historiography on Africa that had written Africa out of the reckoning of events. This was the picture that was encapsulated in the endless shelf-rows of literature-of-African agency-denial that made up the curriculum that Achebe had to work through as an African undergraduate in a university college located in Africa. As exemplified in Mr Johnson, for instance, Lyn Innes has correctly noted that Joyce Cary’s “European characters belong to history; their psychology is understood in terms of cause and effect, and they learn and change within specific social and historical situations.” “In contrast,” Innes continues, “African characters like … Mister Johnson do not learn; they behave in certain ways because they are what they are, and ultimately they remain true to their assigned racial characteristics” (emphasis added). For Achebe, it was not just the “infuriating principal character, Johnson,” that he found objectionable in Mr Johnson but a “certain undertow of uncharitableness just below the surface on which [Cary’s] narrative moves and from where, at the slightest chance, a contagion of distaste, hatred and mockery breaks through to poison his tale.” Achebe recalls the occasion of a party in the novel that Johnson gives for his friends which is described in the following grisly prose by Carey: “the demonic appearance of the naked dancers, grinning, shrieking, scowling, or with faces which seemed entirely dislocated, senseless and unhuman, like twisted bags of lard, or burst bladder.” Achebe’s response is quick and to the point: “Haven’t I encountered this crowd before? Perhaps, in Heart of Darkness, in the Congo. But Cary is writing about my home … isn’t it? In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like.” Talking of Heart of Darkness, Achebe would later in 1977 publish his celebrated African-centred reading of Conrad’s text under the caption “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”.

Re-entry

“Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.” In contrast to the extant literature-of-African agency-denial, Things Fall Apart begins with this uncompromisingly evocative statement, proclaiming the re-entry of the African subject of history in this long-overdue reconstructionary narrative. No more are we stuck with the mummifying escapades of the lobotomised creature called Mr Johnson. Instead, we begin to interact with an African who operates from a clearly recognisable centre of their choosing – we have no difficulty whatsoever in recognising and understanding Okonkwo and his land and his people and his humanity. Indeed by the end of chapter one, which is just four pages long, the author establishes a discerning profile of Okonkwo: his upbringing and family ties, his friends, his achievements, and a fascinating overview of the juridico-spiritual and political economic foundation of Umuofia. The rags-to-riches triumph of Okonkwo’s phenomenal personal struggle to succeed in life, despite his modest background, offers a breathtaking insight into the sociology of Igbo meritocratic society; but we also engage with the weaknesses and the intricate balances between the conflicting, and at times contradictory, frames and processes of everyday life that Umuofia has had to construct, such is Achebe’s unwillingness to project a merely romantic canvass of Igbo pre-conquest history. Achebe’s is a remarkably straightforward, disarmingly effortless and a non-convoluted enterprise. It shows that the African story of restoration does not require some pretentiously nor ornamentally turgid sociological or narratory oeuvre. As Robert Wren has cogently observed, “much of Achebe’s fiction, like the greatest fiction, has something of the compression of poetry, which says much in little.” At the end, Okonkwo, the valiant general of his people’s past wars, loses the opportunity to lead his people in the historic resistance battle against the impending European invasion of Umuofia which he has long relished. He commits suicide when he is convinced that “Umuofia would not go to war.”

Kole Omotoso has argued that unlike the Yoruba who view the British invasion of their country as a “mere episode, a catalytic episode only”, the Igbo see the British invasion of Igboland as a confrontation with a “strange Difference, an Other, a Contradiction, an encounter that can only be negative in terms of the effects on Igbo culture and its ways.” Umuofia surely appreciates the grave implications of this archetypal “clash of civilisations” that Omotoso depicts. The Okonkwo-Obierika studied deliberations on the horrific massacre of the people of Abame by an ever-expanding European invading military force and the impact of the event on Umuofia’s national sovereignty is highly illustrative. Indeed, the continuing independence of Umuofia is threatened by this invasion. This gives rise to calls for a steadfast defence of their homeland by its people, despite the military superiority and the ruthlessness of the enemy it faces as historian Obierika is keen to stress: “Have you not heard how the white man wiped out Abame?” He adds, ominously, “They would go to Umuru and bring the soldiers, and we [Umuofia] would be like Abame.” For Okonkwo, the obvious overwhelming military odds against Umuofia notwithstanding, the country must defend its sovereignty resolutely: “We must fight these men and drive them from our land.”

Okonkwo’s forthright response to Obierika’s apparent reticence about how to respond to the impending British invasion of Umuofia shows clearly that years of enforced exile from home have not in any way diminished the hero’s patriotic instincts and distinctions. Okonkwo’s position on this subject has been the source and focus of criticism by some scholars who think it is reckless, given the preponderant military superiority of the invader; nothing else. Ernest Emenyonu notes: “He [Okonkwo] stubbornly clings to his delusion, does not admit defeat until ‘tied to a stake’.” Solomon Iyasere agrees: “Compelled by his own uncompromising attitudes ... Okonkwo turns to the only means he knows – violence – to solve the problem.” Kalu Ogbaa writes: “Okonkwo seizes the call to arms as a welcome opportunity to demonstrate once more his patriotism and valor without discretion. He understands how to ‘root out this evil’ without regard to the danger ...” Richard Priebe reflects on what he terms “Okonkwo’s unbending will” which “inexorabl[y]” leads to the “tragic end” of the hero’s suicide. In the same breadth, Abdul JanMohamed feels that Okonkwo is “blind to the virtues of flexibility and accommodation” which leads the latter to “impulsively” kill the envoy sent by the invading European-led army (positioned outside Umuofia at the time) to disband a crucial mass meeting of Umuofia ohanaeze (people and leadership) called to discuss the grave emergency of the impending European invasion. This subject of “inflexibility” in Okonkwo’s response to the emergency at stake is a theme pursued by Abiola Irele who describes it as a “tragic flaw” in the hero’s character which he also reckons is a “reflection of his [Okonkwo’s] society.” Gareth Griffiths, finally, is particularly contemptuous of Okonkwo’s unquestioning disposition to defend his homeland from the European aggression: “Okonkwo is destroyed because he performs more than is expected of him, and sacrifices his personal life to an exaggerated, even pathological, sense of communal duty.” Yet, bound by the sole preoccupation on the balance of military forces of both sides, these critics lose sight of the salient features in history that characterise the defence by peoples, any peoples, of their homeland from external invasion whatever the odds – even when this defence might appear “too obviously suicidal”, to quote from C.L.R. James. As history has shown, each and every invader of some other person’s country is potentially militarily superior to their would-be victims. But the latter’s response to the event is the defence of the homeland under attack despite the odds and even when these are known by the defenders as overwhelming.

Genocide

The Abame massacre and those Umuofia debates on its aftermath crucially map the spectrum of milestones that would define the trajectory of the British 100 years’ war against the Igbo and the variegated frames of Igbo resistance to it. This war culminates in the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide when 3.1 million Igbo, a quarter of the nation’s population then, were murdered. This was the foundational genocide of post-European conquest Africa, effectively inaugurating the age of pestilence which, by and large, characterises contemporary Africa. Soon, the killing fields from Igboland expanded almost inexorably across Africa as the following haunting reminders of slaughter during the epoch illustrate: Uganda, Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, southern Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan. Twelve million were killed in these 13 countries. Added to the 3.1 million Igbo dead, Africa has had a gruesome tally of 15.1 million people murdered by its genocide states in the past 42 years.

Britain was a central operative, along with the Nigerian state, in the planning and execution of the Igbo genocide right from its outset in 1966 to its concluding phases in 1969/1970. It was Britain’s “punishment” of the Igbo for its audacious lead of the struggle for the freeing of Nigeria from the British occupation that began in the 1940s. Twice during that struggle, the occupation regime had casually watched two organised pogroms against the Igbo in north Nigeria – in 1945 and 1953. These murders, which also included the looting and destruction of tens of thousands of pounds worth of Igbo property and businesses, were carried out by pro-British political forces in the region who were opposed to the restoration of African independence but who Britain would hand over supreme political power of the country on the eve of its so-called departure from Nigeria in 1960. The pogroms were clearly dress rehearsals for the subsequent genocide.

Without British complicity, it was highly unlikely that the Igbo genocide would have been embarked upon in its initial phase by the Nigerian state with such unrelenting stretch and consequences between May and October 1966. Without the massive arms support that Nigeria received from Britain especially, it was highly improbable that Nigeria would have been in the military position to pursue its second phase of the genocide – namely, the invasion of Igboland – between July 1967 and January 1970. Harold Wilson, the British prime minister at the time, was adamant, as the slaughtering worsened, that he “would accept” the death of “a half a million” Igbo “if that was what it took” the Nigerian genocidists on the ground to accomplish their ghastly mission. Such was the grotesquely expressed diminution of African life made by a supposedly leading politician of the world of the 1960s – barely 20 years after the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide. As the final tally of its murder of the Igbo demonstrates, Nigeria probably had the perverse satisfaction of having performed far in excess of Wilson’s grim target … In the wake of the genocide, Igboland remains occupied by the Nigerian military. Several thousands more Igbo have been murdered in Nigeria since 1970 by the state and its varied agents, some who now organise unrelentessly from the platform and under the banner of religious fundamentalism. Forty years on, Nigeria has imposed on the Igbo and Igboland the most dehumanising raft of socioeconomic package of non-development and deprivation not seen anywhere else in Africa. In essence, the genocide savagely goes on …

Renaissance

Finally, we must pose the following question: When will Umuofia re-establish its lost sovereignty? The restoration of Umuofia freedom is arguably the most eagerly awaited development in Africa of the new century. The precise formulations and circumstances of such an outcome, with consequences of immense epochal proportions, are impossible to predict or indeed prescribe. Interestingly, historian Obierika reminisces on the future of Umuofia, albeit cryptically, in those solemn moments as he reassures the world of the great life of his fallen dear friend. One component in this seeming puzzle is however certain. In one of those fascinating but intriguing quirks that occurs in the course of history, the restoration of freedom, for Umuofia, will, again, amount to things falling apart. Umuofia’s current geopolitical status, as everybody knows, is completely untenable for its people. This second time around, unlike the cataclysmic events of 140 years ago, a far-reaching social transformation of the nation is at once distinctly inevitable and historically liberatory. Umuofia’s restoration of sovereignty will herald the much-sought process across Africa for the dismantling of the constellation of genocide and kakistocratic states embedded in post-European conquest Africa of which Umuofia is presently forced in. The African renaissance would have begun in earnest.


Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is a leading scholar of the Igbo genocide, 1966-1970. His books include Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Macmillan, 1990), Africa 2001: The State, Human Rights and the People (IIAR, 1993), African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe (African Renaissance, 2001) and Biafra Revisited (African Renaissance, 2006)