Last night friends, colleagues
and families converged on the picturesque market town of Henley-on-Thames, west
of London, to celebrate Chinua Achebe’s incomparable and irrepressible There
was a Country. A spontaneous rendering by all gathered of a popular Igbo
chorus on a variation on the theme of “Happy Survival”, appropriately the Igbo
post-genocide survival anthem, launched the party.
There was a Country is an
indefatigable reminder to an oft-complacent world of the gruesome and
devastating Igbo genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 and the incredible
survival of Igbo people. 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s
population were murdered by the Nigeria state and its domestic and foreign
allies during these 44 months of the foundational genocide of
post-(European)conquest Africa. It is precisely this dual-track mission of There
was a Country that has been most troubling to those fanged assailants of
Achebe’s memoirs. Any reminder of the Igbo genocide and, particularly, the Igbo
survival therefrom, riles the sensibilities of assailants whose life’s quest is
to continue to dart around the crumbling edifice of a doubtful sage, more
demonstrably a genocidist “theorist” who insensately advocated and co-supervised the
murder of 3.1 million children, women and men. This marks the beginning of
Africa’s current age of pestilence. What a burden of a legacy for anyone to
wish to prop up; truly, a dreadfully punishing ordeal.
It is instantly recognisable by
everyone that the Igbo survival from the genocide is a monumental repudiation
of this legacy whatsoever guises it appears to be recycled. This is pointedly
what the assailants of There was a Country are struggling to come to
terms with.
Igbo will never forget. Happy
Survival! Land of the Rising Sun.
