LESSONS FROM ACHEBE’S THERE WAS A COUNTRY: A PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW

Résumé

There is a growing consensus that Nigeria is heading towards a total collapse. Many reasons account for this: inept leaders, security crises, corruption, lack of accountability, ethnicity, nepotism, mediocrity among others. The root cause of these problems for many critics are the unworkable amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorate by Lugard in 1914; the bad political arrangement instituted by the British at independence; and the unfortunate Nigeria-Biafra war that followed and its aftermaths that has continued to haunt the unity of the country. Whatever the degree of accuracy of these submissions, one thing remains incontrovertible: Nigeria is in deep crises to the point that her future existence is cloudy except effective solutions to her multiple problems are urgently found. Achebe’s There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (TWAC) is one such attempt to both X-ray the issues dogging Nigeria’s progress and to proffer solutions. It focuses majorly on the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, its profound importance in understanding the current crises in Nigeria and the need to ask the proper questions and to draw the right inferences so as to save Nigeria from being recorded in history as ‘there was a country.’ This study identifies with Achebe’s project by carrying out a philosophical review on the lessons the war provides using Achebe’s TWAC as the source material. The purpose is to situate the lessons in a way that they will act as invaluable guide in understanding Nigeria’s past and present crises and how best to negotiate the future with hope.