‘All because of The Spectator’

Clemency Burton-Hill

27 June 2007

I wonder if this little experiment with unifying the language had a corollary in the very formation of the state of ‘Nigeria’ itself — which was surely one of the most presumptuous acts by a colonial power in all of history. He agrees. ‘The consequences are there for all to see,’ he says. ‘There is no escape from them. The worst thing is, the presumption itself was not honest. If they genuinely thought that all these different peoples should be brought together in unity and brotherhood, well, at least you could respect that spirit. But there was no instance in which you saw English colonisers going out of their way to promote friendship and unity. On the contrary, they favoured certain groups and this had tragic consequences. And now — look at us, our leaders have refused to acknowledge the brotherhood and sisterhood of the entire community. They’re partial and discriminatory, they’re unable to say ‘my people’ and mean everybody. We can’t even hold an election!’

It is the continuing and desperate waste of Nigeria’s potential, both human and material, that simultaneously depresses and energises Achebe, who was a diplomat in the ill-starred Biafran government of 1967–1970 and first battled the devastating effects of political corruption in Nigeria more than 40 years ago in his novel No Longer At Ease. ‘It is not working,’ he says, again and again. ‘Nigeria is a tremendous experiment but it is not working. In the midst of so much wealth, there is terrible hunger and starvation. All that talent, and they drive it away.’ He is adamant, though, that we don’t despair or give up trying to make Nigeria, which is the most populous and oil-rich country in Africa, ‘work’. The possibility of a politically and economically developed state is without question still worth fighting for. ‘But time is not waiting for us,’ he warns.