The Wrong Enemies: Revisiting History And The Inheritance of Igbo Grievances, By Adetunji Aderohunmu

An open letter of resignation written by Robert S. Goldstein, reportedly the general public relations consultant of Biafra within the United States between August 1967 and November 1968, to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, and revealed within the Morning Post on August 17, 1968, makes some relatively uncomfortable allegations: Ojukwu was irritating worldwide efforts to ship meals, drugs and different aid supplies to ravenous Biafrans via a proposed land hall.”

One of the best disservices any technology can do to its successors is to bequeath them an incomplete model of historical past, significantly one which teaches them whom to hate with out adequately explaining why.

I’ve typically questioned whether or not, in our try to know the enduring bitterness surrounding the Nigerian Civil War, now we have paid ample consideration to the choices of the very management that took the previous Eastern Region into that disastrous journey.

The struggling of the Igbo inhabitants in the course of the battle is neither debatable nor one thing I’d try and trivialise. Thousands died, households had been displaced, livelihoods had been destroyed and a whole technology was traumatised.

However, acknowledging the struggling of a individuals mustn’t preclude an sincere examination of the choices, calculations and duties of those that claimed to signify them. Victimhood ought to by no means grow to be a everlasting exemption from historic interrogation.

I just lately got here throughout what’s introduced as an open letter of resignation written by Robert S. Goldstein, reportedly the general public relations consultant of Biafra within the United States between August 1967 and November 1968, to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. The letter revealed within the Morning Post on August 17, 1968, makes some relatively uncomfortable allegations. Goldstein accused Ojukwu of irritating worldwide efforts to ship meals, drugs and different aid supplies to ravenous Biafrans via a proposed land hall, insisting as an alternative on an airlift and an entire ceasefire as situations for accepting different preparations.

He additional alleged that the humanitarian disaster was getting used as leverage in negotiating political and navy concessions. If the account is correct, it raises a disturbing query: how a lot of the struggling might have been mitigated if political concerns had not been allowed to complicate humanitarian intervention?

This isn’t an try and absolve the Federal Government of its personal duties, significantly its blockade and conduct of the battle. It is, nevertheless, an invite to look at all sides of a tragedy relatively than selectively assigning duty.

What troubles me much more is our obvious reluctance, as a rustic, to topic historic narratives to the identical scrutiny we readily apply to modern political developments. For many years, some sections of the Igbo inhabitants have carried an everlasting resentment in direction of different Nigerian ethnic teams, with Chief Obafemi Awolowo incessantly that includes prominently in narratives surrounding the hunger of Biafrans.

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Yet, how a lot consideration has been dedicated to interrogating Ojukwu’s choices, significantly the humanitarian and diplomatic penalties of his administration’s dealing with of aid proposals? How many youthful Nigerians have encountered accounts that problem the acquainted narrative of a completely innocent Biafran management?

I’m not suggesting that Goldstein’s letter, standing alone, settles the historic debate. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding humanitarian aid had been sophisticated, with mistrust, navy concerns and obstruction on either side. But that’s exactly why historical past should be examined past ethnic loyalties. It is troubling when generations inherit the anger of their forebears with out inheriting the mental curiosity to analyze the circumstances that produced it. We can’t preserve pointing fingers at supposed exterior enemies whereas refusing to interrogate the choices of our personal political actors.

Perhaps it’s time for a extra sincere dialog throughout the Igbo group, simply as each different ethnic group in Nigeria should be prepared to confront the uncomfortable chapters of its personal historical past. The Yoruba have their historic controversies, the Hausa-Fulani have theirs, and no ethnic group has an unique declare to political knowledge or historic innocence. Ojukwu was not all the Igbo nation, simply as Awolowo was not all the Yoruba nation and Gowon was not all the Hausa-Fulani inhabitants. Leadership choices mustn’t grow to be everlasting ethnic verdicts. My concern is {that a} individuals who proceed to interpret their historic misfortunes primarily via the actions of different ethnic teams could inadvertently overlook the interior choices and management failures that additionally contributed to their predicament.

There is a distinction between demanding historic justice and nurturing inherited hostility. The former will help a nation heal; the latter ensures that each technology finds a brand new enemy responsible for the injuries of the earlier one. Perhaps the best injustice we will do to the following technology of Nigerians is to show them whom to hate earlier than educating them what truly occurred.

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