by Akindele Opeyemi

We have not taken responsibility for the unfettered pogrom against Igbos before and after the civil war. We still trade blames. We were not sorry. We are not sorry.

History continues to be a relevant discourse because history is our problem. I have always insisted that the unfettered massacre of the Igbos before, during and after the Biafran War (1967-1970) is like a guilty conscience. Nigeria as a country fruitlessly try to repress it, yet it keeps rearing its ugly head. Like the proverbial corpse buried in a hurry by a bunch of frantic murderers (thanks to rich Yoruba language), the fact of the Biafran War has again let one leg out of the grave. After it reared its ugly head in Achebe’s There was a Country, Nigeria was engulfed in hot debates largely over peripheral issues and details, rather than confront the heart of the matter. And we repressed it like a guilty conscience.

Here again, the Biafran corpse buried in a hurry has let out its leg in Chimamanda’s Half of a Yellow Sun! Now, Nigeria’s film board is trying to repress it. Though the novel upon which the movie is based was released years ago, why a seeming clampdown is being meted out on the movie is apparent: many couldn’t read Adichie’s novel due to high rates of illiteracy; and for those who are literate, endemic poverty means many still can’t afford to buy the novel. The BBC puts it succinctly: “The book was released in Nigeria but with the country’s high rates of illiteracy, a film is likely to get more attention.”

Half of a Yellow Sun reminds us of the moving movie –Sometimes in April- which recaptures the shocking reality of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Earlier in April, the whole world was touched as Rwandans -Hutu, Tutsi and Twa- all mourned the 1994 genocide of mostly Tutsi and moderate Hutus. Rwandans stood together. They accepted responsibility. They stooped. They were sorry for the massacre of their fellow countrymen. They immortalised the memory. They will not forget. They teach the history to their children in schools. They put the memories of what must not be allowed to happen again in the glare of all, especially the future generation. They said “Never again!”.

But not Nigeria. We have not taken responsibility for the unfettered pogrom against Igbos before and after the civil war. We still trade blames. We were not sorry. We are not sorry. And we are more eager to fight than any country in the world today, unfortunately. Like guilty conscience, the nagging compunctions are there, but we continue to repress it. Or why do some continue to make allusions to the Biafran War the way they do when national issues are raised? For instance, Murtala Nyako, Governor of Adamawa State (Boko Haram’s hotbed) recently made a false, paranoid claim that President Goodluck Jonathan is paying the northerners back for their role during the civil war (1967-1970) by sponsoring the terrorist Islamic sect and also using the military to commit genocide against northerners. Elders of Northern Nigeria also insinuated the same line on reasoning when they claimed former Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen Azubuike Ihejirika (of Igbo extraction) commited crimes against humanity and therefore should be tried at the Hague for his manner of conduct of anti-terror war against Boko Haram in the region. Such attempts to intertwine unrelated issues points to fundamental issues which are the largely unresolved.

We need to learn from Rwanda how to deal with our own history, and move forward. Indeed the director of the movie, Biyi Bandele, was right when he insisted that “One of the reasons Nigeria is more divided today – 40 years after the end of the war – than it was before the war started, is because we have refused to talk about the elephant in the room.” A callous attempt to ban Half of the Yellow Sun will even promote its popularity rather than deter us from watching it. The Jews have preserved memories of the Holocaust through movies, museums and novels. We can do the same in Nigeria.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.