‘There Was a Country’: a review of Chinua Achebe’s Biafran memoir

BY IKE ANYA, AFRICAN ARGUMENTS

In our house in Nsukka, the small university town in eastern Nigeria where I grew up, my parents’ bedroom harboured a cupboard, reached only by standing on a stepladder. In that cupboard lay a battered brown leather satchel, filled with memorabilia from Biafra. I remember Biafran stamps, currency notes and coins, photographs, receipts, letters and a small green hard backed pamphlet: The Ahiara Declaration.

From time to time, under conditions of great secrecy, the satchel would be brought down and my brothers and I would be allowed to rummage through it as my parents told us stories of their harrowing experiences during the war. We would look at photographs of friends and family “lost” in the conflict, or during the massacres of Igbos that preceded it. We would marvel at the lightness of the Biafran coins. I don’t remember my parents explicitly saying it, but somehow it was communicated to us that the satchel and its contents were not things to be discussed outside the family home.

In Nigeria in the 1970s when I grew up, Biafra was only talked about in hushed tones, in an atmosphere of an unspoken fear that talking about it could bring reprisals.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to an early rough-cut screening of the film version of Chimamanda Adichie’s book, Half of a Yellow Sun. At the end, in the darkened room in Soho, as I joined others to congratulate the director Biyi Bandele, I found myself hugging him instead and felt to my embarrassment, tears running down my cheeks. As I apologised, avoiding the bemused stares from some of the staff at the venue, I explained to Biyi that I had felt such a powerful reaction because the story he was telling was the story of my family – of my parents and grandparents.

That evening, as on the phone I described my feelings watching Biafran refugees fleeing the university town of Nsukka to my mother, who had herself fled the town with my father and elder brother in 1967, she said “I am glad that our story is going to be told, that the world will remember”.

Chinua Achebe’s new book There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra emerges into this landscape of memory and remembrance, forty two years after the war ended. In the book Achebe, a few weeks before his 82nd birthday, finally sets out to tell the story of his Biafra. The format he adopts is novel – involving a rambling mix of anecdotes, summarized histories, analysis, reportage, declamation and haunting poetry. In some ways, reading the book feels like I imagine spending an hour or two chatting with the distinguished novelist might.

He roams from the story of how Nigeria came to be, to his schooldays and burgeoning friendships with prominent figures like the poet Christopher Okigbo, whose presence looms large through the book. Interspersing the historical account is the story of his father, one of the early Igbo converts to Christianity, and his experiences growing up with newly Christian, trailblazing parents caught between the old traditions and cosmology of the Igbo people and the new Christianity. The personal glimpses into his early life are hugely enjoyable and indeed tantalizing – often outlined so succinctly, that he leaves the reader greedy for more detail.

Approaching the events leading up to the war - the descent of the first post-independence Nigerian government into an abyss of corruption and misrule; the role that the colonial government played in setting the stage for this descent and the first military coup in 1966 – he acquires a less personal and more straightforward recounting tone. This continues until the latter part of the book, when he begins to describe the counter-coup of July 1966, the massacres of Igbos that followed the coup, the failed attempts at negotiating peace and the subsequent declaration of independence and the harrowing consequences that followed.

Achebe, as is his right, does not pull any punches, although he does make some concessions to alternative points of view, especially in relation to the legacy of colonialism and the moral imperative on writers to produce committed literature. He is less conciliatory on the question of whether the actions of the Federal Government of Nigeria during the war constituted war crimes and, possibly, genocide. He is scrupulous in naming the officers and individuals responsible, and where possible provides their viewpoints based on news and other reports.

He also highlights the role played by Western countries and the international community. And he challenges the popular perception that General Gowon’s “No Victor, No Vanquished” policy at the end of the war in 1970 led to the successful re-integration of the Igbos into Nigeria, highlighting the egregious government policy which wiped out the savings of every Biafran who had operated their bank accounts during the war with an “ex- gratia” payment of just 20 pounds. He is also laser sharp in his conviction that part of Nigeria’s problem stems from its anti-meritocratic suppression of the Igbo people, and the refusal of the country to face up to insalubrious aspects of its history, issues that he argues continue to haunt it.

Of particular interest are the snippets that emerge of life in Biafra – the intense emotional connection of a people united by the fear and anger at the massacres, the ingenuity of the engineers who fond ways to refine petrol or build bombs and the efforts of artists and intellectuals to contribute to building a new nation. He also describes his own forays to foreign capitals to seek their support for the Biafran dream and the eventual withering and death of that dream. Sprinkled through the book are excerpts from a series of interviews commissioned by the Achebe Foundation with many of the key players in Nigeria’s history. These, when eventually published, should provide a rich resource and other perspectives on the events that the author describes.

The final section of the book picks up on Nigeria’s journey since the end of the war, dipping into the failures of governance and the consequences, raising several questions that need to be addressed for the future.

The book could benefit from a closer proof-reading and fact-checking process by an informed editor. Irritating errors crop up like “maul over” for “mull over” “deferral” for “federal”, “Iwe Ihorin” for “Iwe Irohin” and St Elizabeth’s Hospital for Queen Elizabeth Hospital, but these do not detract from Achebe’s attempt to present, from his perspective, an account of those dark days. As he says in the book, “My aim is not to provide all the answers but to raise questions and perhaps to cause a few headaches”. It is clear that this is his book, his view and his own particular nostalgic ramble. Ultimately, it is important that he has shared it, warts, unevenness and all. In doing so, Achebe has helped bring the contents of my parents’ brown satchel back into the open.

Ike Anya is a Nigerian public health doctor and writer based in London. His essay People Don’t Get Depressed in Nigeria appears in the current edition of Granta Magazine

There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra - TLE Review

Chinua Achebe: There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Herbert Ekwe Ekwe (Independent scholar )

The Literary Encyclopedia

Chinua Achebe is Africa’s foremost novelist and one of the African World’s most outstanding intellectuals. The 1958 publication of his classic, Things Fall Apart,underscores the African-centred thrust of Achebe’s esteemed literary journey. In There was a Country, Achebe revisits the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa. It is also Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century, in which 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered. Achebe himself narrowly escaped capture by the genocidist army in Lagos where he worked as director of the external service of Nigeria’s public broadcasting corporation.

Safely back in Biafra, Achebe was appointed roving cultural ambassador by the fledging resistance government of the new republic to travel and inform the world of this heinous crime being perpetrated in Africa, barely 20 years after the Jewish genocide. He recalls with immense satisfaction the successes of his travels in Africa, Europe and North America during the period – meeting leading writers and intellectuals, addressing church, civil and human rights assemblies, and charity and humanitarian caucuses. Achebe praises, particularly, the writings and campaign work of opposition to the genocide by Jean-Paul Sartre, Francois Mauriac, Auberon Waugh, Kurt Vonnegut, Herbert Gold, Harvey Swodos, Geoffery Hill, Douglas Killam, Conor Cruise O’Brien and Stanley Diamond. On Diamond, for example, Achebe notes: “This world-renowned anthropologist … galvaniz[ed] a formidable American and Canadian intellectual response to the tragedy” (Chinua Achebe, 2012: 106).

These responses to the genocide from abroad are a sharp contrast to the appalling position of Nigerian intellectuals, Achebe’s own contemporaries of writers and academics mostly from the University College Ibadan, essentially Nigeria’s pioneer post-conquest circle of scholars who emerged in the mid-1950s (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, 2002). Apart from dramatist Wole Soyinka, notably, a stretch of Nigerian intellectuals supported the genocide or were complicit in the crime by their deafening silence: “We expected to hear something from the intellectuals, from our own friends. Rather, what we heard was, ‘Oh, they had it coming to them’, or words to that effect” (68-69). Furthermore;

as many of us [who survived the first phase of the genocide] packed our belongings to return [home] some of the people we had lived with for years, some for decades, jeered and said, ‘Let them [Igbo] go; food will be cheaper in Lagos’. That kind of experience is very powerful. It is something I could not possibly forget. I realized suddenly that I had not been living in my home; I had been living in a strange place. (68)

Okwudiba Nnoli, the political economist, who, equally, cannot forget the nonchalance and hostility of Nigerian colleagues and others then, recalls: “[a]t that time, Nigeria seemed morally anesthesized” (Okwudiba Nnoli, 1980: 245).

The perpetrators of the genocide, who subsequently seized and pillaged the rich Nigerian economy, have by and large escaped sanctions from the international community. The consequences for Africa have been catastrophic, in that various autocratic regimes on the continent felt they could go on similar killing sprees with impunity. Forty-two years on, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in the ever-expanding genocidal killing fields of the continent in Rwanda (1994), Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo (variously, since the late 1990s), Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004), Abyei – south of the Sudan – (ongoing) and Nuba – south of the Sudan – (ongoing) and in other wars in Liberia, Ethiopia, Congo Republic, Somalia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad, Mozambique, Algeria, Libya, Kenya, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Angola, Zimbabwe, Burundi and Mali.

Achebe reminds his readers that the perpetrators have still not shown any form of remorse for this crime (234-236). On the contrary, Nigeria’s genocidal campaign against the Igbo people has been followed, post-January 1970, by the implementation of the most dehumanising raft of socioeconomic package of deprivation in occupied Igboland, not seen anywhere else in Africa. This package includes the following 10 distinct features:

1. Seizure and looting of the multibillion-(US)dollar capital assets across Biafra including particularly those at Igwe Ocha/Port Harcourt conurbations and elsewhere in Nigeria

2. Comprehensive sequestration of Igbo liquid assets in Biafra and Nigeria (as of January 1970), bar the £20.00 (twenty pounds sterling) doled out only to the male surviving head of an Igbo family

3. Exponential expropriation of the rich Igbo oil resources from the Abia, Delta, Imo and Rivers administrative regions

4. Blanket policy of non-development of Igboland

5. Aggressive degradation of socioeconomic life of Igboland

6. Ignoring ever-expanding soil erosion/landslides and other pressing ecological emergencies particularly in northwest Igboland

7. Continuing reinforcement of the overall state of siege of Igboland

8. Nineteen cases of premeditated pogroms against the Igbo, particularly in north Nigeria, between 1980 and 2012

9. Ninety per cent of the 54,000 people murdered in Nigeria by the state operatives and agents since 1999 are Igbo people, according to the December 2011 research by the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule Of Law – an Onicha-based human rights organisation

10. At least eighty per cent of people murdered by the Boko Haram islamist insurgent group’s attacks across swathes of lands in north/northcentral Nigeria since Christmas Day 2011 to date are Igbo.

These latter features, especially numbers 1-7 which inaugurated phase-III of the Igbo genocide on 13 January 1970, constitute one of the five acts of genocide explicitly defined in article 2 of the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life designed to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2012).

There was an extensive coverage of the Igbo genocide in the international media throughout its duration. Yet in most countries of Africa in addition to the Organisation of African Unity, the continent’s supranational body, there was no condemnation of the Igbo genocide. On the contrary, in one conference communiqué after another issued throughout the 44-month duration of the slaughter, most of Africa considered the genocide a “Nigerian internal affair” (Achebe: 96-99). Achebe himself was part of the Biafra delegation to one such conference in Kampala, Uganda, in May 1968 (Achebe: 166-167). It is precisely because the perpetrators of the Igbo genocide appeared to have been let off the hook for their crimes that Africa did not have to wait very long before the politics of the Nigerian genocide-state metamorphosed violently beyond the country’s frontiers. Leaders elsewhere on the continent would subsequently wage their own versions of the liquidation of “opponents” of subjugated nations and nationalities as ruthlessly and horrifically as they could, à la Nigeria, because they expected no sanctions from either their African colleagues or from the rest of the international community. As a result, as already indicated, the killing fields of Igboland expanded almost inexorably across every geographical region of Africa.

As for the United Nations, it, too, never condemned the Igbo genocide unequivocally. Achebe appropriately uses the word “silence” (Achebe: 211) to capture the UN response to the tragedy. U Thant, its secretary-general, consistently maintained that it was a “Nigerian internal affair” (Achebe: 211-212). The United Nations could have stopped the genocide, instead of protecting the interests of the Nigerian state (Achebe: 212). In the wake of the Jewish genocide of the 1930s-1940s, Africa was, with hindsight, most cruelly unlucky to have been the testing ground for the presumed global community’s resolve to fight genocide subsequently, particularly after the 1948 historic UN declaration on this crime against humanity (cf. Hugh McCullum, 2012). Only a few would have failed to note that U Thant’s reference to “internal” is highly problematic, for genocide, as had been demonstrated devastatingly 20-30 years earlier in Europe, would of course occur within some territoriality (“internal”) where the perpetrator exercises a permanent or limited/ partial/ temporary sociopolitical control (cf. Nazi Germany and its programme to destroy its Jewish population within Germany itself; Nazi Germany and its programme to destroy Jewish populations within those countries in Europe under its occupation from 1939 and 1945). Between 1966 and 2006, the world would witness genocide carried out against the Igbo, the Tutsi/some Hutu, and Darfuri in “internal” spaces that go by the names Nigeria, Rwanda, and the Sudan respectively. The contours of the territory where genocide is executed do not therefore make the perpetrators less culpable, nor the crime permissible as the United Nations’s crucial 1948 genocide declaration states unambiguously.

The central role played by Britain in this campaign no doubt reinforced the failure of the United Nations to protect Igbo people during this catastrophe. Britain, a fully-fledged member of the United Nations – indeed a founding member of the organisation who enjoys a permanent seat on its security council and participated in drafting the anti-genocide declaration – supported the Igbo genocide militarily, politically and diplomatically. Britain was deeply riled by the Igbo lead-role in the 1930s-1960s in the struggle to terminate its occupation of Nigeria. A senior British foreign office official was adamant that his government’s position on the international relief supply effort to the encircled and bombarded Igbo was to “show conspicuous zeal in relief while in fact letting the little buggers starve out” (Roger Morris, 1977: 122). Indeed as the murder of the Igbo progressively worsened, Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who Achebe describes as “villain of the peace” (Achebe: 214), was unfazed when he informed Clyde Ferguson (United States State Department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” (Morris: 122) Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide.

Achebe embarks on his all-important memoir by quoting that engaging Igbo proverb that reminds everyone of the urgency of trying to come to terms with a catastrophic history: “a person (sic) who does not know where the rain began to beat them cannot say where they dried their body” (Achebe: 1). Thankfully, for the interest of posterity, this subject, the Igbo genocide, is one of the most documented crimes against humanity. Leading university and public libraries across Europe (particularly in Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden) and North America have invaluable repositories of books, essays, articles, state papers (including, crucially, hitherto classified material now declassified as part of mandatory timeframe provisions and freedom-to-information legislations), church papers, human rights/anti-genocide/anti-war groups’ campaign papers, reports, photographs and interviews, Red Cross/other third sector papers, reports and photographs, newspaper/newsmagazine/radio/television/video archives and sole individual depositories, some of which are classified as “anonymous contributors”.

These data variously include extensive coverage of news and analyses of varying features of the genocide between May 1966 and January 1970 as well as still photographs and reels of film footage of the devastating impact of the genocidist’s “starvation” attack on Igbo children and older people, the air force’s carpet bombings of Igbo population centres (especially refugee establishments, churches, shrines, schools, hospitals, markets, homes, farmlands and playgrounds) and the haunting photographs and associated material that capture the murder of tens of thousands Igbo in north Nigerian towns and villages and elsewhere during the first phase of the genocide in May-October 1966. A stream of these archival references has flowed steadily onto the youtube website as well as other internet outlets and much more material on the genocide will be available online in the months and years ahead. On the whole, this documentation is a treasure-trove for the conscientious scholar and researcher on the genocide.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua Achebe, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. London: Allen Lane, 2012.

Amnesty International, “Killing at will: Extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings by the police in Nigeria”. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR44/038/2009/en/f09b1c15-77b4-40aa-a608-b3b01bde0fc5/afr440382009en.pdf (accessed 24 September 2012)

Duffield, Caroline (a), “Nigerian hospital ‘overwhelmed by corpses from the police’”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/8400799.stm (accessed 25 September 2012).

Duffield, Caroline (b), “Nigerian police: Issuing corpses and denials”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/8401119.stm (accessed 25 September 2012)

McCullum, Hugh, “Biafra was the beginning”. http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=5549 (accessed 22 September 2012).

Morris, Roger, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger & American Foreign Policy. London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977.

Nnoli, Okwudiba, Ethnic Politics in Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1980. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Convention and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide”. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/genocide.htm (accessed 25 September 2012)

Walker, Andrew, “On patrol with Nigeria’s police”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/7986039.stm (accessed 23 September 2012).

Citation:
Ekwe Ekwe, Herbert. "There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 October 2012

The Literary Encyclopedia

Kenya Makes The List In Academy Awards Foreign Language Category

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced a record setting seventy-one entries to its list of official foreign language category Monday, October 8, 2012 for the Oscars in 2013 with Kenya making the list for the first time.

"Nairobi Half Life," directed by David "Tosh" Gitonga and writers Serah Mwihaki, Charles “Potash” Matathia, Samuel Munene and Billy Kahora about a story of an aspiring actor who goes to the big city, Nairobi, in search of fame and future; lost his belongings becoming destitute and while struggling to get back on his feet with the help of dubious friends, he finds himself in a series of criminal activities.

Iran did not submit its entry in protest of "Innocence of Muslims" which sparked deadly riots all across the globe. The Oscar nominations will be announced on January 10, 2013 while the ceremony will be held on February 24, 2013.

Calgarian sees the positive after homeless experience

Reasons for thanks abound

By Valerie Fortney, Calgary Herald

Tasha Brown - with her husband Oliver Okennah and her three children, Domanik, 10, Delilah, 16, and Diante, 12 - is speaking out on the issue of homelessness. Photo: Ted Rhodes/Calgary Herald

Her date was more than a half-hour late. As she walked out of the coffee shop, Tasha Brown made an uncharacteristic decision.

"I was throwing in the towel," she says with a laugh of her fleeting moment of defeat. "Just then, I looked up and saw the most handsome, tall man walking towards me."

That chance encounter earlier this year between a single mom and a new Canadian turned into a two-hour-long, impromptu coffee date. "We were together every single day from that moment on," says the 34-year-old Brown. "I pretty well knew Oliver was the one after a couple of dates."

On Sept. 29, Tasha Brown and 33-year-old Oliver Okennah were married in a northwest Calgary church, before close to 200 cheering friends and community supporters. Despite the couple's humble $1,000 wedding budget - her flowing gown was a gift from a friend, while others pitched in with such accessories as flowers and table decorations - it was a grand affair.

Anyone familiar with her can-do spirit would have little doubt Brown could pull it off. "I don't like to think about limits," she says with a chuckle as we chat in her Erin Woods home on Friday. "You've got to keep positive and work with what you have."

Brown first came to the attention of Herald readers Thanksgiving of 2006, when I was assigned the task of talking to people who knew first-hand the challenges of being homeless on Calgary streets. When I put in a request at the charitable organization CUPS Health and Educational Centre to help me find someone who could speak on homeless families, Brown was the only one who volunteered.

"I had nothing to be ashamed of," she says of that day six years ago. "We went without a home for only three months, but it was a devastating experience that had lasting effects. I really felt people needed to understand what it was like for us."

At the time, Brown was a single mother of three, who after being swindled out of a damage deposit - the man renting wasn't the real owner - found herself a client of such local agencies as Inn From the Cold and CUPS. Those long months were spent in church basements by night and CUPS' family resource centre by day.

Brown's no-holds-barred story of having to read bedtime stories to her kids from a cot in a gymnasium, as well as the stigma they experienced at school, struck a chord with readers.

"I was overwhelmed by people's generosity," says Brown, who was offered a rental home at an affordable rate, among many other generous donations.

Soon, buoyed by the experience, Brown and her then-15-year-old daughter Delilah began speaking publicly about their experiences and were profiled in a documentary on homelessness; Delilah was later selected as a finalist for "Top 20 under 20," a national program sponsored by the national non-profit organization Youth in Motion.

"A lot of great things came about by speaking out," says Brown, who began working for CUPS in its family resource centre. The support she received gave her the confidence to strive for even more: in 2009, she took a program sponsored by Momentum, a local non-profit organization run by the Mennonite Central Committee. That program got her in touch with representatives from the Own Hart Home Owners Program, which matched, at a ratio of four to one, what she was able to save for a down payment.

Last year, she and her kids moved into their three-bedroom townhouse. "We even got the dog," she says with a smile of Officer, their ab cross. "People take for granted having a roof over their heads, but without it, it's pretty hard to get anywhere."

Brown, who continues her work today with CUPS in its intake area, feels she can be an inspiration for those desperate clients who walk in the door.

"I understand why so many turn to such self-destructive things as addiction," says the non-drinker who was recently profiled in a book for the Calgary Homeless Foundation, Susan Scott's The Beginning of the End. "I've walked in their shoes, so I understand what they're up against."

These days, she is busy with writing a book on her experience of homelessness - "I want my kids to know what I was thinking and I want people to understand what goes on when you're in this situation" - while happily settling in to married life.

"We're saving up to go to Nigeria, where Oliver is from," she says. "I want to meet my new family."

Meanwhile, she says this Thanksgiving she will think of all the richness of her life that came out of her own courage to speak out those six years ago.

"It doesn't matter how much money you have, how important you are, what kind of car you drive," says the gal who'll soon go by the name Tasha Okennah.

"What matters is who is sitting around your table - that you're loved and doing your best with what God has given you."

Flood Sacks Jonathan's Home, Kinsmen As Group Warns of Impending Famine

It was a typical case of the powerful also cry as the nationwide flood has hit the homes of both the rich and the poor.

The flood has spread to the homes of political gladiators in Bayelsa State, including the homestead of President Goodluck Jonathan. His native community, Otuoke, just at the bank of the Kolo creek in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, was over the weekend, submerged by flood, following the ceaseless downpour in the last few days. Over 90 per cent of Bayelsa State has been submerged by flood.

All attempts to get to Otuoke proved abortive as the road from Agbura community near Yenagoa was taken over by the water. Those venturing to the community could only go by canoes which were on standby along the road to the community.

The heliport where President Jonathan's helicopter usually lands in the outskirts of the Otuoke community has now been converted to a refugee camp, as the flood has sacked thousands of people from their homes.

Former governors of the state, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha's country home at Amassoma and his residence at Yenagoa, the state capital have all been overtaken by the ravaging flood.

The Niger Delta University (NDU) also situated at Amassoma has also been swallowed by the flood.

Earlier last week, the country home of the present governor, Seriake Dickson, was submerged by flood as well.

Governor Dickson who spoke to the refugees at the sports complex yesterday said he had set up an emergency disaster committee to advise him on the situation.

He said that over three quarters of the people of the state were affected by the flood and that the normal expenditure of the state cannot cope with the magnitude of the situation.

Lamenting the disaster that the flood has wrought, Governor Seriake Dickson stated that six of the eight local government council areas in the state were under water, adding that the rest two, Nembe and Brass may be submerged soon.

He said that his country home in Toru Orua had been submerged also. "I couldn't land in my own community when I went there."

But the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA) has set up three refugee camps in conjunction with the state government to house the over 10,000 internally displaced persons so far identified in Yenagoa.

The Samson Siasia Sports Complex, the Bishop Demieri Grammar School (BDGS) and the Igbogene Heliport have been converted to refugee camps.

The NEMA zonal coordinator, South/South, Emenike Umesi said that three large tents capable of holding 200 families each would be erected at the Sports Complex while 24 small tents were being erected at the heliport.

THISDAY gathered that the two communities are under heavy flooding each year, hence the decision of the state government to relocate the state airport from the area to another location.

But fearing the effect of the nationwide flooding, Civil Society Organisations have warned of imminent food shortage throughout the country following the flooding of many communities in over 21 states in Nigeria.

One of the Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Global Initiative for Peace, Love and Care (GIPLC) has warned that Nigerians could suffer severely if positive and urgent steps were not taken to address the situation.

The National Coordinator of the organisation, Malam Nuhu Fulani-Kwajafa in Abuja at the weekend during a sensitisation rally observed that the affected communities were commercial farming takes place.

Kwajafa said they were embarking on a coordinated effort to secure money and other relief materials from voluntary donors to assist the affected communities.

The coordinator, also emphasised the need for urgent steps to be taken by government at all levels to ensure that the victims were rehabilitated and alternative farmlands provided for them to resume farming.

And in what seems like a response, Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akinwumi Adeshina at the weekend said that, federal government would partner with the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines for the introduction of rice that can do well under flooded conditions.

Adeshina disclosed this in Ilorin, Kwara state capital over the weekend after a visit to the state governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed.

The minister who was in the state to inspect flood-ravaged farm lands in Edu and Patigi local government councils of the state, said the federal government would also distribute high yielding maize seedling that can mature in 60 days, free of charge to farmers.

According to him, "these efforts are part of federal government's effort in ensuring that the floods, across the country which ravaged farm lands, does not lead to food scarcity in the country".

He said that, he was in Kwara state to express the sympathy of the federal government to the people of flooded areas and the state government.

The minister, who attributed the floods to climate change in the world, said the federal government, apart from provision of high yielding and flood resistant seedlings, has mobilised other measures to deal with the situation.

........THIS DAY

Book Review: “There Was a Country”: Chinua Achebe’s Memoir of War

Chinua Achebe’s memoir of the Biafran war

Uzodinma Iweala, The Daily Beast/Newsweek

Steve Pyke / Courtesy of the New Yorker-Contour by Getty Images

I met Chinua Achebe for the first time when I was in high school, but I knew him through his works long before that. “Uncle,” as my siblings and I were told to call him, came to our house in Washington, D.C., for a teatime reception my mother had organized. She had just co-written a biography of him for children, inspired in part by my lament that there were few books about the lives of famous Africans. It was hard to reconcile the taciturn, elderly, black-beret-wearing gentleman in his wheelchair beneath the bougainvillea with the unapologetic in-your-face voice of Africa I had imagined while reading his seminal work, Things Fall Apart, or the determinedly angry man I had pictured working through the arguments of his ever-relevant 1982 essays, The Trouble With Nigeria. The man who sat in our living room reminiscing with my father—who remarked to my best friend’s mother when she apologized for presenting a dog-eared copy of Things Fall Apart for him to sign, “Well I know that you have truly read the book!”—was unassuming, not substance over style, but substance as style.

It is perhaps for this reason that Achebe’s works have become the foundational texts for much of African literature and his person a role model for many Africans, writers and nonwriters alike. Things Fall Apart, his first and most influential novel has sold more than 12 million copies since it was published in 1958. It is a staple in any course on the modern English-language novel, and has even inspired an eponymous hip-hop album by the The Roots. His essay on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has so profoundly shaped the way Conrad is read that the two texts are now taught alongside each other. Achebe’s refusal twice to accept Nigeria’s National Honors on the grounds that many of the problems with governance he illuminated in The Trouble With Nigeria remain unsolved, has only solidified his reputation as a man of ultimate principle. But the cultural, historical, and personal antecedents of this “Teacher of Light” have largely remained the focus of postcolonial theorists who have often rendered the world’s most accessible author inaccessible.

It seems fitting, then, that Achebe who turns 82 this November, would attempt to offer himself to us in his new memoir, There Was a Country. The book has all the elements of an author’s journey through his own life. There is the story of how his orphaned father’s conversion to Christianity set the stage for Achebe’s education and love of reading; how his own personal early experiences with both traditional religion and Christianity created internal conflicts that form the subject matter of his early novels; how he bounced from studying medicine to English, into a career at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corp., and through that into the arms of Christie Okoli, his wife for the last 56 years. But this narrative stops short, as if Achebe partially subscribes to the thinking of Toni Morrison, who famously canceled a memoir, saying, “There is a point at which your life is not interesting, at least to me.” For Achebe it appears that his life is only interesting within the context of the Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Nigeria-Biafra War) of 1967–70, which claimed up to 3 million lives, most of them from the Igbo ethnic group of which Achebe and I are both members. This war began after the mass slaughter of Igbos in northern Nigeria inspired the flamboyant Oxford-educated Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu to declare an independent state in the Igbo-dominated southeast, and inspired many to humanitarian action, even as it became a proxy battleground for corporate and Cold War interests.

Forty years on, it is impossible not to see the impact of that civil war. For many Igbos, the impact is still very personal. Both of my grandmothers can only shake their heads and repeat “It was so terrible” when asked about that time in their lives. As does Achebe in There Was a Country, my grandfather can recount numerous near brushes with death at the hands of often-ruthless Nigerian fighter and bomber pilots. My mother and father speak vividly of the initial excitement following Ojukwu’s declaration of Biafran independence followed by fear, deprivation, and eventually an absolute weariness as the conflict dragged on. For the children and grandchildren of Igbos who lived through the war, these stories of trauma have left an indelible impression that underlies a certain mistrust of Nigeria’s attempt at national unity. Equally devastating is the war’s impact on our national political system. Achebe writes that after the war, “the Igbo were not and continue not to be reintegrated into Nigeria, one of the main reasons for the country’s continued backwardness, in my estimation.” A trip to the Igbo-dominated southeast reveals abysmal roads, bridges threatening to collapse, and a power grid that is all but entirely useless, all what many Igbos believe is a deliberate policy of neglect as punishment for the sin of secession. The country has suffered as a result of what Achebe calls the evil of tribalism.

Money Laundering in the Churches

Thieves and robbers are Satan's gifts to the churches.

When a villain has ill-gotten gains, he sometimes needs to have the money "laundered." This is the process whereby stolen money is made respectable by moving it through a number of legal channels designed to camouflage its original illicit source. Sometimes, the stolen money is smuggled out of the country and then brought back in through regular channels, so as to make it seem like it originated from foreign shores whose records are inaccessible domestically.

Another version of this money-laundering process is duplicated in the churches with pastors as the lynchpin. When a contrite Judas brought back the thirty pieces of silver he received for betraying Jesus to the Jewish Priesthood, they refused to put the money in the offering-box: "The chief priests took the silver pieces and said, 'It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.'" (Matthew 27:6).

This was convoluted reasoning at best, showing the "doublethink" of religion. The priests had no qualms about bringing about the death of innocent Jesus. But they felt it was inappropriate to put "blood money" in the offering-box. However, even such hypocritical qualms are no longer evident today. Today, it does not matter where the money comes from, as long as it is money you can be sure the church will receive it.

Theft sanctification

As I said, pastors operate today an elaborate money-laundering business. You steal the money; you kill for the money; it makes no difference. Just bring the money; we will receive it gladly from you with no questions asked. When you bring the money, we will bless you and pray for you. We will also pray that the source from which you got it will not run dry, so you can go and bring some more.

This goes a long way to assuage the conscience of the wicked. They are encouraged that as long as they give a significant fraction of their stolen money to the church, the theft is sanctified. In effect, the offering is used by the pastor to make atonement for the sin of the theft, thereby releasing the crooked donor from guilt. So doing, we receive and launder stolen money on God's behalf. Indeed, there is an implicit signboard in front of mega-churches, saying: "Thieves and robbers are welcome here, preferably with a tithe of their stolen loot." When they come, we lavish encomiums on them.

When I accused a lawyer with whom I was negotiating a business deal of sharp practices, she retorted: "Dr. Aribisala, I will pay tithe on the amount." Jesus shows nothing but contempt for this kind of thinking. He said to the Pharisees: "Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?" (Matthew 23:19).

Thieves and robbers are Satan's gifts to the churches. Visit the mega-churches in Nigeria and you will discover the people seating in the front-row are the big-time thieves who have robbed the country blind. Everybody knows they are crooks; nevertheless, they have pride of place in the churches. Their seats are reserved. The messages preached are carefully-crafted so they are not offended and remain comfortable in their thievery.

Mega-pastors would hardly operate in the tradition of John the Baptist, calling the Herods of Nigeria to repentance. On the contrary, when Herod comes to church, we give him the microphone to address the congregation. Thus, one Lagos mega-pastor gave Governor Bola Tinubu, a non-Christian, the microphone to address members of his house on the sand, when he was seeking re-election in 2003. Of course, the "ogbologbos" of Nigeria can always address the faithful of Redeemed at Kilometre 46.

Says Ebenezer Obadare: "In a dynamic that works quite well for the state and serves the ends of holders of political power, religious leaders attend their (office holders') birthday ceremonies, bless their respective families, and, at the end of each year, unfailingly prophesy positive things for the country they so spectacularly misgovern."

Robbers' revolt

I was given a fascinating report about a well-known Lagos prosperity pastor. He suddenly saw the light one Sunday, and decided to preach the true gospel for a change. He warned his parishioners that it is righteousness that exalts, but sin is a reproach. He told them if they did not repent, they would miss the kingdom of God.

No sooner had he finished his message than uproar arose. The major financiers of the church were livid and they asked for an emergency meeting with him. They did not mince words. They told him in no uncertain terms that that kind of message was unacceptable. It was very easy for him as a pastor to grandstand with lofty religious sentiments, while living on the money he collects from them. But how did he think they were getting the money they gave him? Let him leave the pulpit and come into the real world so he can see whether it is possible to become a slumdog billionaire through the righteousness that exalts a nation.

The pastor's ears were opened. He quickly went back to his old time-worn prosperity and motivational messages and everyone was happy again. "Preach it, pastor; preach it," they cheer him on, while an attendant dutifully comes forward to wipe his face with a towel.

Stolen offerings

In 2002, it came to light that one Lawrence Agada stole 39 million naira over a period of time from the Sheraton Hotel, Lagos, where he was employed as a cashier. For very strange reasons, he spent very little of the stolen money on himself. Instead, he gave the lion-share of it as tithes and offerings to a parish of Christ Embassy. Clearly, there was witchcraft at work here. The man did not even own a car. Neither did he have a motor-cycle. Nevertheless, he did not use any of his stolen loot to enhance his standard of living. What must they have been telling him at Christ Embassy to lead him to the conclusion he could serve God with stolen tithes and offerings?

His "generosity" so impressed his church that, on occasion, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, the head of the church, wrote him a special letter of commendation read to his entire parish. At no time did anyone deem it necessary to enquire how someone who was only a cashier could have obtained so much money. When the theft was finally detected by his employers, Christ Embassy admitted that Agada had indeed given the stolen money to the church. Nevertheless, the church refused to refund the looted money. You may well ask why a church of God would refuse to refund money it knows was stolen to its rightful owners.

Suffice to say any church which directly or indirectly encourages theft and knowingly receives stolen property cannot be of God. If you steal, it makes no difference if you give all the money to your church, you are still a thief. Your offering might be acceptable to your pastor, but make no mistake about it; it is not acceptable to God. God hates robbery for burnt offering. (Isaiah 61:8). He said: "As your offering to me you bring a stolen animal... Do you think I will accept that from you?" (Malachi 1:13).

........FEMI ARIBISALA/VANGUARD

Bakassi! "How Obasanjo Deceived Us"

A scene during the tense period, in 2006, when the United Nations was deciding whether Bakassi was to be part of Nigeria or Cameroon.Many Efik here still feel Nigerian, though they have been made into Cameroonians.

The Etiyen of Bakassi, Dr. Etim Okon Edet, is not only the paramount ruler of Bakassi but also the Chairman of Cross River State Council of Chiefs. A product of the University of Calabar where he studied political science, the traditional ruler was forced out of his palace in Atabong by the intrigues of concession of his land, which is part of Efik Kingdom, to Cameroon by the Federal Government based on the war time policy of appeasement entered into by Gen. Yakubu Gowon and the late Alhaji Ahmoudu Ahiidjo of Cameroon and Sealed by Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo and Mr. Koffi Ananah, who accepted the ICJ verdict and rushed into implementation of the verdict with the endorsement of the controversial Green Tree Agreement.

Five days to the dead-line of October 9, 2012 to appeal for the review of the ICJ judgment, the Federal Government moved to do the needful on Thursday when it raised a panel to look into the possibility of the review. In this interview, Edet tells Sunday Vanguard that those who ceded Bakassi and threw over three hundred thousand people into destitution should face trial for crimes against humanity.

Can you give us an insight into what is happening in Bakassi?

I think we have done quite a lot on the Bakassi issue, right from the onset of the judgment. We have condemned the judgment. I don't know what we should do and where should go from here. We are approaching the final day of the decision and the country is not doing anything.

What I want to say is that Nigeria should release us, Bakassi, technically, is included in Nigeria, but it is not in Nigeria. People say, technically, that it is included in Nigeria because we are listed as a local government in Nigeria, so, any action we want to take now would be mean a violation of the constitution of Nigeria.

But, for sure, I, as the paramount ruler of Bakassi land that is in existence in this planet earth, we would take back our land. Just as the nation of Israel went back to their land in a miraculous way, I am so convinced that, with or without an appeal to the ICJ, there is another court that is beyond us all, we are all awaiting the judgment of that court.

So, Nigeria should be kind enough to release us. Some people went to the National Assembly to say that Bakassi is not part of Nigeria and therefore it should be deleted from the constitution. I support that call. We now know that we are not legally in Nigeria. We want to be free to confront whoever handed us illegally to anybody unknown to us. We will confront them and then we will be free to do so.

May be at that point, the entire world would then look at us as a crazy people. I don't want a situation where by any cobweb is still moving around us and nobody cares to say anything. But we are assuring everybody that the Bakassi issue is going to be a serious case study of injustice done to people on this earth, and it is going to affect those who are pretending now as if the matter does not concern them.

When you don't want to do something, He (God) does it in a very wonderful and miraculous way. God cannot begin a project that He cannot end. God created us and put us where we are just like all of us.

For instance, if you were born in Maidugri, Borno State, perhaps you would have been a Muslim; not by our choice, not by our making but God wanted us to be there (Bakassi). We are here and we are Christians because that is where we came to be. So God placed us there, gave us the land, named all those areas, the trees, the villages, the shrines, the food, etc, and, after several years, people are coming to make adjustments, people are beginning to be displaced from what God originally made it to be. So God will not start a project, and leave it like that. He has to complete it.

So, I'm assuring, from the bottom of my heart, that we are taking back our Bakassi, I'm not worried. I don't know the year, I don't know the method, but I'm telling our people that we are going to get our land back, we will pray to the Almighty.

Whatever the president is doing, or whatever Nigeria is doing, the president should know that he is from the Niger Delta region, the president should know that we voted for him. When the president came, I received him, I campaigned for him, today he is not listening to what we are saying. God is going to judge.

We are not looking at any man again; we are not looking at the president again. I think in the past years, people have died, people have suffered, nobody is going to school; their schools have been abandoned there.This is a grave injustice to a people that was denied education by the colonial powers, a people who are in a hurry to produce educated people to catch up with their kiths and kins.

How do you react to the claim that the National Assembly does not border about sovereignty, lives and security of the country?

I am even surprised that after their long vacation, the Bakassi issue, which they condemned over a period of time, is not seen as a serious issue to deserve their attention. This is a matter they condemned and they said that the treaty had not been domesticated by them.

I personally witnessed two motions, moved in the House of Representatives stopping proceeding and another asking government to go to the ICJ to ask for a review of the judgment because of the overwhelming things that they had seen.

In other areas of the world, such resolutions will not be taken lightly. So, when they returned from their vacation and the matter was not on the front burner, I felt disappointed. They are talking about something else like moving motion for the printing of new naira notes, moving motion on allowances and other issues. Nobody is talking about Bakassi.

They will see the truth and turn over it, a brother will not help a brother, such a situation brings anarchy. I am surprised that a people are even playing politics with this matter, some want to play safe because of the politics of 2O15, they want to be careful with some national issues.

You will know a leader in times of crisis not when things are smooth. I am talking as a leader of Bakassi; I don't mind whatever it will lead to because I am hurt. Nigerians too should be hurt that a part of this country has been lost. I have never seen a nation giving out a territory instead of extending their territory.

The National Assembly is not doing well. Why didn't they impeach former President Obasanjo for breaching the constitution? Why are they talking now? I have received so many visits on Bakassi. They just come around to collect money and play with us. I had to stop some of them from coming to me because I was not ready to receive them. The information they are seeking is all over the internet.

They know that the people of Bakassi went to court in this country. Judgment was given, injunction was placed that the Green Tree should not be implemented but they went ahead to do it. So, what are we talking about? Where would we get justice?

I am completely disappointed in the National Assembly that they are not using their powers. The National Assembly cannot fail Jonathan, yet they took an oath to correct many errors, to do justice.
Look at the power project, corrections are being made at all levels. Look at our constitution, reviews are being made and yet they cannot review a judgment that was made. Why can't they make an attempt on the ICJ verdict review and let it be on record?
The Federal Government said if they ask for a review, the world would laugh at them. Do you agree?

You can even see that Gowon is silent on this issue up till today. Obasanjo joined; the two former military leaders have not made any statement about the mistakes they made.

Like I said, I will continue to pray to God to prolong their lives to see the end so that they can tell the story. Now, we have heard that Nigeria will be a laughing stock if we go back to ask for the review of the judgment by the ICJ. Is it that Bakassi is now made a sacrificial lamb?

They swore an oath to protect the destiny and integrity of this land. They have not done so. But they should understand that the lives of people are involved. Both Gowon and Obasanjo should be tried for war time and peace time atrocities visited on Bakassi land. Our oil and land they have given to Cameroon and made us refugees.

Americans should know that the lives of people are involved. All those who witnessed the signing of the Green Tree Agreement should know that the lives of people are involved and, when you joke with the lives of people, you are joking with God.

If we are the sacrificial lamb for Nigeria to be one, are we not entitled to compensations, are we not entitled to other good things of life? If I am giving out my life for you to be free, I am also entitled to any other thing that you are taking out of my land, but you have not done so. You have not given me another life to live, I am still roving around, and you think it would be well with such people.

When Bakassi people talk about resettlement, what is it that comes to their mind?

We want back our land. At the initial point, we were deceived; we were told that we had to be obedient servants, we had to obey our president. For the president of your country to call you one on one and plead with you:' There are other implications that you are not aware of now. Please you guys should leave the place, we are going to put you somewhere and almost a similar place that you were before.'

We believed him and we moved. First year, second year, what they did was to go and give account and I told them it was not our kind of resettlement. They thought it was an emergency situation.

We have lived in a particular where most of the people are fisher men, they have waited and they continued to wait, now we know that they are not serious, we know that our president lied to us, lied to me in particular. He called me, held me by the hand, the president of my own country held my hand and we discussed.

I told my people to be calm, but, up till this moment, we don't even need resettlement, we don't need anything called resettlement because we don't know what they are going to do. Like you rightly said that money was given but, up till now, this country has not called on the person who collected the money. Is getting people to stay in a camp resettlement? You are talking about putting people in camp, these were people who had their own tradition, everything was fine, they did not complain. Now you are coming to build a camp and you want to put them there.

I told Donald Duke (former governor of Cross River State) who started this process that 'if you want to take these people to another populated area; it means that you want to displace those people who are the original owners who will not allow you to change their name'. So he compounded the issue.

You mentioned Donald Duke that was in government. You also mentioned that the president at that time spoke to you, but why is it that since this problem came up, Cross River State government has kept quiet?

They are playing politics with the lives of people but God himself will visit all those who took part in the Bakassi problem one after the other.

Today nobody is saying he/she did this and it was done wrongly and that he was sorry and nobody is asking any question which means there was coherence from top to bottom.

If you are a minister and you gave out a job and the job was not properly done and the people are complaining and whatever the decision they write to the minister, he suppresses, the minister that did not take part in it would want to know if the job was not properly done if at all it was done.

You spoke about the N4 billion set aside for resettlement, well I don't know about that. And let me say it clearly, it is Bakassi today, tomorrow it may be Bekwara, the day after tomorrow it may be Bayelsa. And it would go on like that. When you become a refugee you become an immigrant in your land.

There is nothing we have not done. We have even written to the United Nations General Assembly. The world today is a global village. Going to court is a serious matter and taking judgment is a very serious matter. Nobody can say he is ignorant of the Bakassi problem and that injustice has been done to a community in Nigeria.

Well, maybe the ICJ was thinking that if justice was done ...... or the area that was given out was a no man's land, whatever they were looking at. But we never participated in the (civil) war. We never knew what was going on at the ICJ. It was in 2001 that I started hearing about the case in the ICJ because we never took part in it; we were not carried along.

But I will tell you that our area is not going over to Cameroon. The ICJ has finished their work; the Attorney General of the Federation recently said so to the president and the foreign affairs minister that they are not going back to the ICJ.

He said they should not revisit the matter. But God will visit all those who are part of this wrong done to us.

Why is the issue of Bakassi only centered on oil and its resources and not the people?

That is the question we should ask the people and the entire world. You know people are just looking at where they can make money even when they steal the money but the money they are already making in Bakassi is blood money. Whoever is making money there now or is trying to make money there in the nearest future is making blood money except the proper thing is done, except justice is done and except the people are no more dying. People are no more interested in the human factor but the oil money. They are looking for blood money.

Nigeria is holding us hostage

We built about three secondary schools in Abana and several primary schools. But these schools are no more there. Each time I attend May 1 Children's Day and October 1 Independence Day celebrations, I kept telling the political leaders that I would not attend the ceremonies again if I don't see the primary schools at Abana and children passing.

The schools are no more, the people are scattered. The people you only see there are the councilors and chairman without a local government. The largest local government has just five councilors and above all I am the only man standing. Iam just standing on the law. I want that law to be taken away so that I can stand firmly on the ground.

Apart from that law in the constitution, there is nothing else. It just exists by name. But must human beings continue to exist just as names and there is nothing to fall back to on ground?

The allocation given to Bakassi is not a hidden thing. It is on the internet. Bakassi still exists in law and the allocation Bakassi is getting is because of that law. That is why I said the law must be removed for us to be able to conduct issues because we existed before Nigeria, we existed before Cameroon and we existed before the local government.

We have been there before the local government was attached to Bakassi. We were known as the Bakassi people and not Bakassi local government. So why have they refused to leave us alone with their laws and allow us to stand how we used to stand? Cameroon had never entered there before. They know they can never enter there ordinarily. We are riverine people and, in that time, to leave Bakassi for Calabar was a long journey that took days.

Nigeria is saying no going back on the issue, 'Bakassi is gone'. Then let them leave us alone. Nigeria is still keeping Bakassi because of the oil. You say these people are not there but you are using them to collect money and to take their resources. Because Bakassi is still in the constitution, we cannot act but if Nigeria removes Bakassi from the constitution, the Republic of Bakassi cannot be in Nigeria or in Republic of Cameroon.

Bakassi cannot be in Cameroon because the ICJ cannot give the land of Bakassi to Cameroon, because they don't know anything about the land. So we need freedom. We need to be left alone. Nigeria, please leave us alone. You don't need the people but you need their resources. Let them release us. If they release us, Cross River will be willing to release us.

So what is your message for Bakassi people?

The message is that very soon, the problem will be over. We have only a few days to go but God will perform His miracle. He can use one day to change an event. He would allow you to flourish in your stupidity and ignorance and just like He told that rich man in the Bible that today was the end.

I am assuring all our people that this whole situation will come to an end and that they should be constant in their prayers that He should do for them just like He did for the children of Israel. Today, Bakassi people are living with enemies surrounding them. So they should pray constantly.

.......HUGO ODIOGOR - A VANGUARD INTERVIEW

N351 Million Drugs Hidden in Balls Intercepted at Lagos Airport

Officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) yesterday impounded three consignments of heroin hidden inside balls and woollen carpets at the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO) Shed, Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos worth N351million.

The consignments of drug, imported from Pakistan, were detected through the help of the agency's sniffer dogs weighing a total of 29.260 kilogrammes.

The rug consignment containing 14 kilogrammes of heroine came as cargo on KLM flight while the other two consignments of balls weighing 10.230 kilogrammes and 5.030 kilogrammes were imported on Saudi Arabia Airline.

Chairman of NDLEA, Ahmadu Giade, vowed to incapacitate drug trafficking syndicates in the country through counter measures.

"Every drug seizure is important to us because of the value of the drugs and the fact that every seizure made advances the anti-drug campaign. This seizure is important to the country because the damage the drug would have caused cannot be quantified. Drug trafficking cartels may be sophisticated in drug concealment, but the seizures are indicators of Nigeria's counter efforts. We will not relent in protecting the country from the activities of drug traffickers", Giade stressed.

According to Giade, investigation is on-going to unravel the cartel behind the shipments of narcotics.

Meanwhile, the NDLEA Airport Commander, Mr. Hamza Umar, pointed out that the goods were abandoned by the importers as soon as they arrived the airport, adding that the officials of the agency had to tear the consignment to uncover the drugs.

"The drug was factory packed in the cartons containing the balls. The rug concealment was also factory packed because we had to tear and unfasten to recover the drugs. Four rugs were found to contain heroin. So far, no arrest has been made but the cases are under investigation" Hamza explained.

.........DANIEL ETGHE/VANGUARD/NIGERIA

Chinua Achebe: Peaceful world my sincerest wish

Chinua Achebe speaks about his works and his life at his home on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York where he is a professor. Date: January 22, 2008. Image: Craig Ruttle/Associated Press

By Nasrin Pourhamrang, The Africanist


Recently, the classic African novel “Things Fall Apart” by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe was translated into Persian by Ali Hodavand and released in Iran. Nasrin Pourhamrang, Editor-in-Chief of Hatef Weekly Magazine interviewed the author on a wide range of topics from Art, culture and literature; politics, cultural and linguistic preservation to the legacy of colonialism and his forthcoming book there was a Country-A personal history of Biafra.

Nasrin Pourhamrang: Technology has come to the help of the borderless world of art and literature and has eliminated the geographical frontiers. How do you feel about the fact that your novel has been translated into Persian and that Iranian readers can read some of your works for the first time and make an acquaintance of Chinua Achebe?

Chinua Achebe: I received the news of the Persian translation of Things Fall Partwith great joy! Of course, one of the goals of any writer is to connect with his or her readers. Things Fall Apart in particular, indeed all my books, have enjoyed a warm readership. I am particularly grateful for the effort of the translators of my work. They extend the reach of Art, in this case stories, to more people who may not have encountered them in the original English. I am told with this Persian translation that Things Fall Apart now exists in nearly 60 world languages! It is a wonderful blessing and I am deeply, deeply, grateful! So, the fact that readers in Iran can also read my work is very important to me.

NP: Are you familiar with Iran, its culture and civilization? Have you ever heard of the artworks of Iranian artists as well as the work of her authors and writers?

CA: I am a life-long student of Literature, History, Art and Culture. I can’t, however, claim to be an authority on Iranian history and culture. Let me also confess that I was caught looking through my Encyclopedia Britannica before this interview – my grandchildren insist that no one does that anymore!

Nevertheless, I am aware of the writings of Herodotus on the Persian Empire and the spectacular golden art work of the Achaemenid period. I have always wanted to see the ruins of Thachar palace and Persepolis ;the Quajarid reliefs, paintings from Iranian antiquity and the beauty of Persian calligraphy up-close. Of course, Persian carpets, as you are well aware, are adored the world over. In university, we encountered stories about great Persian emperors like Cyrus the Great who Alexander the Great revered. Also Darius the Great…and the later emperors.

As a writer, as you might expect, I have a special interest in the ancient scrolls of Persian philosophy. I have also been taken with the medieval poetry of Rumi, Hafez, Sa’adi, Khayyam, Farrid Attar; as well as epics such Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) by Ferdowsi. Modern Iranian classics such as The Blind Owlby Hedayat and Sin by Farrokhzad should be required reading around the world, in my opinion. On my desk is Cypress Tree by Kamin Mohammadi, who I understand, is a very talented young female writer.

NP: What will you say if I ask you to talk directly to the Iranian audience and discuss your concerns and wishes with them?

CA: “Peaceful co-existence between all racial and religious groups is my sincere wish for mankind” After the ancient civilizations of Africa, there are no peoples older than those that inhabit what the British first called “the Middle East.” The great world religions come from this part of the world. Islam and Judaism are considered Abrahamic religions because they are believed to descend from God through Abraham. We would not have Christianity without Judaism and the Jewish people. The three religions share many values and tenets and beliefs. There are parts of the Quran that integrate Jewish history.

I wish to highlight lessons from Iranian history that should be championed by Iranian people in today’s precarious world. It is important for all of us to remember that the Iranians and the Jewish people have enjoyed a very long, mutually beneficial and fruitful relationship. It dates back to 727 B.C. and the deportation of the Jewish people to Media and Persian from Samaria…that is nearly three thousand years ago! Cyrus the Great, who we have mentioned in this conversation, through a decree later known as the “Cyrus declaration” allowed the Jewish people who lived along the Babylon river to return to Judea to rebuild their lives. Many, however, who had lived in Persia for a few generations, decided to remain and formed permanent Jewish settlements of intellectuals, merchants and artisans for centuries.

Jewish scholars (something I am told can be confirmed in the Talmud – a revered Jewish book of rabbinical postulates), teach us that the environment was so tolerant for Jews in ancient Persia during this period that in a mark of their own magnanimity towards the Persian people, there was a call by Rabbis of the time for a picture of Susa the capital of Persian Kings to be engraved on the eastern gate of the temple of Jerusalem!

My appeal, therefore, is to the ancient virtue of Iranian hospitality, tolerance and peace. It is vitally important that the educated classes in Iran point out this glorious history which is central not just to the Middle East; but to all of mankind.

Finally, I would like to see the Dialogue of Civilizations proposed by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami become reality–bringing together representatives of all of the earth’s people to Tehran in an environment of freedom of creative, intellectual, cultural and religious expression.

NP: Your new work There was a Country-A personal history of Biafra is due from Penguin Books next month- September, 2012 – in the United Kingdom. Can you tell Iranian readers what it is about?

CA: The Nigerian-Biafran war raged from 1967-1970 and claimed nearly three million lives. The conflict wiped out twenty percent of my people – the Igbo and other Easterners- who were known as Biafrans. In There was a Country- A personal history of Biafra, I tell three interweaving stories – using an autobiographical prism to recount two broader stories – the story of pre and post-independence Nigeria, and the story of Biafra and its aftermath.

I have been asked why it took me over 42 years to write about Biafra…The answer is that I was not ready… I had to find the right vehicle that could “carry our anguish, our sorrow… the scale of dislocation and destruction…our collective pain.”In many ways, I can say that I have been writing this book for about four decades – at least in my head and the very scribbling on paper almost as long – particularly the research, interviews, data collection etc. I discovered while working on the book, quite interestingly, that it would not be a straight forward work. I found that I had to draw upon prose, poetry, history, memoir, and politics and that they were independently holding conversations with each other – perhaps because no one genre or art form could bear the weight of the complexity of our condition. You see, the Biafran war was such a cataclysmic event that in my opinion changed the course, not only of Nigeria, which has not fully recovered from that conflict; but of all of Africa. I hope your readers pick up a copy!

NP: It is interesting to me that your first novel, “Things Fall Apart,” which is also your most widely read and translated book was published by a British publisher (William Heinemann LTD). Why did you offer it to a British publisher while it depicted the difficulties and cultural contradictions which the people of your country have suffered as a result of the colonial presence of the British in the past decades?

CA: That is a timely question…… In my new book, There was a Country-A personal history of Biafra, I point out that when a number of us [i.e. African writers] decided to pick up the pen and make writing a career there was no African literature as we know it today. There were many that preceded my time, but still, the numbers were not sufficient. And so I had no idea when I was writing Things Fall Apart whether it would even be accepted or published. All this was new- there was nothing by which I could gauge how it was going to be received.

In those days one had very few avenues to get published…we had very few choices. My first novel was rejected by a number of publishers before providence led it into the hands of Alan Hill at Heinemann after Donald McRae, another Heinemann executive with extensive experience in Africa encouraged Heinemann to publish the novel with a powerful recommendation: “This is the best first novel I have read since the war.” So, you can tell that I had a good beginning and was only too pleased to have Heinemann publish the work. Later, Alan Hill and James Currey and I developed the African Writers Series (I served as first General Editor for the first one hundred titles). The African Writers Series ended up publishing many of the well-known writers of the era from Africa. In many ways, without the intervention of Alan Hill and Heinemann, many of the writers from that generation may not have found a voice.

NP: Over 50 years have passed since you wrote the book “Things Fall Apart.” Have your viewpoints and approaches toward the presence of a colonial power in the soil of your country changed since that time? Would you make changes and edits if you were to decide to write such a novel or rewrite it now and especially reconfigure the personality and reflections of the main characters such as Okonkwo?

CA: Every thinking person, if you consider yourself a serious intellectual grows…Intellectual evolution and growth does not mean, however, that all of a sudden horrendous things in our shared history appear less appalling. It means that greater knowledge and understanding help place the best and worst of events in clearer perspective.

The legacy of colonialism is not a simple one but one of great complexity, with contradictions- good things as well as bad. We do not have enough time to outline every aspect of the colonial and post-colonial condition…So, one cannot talk about making changes or edits to a book that was written to speak to a condition that existed and continues to exist in different forms and different guises.

In many ways, the world is a much different place today than it was in 1958 when Things Fall Apart was published. Some may say a better place – women’s rights are improving around the world, race relations perhaps can be said to have improved as well. In other ways, many things can also be said to have either remained the same or become worse. So the struggle to make the world a better place must continue!

NP: Your books and novels are considered to be the representative of modern African literature. In your view, what are the most prominent features and attributes of the modern African literature?

CA: Yes, well…remember that there was an entire movement, a whole group of us… There was a country, I discuss this in greater depth.

Things Fall Apart, I believe, now has a life of its own. I think it is now more famous than I am! (Laughter). The fifty plus translations are a big indication of its impact. I feel like a parent watching a child succeed from the sidelines. The other books have also been successful. It feels good. I am very grateful. What was the second part of the question?

NP: What are the most prominent features and attributes of the modern African literature?

CA: Yes…I have stated elsewhere that one cannot cram African literature into a small, neat definition. I do not see African literature as one unit but as a group of associated units – in fact the sum total of all the national and ethnic literatures of Africa.

National literature in my definition is written in national languages and has a potential audience throughout the countries that speak that language. Ethnic literature, by contrast is available to a particular ethnic group within that country or sub-region.

I have often been asked why I choose to write in English rather than in my native language. That is a flawed question and a false choice, because most of us think and write in and speak both our ethnic language and the national languages we were taught in school. Context is very important…Those that ask this question fail to understand my goal and the goal of several other pioneers of modern African writing. When I picked up the pen to make writing a career, African literature did not exist as it does today…the numbers were not there. One of the consequences of colonialism was the loss of the many traditions of Africa.

Many of us engaged Africa’s past, stepping back into what can be referred to as the “era of purity” before the coming of Europe. What we discovered we put in books and that became known widely as “African Culture.” Some of us would decide to use the colonizer’s tools: his language, altered sufficiently to bear the weight of an African creative aesthetic, infused with elements of the African literary tradition. I borrowed proverbs from our culture and history, colloquialisms and African expressive language from the ancient griots, the world views, perspectives, and customs from my Igbo tradition and cosmology, and the sensibilities of everyday people.

It was important to us that a body of work be developed of the highest possible quality that would oppose the negative discourse in some of the novels we encountered. By “writing back” to the West we were attempting to reshape the dialogue between the colonized and the colonizer. Our efforts, we hoped, would broaden the world’s understanding, appreciation, and conceptualization of what literature meant when including the African voice and perspective. We were engaged in what the Nigerian literary scholar Ode Ogede terms “the politics of representation.”

NP: So your choice of writing in English was as much a political choice as a practical one?

CA: Yes. And this requires some further clarification…My books appear in English because it is Nigeria’s national language and the language through which I can reach the most readers, both in Nigeria and world-wide. Many of the national languages, as you are aware, are inherited languages from our colonial history that were “shoved down our throats.”Within Nigeria’s borders, there are two hundred and fifty (250) ethnic groups and distinct languages – note I said distinct languages not dialects – and this requires emphasis because Nigeria with 160 million people, exists in an area of Africa that is one of the most populous, as well as genetically, linguistically, and culturally diverse regions of our planet. A national language in such an environment despite its problems, serves both a practical as well as a logical way to communicate across this diversity, effectively.

Let’s be clear – there are areas of Africa where colonialism divided peoples…But on the whole it did bring together many peoples…And it gave them a language with which to talk to one another…The only reason why we can even talk about African unity is that when we get together we can have a manageable number of languages to communicate in. Indeed we would not be able to hold this conversation if we both did not speak English. We would not be talking about the influence of Things Fall Apart and its impact without this strategic choice.

So there were many practical reasons to write in a National Language: I have already mentioned the fact that I could reach many Africans across languages, but also I could reach others across the world as well, like you. But I have also stated multiple times that it is neither necessary nor desirable for an African writer writing in English to attempt to write like a native speaker…he or she must attempt to find a way as I mentioned earlier to alter the language sufficiently to bear the weight of an African creative aesthetic, infused with elements of the African literary tradition…reinventing the language of the colonizers to tell our stories and retell our collective histories.

NP: There is, however, the problem of the disappearance of native or indigenous cultures and languages…

CA: Yes, the “beating down” of older African cultures and languages, traditions, and philosophies must be halted. We must continue to recapture, revive these endangered cultures, languages and traditions… and this will require large scale intervention…This is a real emergency, and in my opinion requires bold action.

There are two levels to this solution. Economists often talk about the micro and macro levels.On the individual level…I have already spoken about African writers engaged in the retelling of their own stories and recasting their image and the image of their people through novels, children’s books, poetry etc. There are those that write solely in their native languages. I write a lot of poetry in Igbo and edited a literary journal Uwa NdiIgbo for several years – for a focused Igbo readership. I have given full scale lectures to upwards of 20,000 people at a time – the two most recent The Odenigbo lecture and the Ahajioku lectures in 1999 and 2009 respectively; in Igbo land in Nigeria.Thatkind of effort isimportant, but I am afraid itonly scratches the surface of the problem… the sheer scale of the crisis demands big solutions, large scale intervention.

Let me let you in on a well-guarded secret…For several decades, the Achebe foundation –an organizationthat is now run by my son Dr. Ike Achebe and on whose board I serve as Chairman-has been working quietly on the Igbo Language project. This initiative was developed to create a language dictionary, a vast array of language tools and educational and linguistic guides, as well asa data base of phonetics, syntax, grammar etc.- to preserve Igbo, a fast disappearing language.

NP: What you describe is quite remarkable but sounds so incredibly daunting…

CA: Yes, in many ways it is…but one must not let despair crush our resolve! There is another layer of complexity that I would like to point out that makes this work so vitally important: Literacy in African traditional languages – the number of people who can read and write in a given language – is very low. This is not unique to Africa, indeed it also true in all places around the world where we find the problem of linguistic extinction. The building blocks of literary and linguistic fluency (equally important) – the alphabet, phonetics, penmanship, diction, syntax, grammar etc. must be also captured and widely taught. It is also important to state that language does not exist in a cultural vacuum…in cultural isolation. The ‘Omenani’ of a people – their belief system, customs, cosmology, values, and worldview – are channeled through a people’s language. Now, these are aspects of a people’s culture (and there are other vital components) that should be captured as well, if one is to attain the goal of preserving a people’s language effectively.

NP: How do you avoid the perception that you are imposing your will on others- something that your work has so eloquently highlighted?

CA: That is an excellent question…The Achebe foundation’s Igbo project does not and will not practice cultural imperialism. We do not impose artificial structures on the languages (a subject of my Odenigbo lecture of 1999), but will strive to preserve what is on the ground and respect linguistic dynamism. That means having the people themselves lead the way and having members of our team approach the work with humility…not with the “I am here to save the world” mentality, but with a “how can we, together, accomplish this incredibly important task!” spirit. Another way to protect indigenous cultures is to make sure you have present local representation and a diversity of workers and perspectives on the project.

A small army of experts and partners from around the globe – linguists, computer scientists, statisticians, literature professors, linguistic historians, educators, etc. – have been working on this for several decades. It is all very exciting, but it also means that no one group can exert an undue influence or pressure on the work. There is also a major push to capture what has been termed “linguistic idiosyncrasies” – speech patterns and accents that may have been lost to history. For instance, in the dictionary there is a list of several versions of a single word (in various dialects) rather than one standardized version.

We intend very soon to present our work to the local schools and provide teachers, students, parents, communities, women’s groups and others with tools to preserve, engage with, and propagate Igbo language and culture.

NP: Your work with the Igbo Language project is incredibly important. Do you intend to spread your effort to other parts of Africa, other endangered languages of the world?

CA: Yes and I hope that the funding will be available. There are many other languages that UNESCO and others have placed on the endangered list. We would like to provide a helping hand in confronting the problems facing several other African languages in much the same way we have tackled the Igbo Language project, to protect them from extinction… but we cannot do it alone. This project has been very expensive and has required personal expenditure on my part…and I do not consider myself a wealthy person. Thankfully, it has also been supported by several foundations and universities in America, but more funding is needed.

International NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] and African governments should tackle this alarming problem as well. African governments have a lot of work do -there are stumbling blocks to reading that we have discovered – poor eyesight for example. There is a great need for reading glasses in the millions – it is quite alarming.

You can see from what I have described and how long it is taking in just one instance that language and cultural preservation is a painstakingly difficult process that requires an army of dedicated workers and a great deal of resources and effort. This is not a simple problem but one of great complexity. And we need well-funded, large-scale projects to tackle this problem before it is too late.

NP: You’ve experienced living in what you have termed the “poorer addresses of the planet” – in African nations – as well as in developed Western countries. What’s your evaluation of the relationship between wealth, technology and culture?

CA: In my opinion, good art can come from any culture and background. Great Art does not cluster in one part of the world or the other. We are living in interesting times. Globalization is our reality, for good or ill… and I can talk about the problems for hours! There are also good things – technology: the internet, television, emails; other tools– have made our world smaller. Many of the best artists and writers are global citizens – they move constantly. Today, there exists a significant degree of cross-fertilization of cultures, ideas, values, stories, art, music, languages – you name it, on a grand scale across the globe. Many artists might have come from former less developed colonies but now they operate on the world stage. So the times have changed.

Having said that, I still feel that before we can announce the arrival of the Great World Story, or Universal culture, we should hear all the stories… appreciate all that the world has to offer. We should hear more stories and revel in the Art from indigenous societies of Africa, Australia, from the Middle East, from Eastern Europe, from Native Americans, from China ,India, Brazil and under-represented cultures of Latin America-countries like Ecuador, Uruguay-the Caribbean, and Oceania etc.

Artists from the developing world do no one a favor by blindly copying Western styles and forms. And let me be clear, because I am often misunderstood: I am not decreeing how a writer should write. I am not suggesting that artists should not or cannot be influenced by other artists from different parts of the world. That is welcome. I am suggesting that an artist should be true to who and what they are and should aspire to produce the best art that they can …that is when the magic in art is released. What I am calling for is an environment where freedom of creative expression is not only possible but protected… where an artist from any part of the worldcanacquire and develop their unique voice and then express themselves on the Great Cultural Stagein full ear shot of the world!

NP: You are now based at Brown University – an American Ivy League University, where you hold the David and Marianna Fisher University Professorship and spearhead the Achebe Colloquium. Tell me a bit more about this initiative.

CA: Yes… well the eminent Ruth Simmons, the former President of Brown recruited me to Brown in 2009,to start a new project in keeping with my life’s work. The Achebe Colloquium on Africa as it is called annually brings together an international group of scholars – Africanists, officials from African governments, the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and other organizations – for two days of intense deliberation and exchange of ideas on the importance of strengthening democracy and peace on the African continent. We have had three gatherings since its inception and discussed topics like Corruption, the leadership crisis in Africa, the Rwanda Genocide, the Crisis in the Congo, Nigeria’s myriad problems, the Arab Spring etc. This year’s conference will focus on Governance, Peace and Security in Africa.

NP: Let me end on a lighter note. Why have you attempted to write books for the children while you’ve been mostly focused on writing serious novels for the adults? How is it possible for you to shift your concentration from the complex and problematical world of adults to the simple and happy world of children? Which type of writing is more enjoyable to you?

CA: I decided to write for children as a matter of urgency and necessity. I first noticed there was a problem when I had my first child Chinelo and went to the bookshops to buy books for her. This was soon after independence from Great Britain. The books about Africa for children were, to put it mildly, not appropriate. So I decided that if I did not like the content of the children’s books, I would write my own. Now, around the same time, my friend Christopher Okigbo – Africa’s greatest modern poet – was the Cambridge University Press’ representative for the entire West African region. He also wanted to create a body of work that was based on local thought and African values for our children. Okigbo was a phenomenal publisher. He was so busy with the world and life and yet he got Cyprian Ekwensi to write a Passport of Mallam Ilia. He then came to me and said “Chinua you must write a children’s book.”

So, in many ways, Chike and the River was a mandated work by Christopher Okigbo. Okigbo had a way of “getting you to do something that you want to do.” He had a saying that the books he published must be first rate or he wouldn’t bother at all. He outlined the Cambridge University Press ‘culture’ – their expectations for a certain number of pages, for a particular moral code, for a particular standard of writing etc. When I accepted to write the book, I already had an inspiration in my life from which to draw for this particular story. I shared in Okigbo’s desire to mold young children into good citizens through good story telling. It sounds heavy, but in fact, good writing has a heaviness of its own – like the moral purpose that pervades Shakespeare or the work of Charles Dickens.

So when I took my manuscript in 1966 to Okigbo, he sent it immediately to the Cambridge publishers and they said they liked it but it was too short, to which Okigbo said in good humour to me: “go and read Ekwensi’s children’s book to get a sense of what we want.” So I went back to work and increased the length of the book. It wasn’t something I was planning to get done immediately, but Okigbo gave it an urgency. We were both concerned that African literature for children as it was formulated up to that point, had numerous stories in our oral tradition, but nothing in published form, so I too understood that there was work ahead of us to do, and quickly!I later published other books for children How the Leopard got its Claws, the Flute; and the Drum.

I think writing is very serious work and very important. All writing for me is a privilege and a joy. I do not have a favorite genre and I have written novels (prose), poetry, children’s books, essays, non-fiction works and political commentaries.

I will leave you with a passage from my new book There was a country-A personal history of Biafra, that I feel encapsulates my sentiments about writing:

The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into familiar and occasionally unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, towards a deeper understanding of self, society, or of foreign peoples, cultures and situations.

Nasrin Pourhamrang is an Iranian journalist and the chief editor of Hatef weekly magazine, a local publication based in the northern Iranian province of Guilan.

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan. His early career in radio ended abruptly in 1966, when he left his post as Director of External Broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. Achebe joined the Biafran Ministry of Information and represented Biafra on various diplomatic and fund-raising missions. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and began lecturing widely abroad. For over fifteen years, he was the Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is now the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown University.

Chinua Achebe has written over twenty books – novels, short stories, essays children’s books and collections of poetry. His latest work There was a country – A personal history of Biafra will be available from Penguin publishers in September. Achebe has received numerous honors from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honorary doctorates from more than forty colleges and universities. He is also the recipient of Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award; the Peace Prize of the German Book trade (Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels) in 2002; the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction in 2007; and the Gish Prize in 2010.