Author Chigozie Obioma: ‘Nigerians Do Not Believe in the Idea of Nigeria’

“Nigeria is an arbitrary nation,” according to Man Booker nominee Chigozie Obioma

Newsweek 9 hours ago

                                                        

In his signature work Things Fall Apart, Nigerian literary legend Chinua Achebe charts the demise of an Igbo community at the hands of colonialist missionaries. While a work of fiction, the novel reflects the stormy history of Africa’s most populous and ethnically-diverse nation, which came into being in its current form when the Northern and Southern Nigeria Protectorates were merged into a single country in 1914 at the behest of British administrator Frederick Lugard. According to Chigozie Obioma—a Nigerian novelist described by The New York Times as the “heir to Chinua Achebe”—the country is at risk of unraveling for real as multiple forces, including pro-Biafra secessionists in the southeast and oil militants in the southwest, demand that their voices be heard. “The thing with Nigeria is that, just like every other colonial state, the country is an arbitrary nation,” says Obioma, whose debut novel The Fishermen was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, in an interview with Newsweek.

In his signature work Things Fall Apart, Nigerian literary legend Chinua Achebe charts the demise of an Igbo community at the hands of colonialist missionaries.
While a work of fiction, the novel reflects the stormy history of Africa’s most populous and ethnically-diverse nation, which came into being in its current form when the Northern and Southern Nigeria Protectorates were merged into a single country in 1914 at the behest of British administrator Frederick Lugard.
According to Chigozie Obioma—a Nigerian novelist described by The New York Times as the “heir to Chinua Achebe”—the country is at risk of unraveling for real as multiple forces, including pro-Biafra secessionists in the southeast and oil militants in the southwest, demand that their voices be heard.
“The thing with Nigeria is that, just like every other colonial state, the country is an arbitrary nation,” says Obioma, whose debut novel The Fishermen was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, in an interview with Newsweek.
Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma, pictured with his book "The Fishermen" ahead of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction ceremony in London, October 12, 2015. Obioma believes Nigeria's national identity is problematic. NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images
The author, an Igbo himself, says he is not surprised by the resurgence in pro-Biafra sentiment. Biafra existed as a republic between 1967 and 1970, after a mostly Igbo region of southeast Nigeria seceded from the rest of the country, sparking a three-year civil war in which more than 1 million people died.
Large protests have been held across Nigeria in support of the Biafran cause, particularly since October 2015, when Nnamdi Kanu—the leader of one of the main secessionist groups—was arrested by Nigerian security forces. Kanu remains in detention, facing trial for several counts of treasonable felony, which he denies.
Obioma also points to militant groups in the oil-rich Niger Delta—such as the Niger Delta Avengers, who have attacked oil pipelines and threatened secession—as reflecting a fundamental dissatisfaction with the absence of a cohesive national identity that boils down to Nigeria’s colonial past.
“We are constantly and perpetually in search of ourselves,” he says. “This is why in most countries in Africa, each person sees themselves first as belonging to a tribe rather than a country… Nigeria as an idea was a foreign idea, and we need to create a country by ourselves that we will be responsible for. If it goes wrong in the future, we will not say, ‘Oh, it was an idea of the foreigner.’ We formed it and so we will be responsible for its success or its failure…
“Nigerians do not believe in the idea of Nigeria because they know it was somebody else’s idea.”

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