My apologies for dereliction of duty in getting these blog posts up. Since the year is running out, I realize that I should get these posts up before I come back to the USA...
After two months in Ibadan, in early May I flew to Nigeria's eastern region, where I primarily worked in the city of Enugu. Enugu used to be a coal mining town, but since the discovery of vast oil reserves a bit further south on Nigeria's southeast coast, the coal business has dried up in favor of oil. When British forces fired on a miners' strike in Enugu in 1949, it nearly prompted an anticolonial insurgency in the country. The intervention of Nnamdi Azikiwe helped prevent further violence, to some activists' chagrin at the time. When Cyprian Ekwensi described the incident in his 1954 novel, People of the City, he referred to a thinly veiled Enugu as the "Eastern Greens," which sticks with me, thanks to images like these taken near my hotel.
The city's other claim to fame is as the former capital of Nigeria's Eastern Region, which in 1967 seceded as the Republic of Biafra. The ensuing war, alternately called the Biafra War or the Nigerian Civil War, raged until 1970 and resulted in millions of casualties and a humanitarian crisis. (More on this below.)
For my immediate purposes, Enugu was the site of an important period in Nnamdi Azikiwe's political career. So, since I'm studying Azikiwe, I figured I had better go to his old stomping grounds. Much of my time in the city was spent at the branch of Nigeria's National Archives in Enugu--which, perhaps in a spirit of federal unity, looks exactly the same as the branch in Ibadan.
I also spent a good bit of time at the Polo Fields Mall (built, unsurprisingly, on an old polo field), which provides a useful landmark in Enugu: just go towards the big Ferris wheel.
Azikiwe was a sportsman throughout his life, and so it seems fitting that the major stadium in Enugu is named after him. Nnamdi Azikiwe Memorial Stadium serves as the home for the Enugu Rangers, who compete in the NPFL, the Nigerian Professional Football League.
I now return to Biafra, because eastern Nigeria has experienced a resurgence of Biafran nationalism in the past several years, partly due to the advocacy of a British-born and -based activist. However, the dissatisfaction with Eastern Nigeria's piece of the pie since 1970 has been simmering for a long time. (For a brief overview, see this and other articles from the excellent site Africa is a Country: http://africasacountry.com/2017/07/nationhood-and-the-struggle-for-biafra/). On my final day in the East (and second to last day in Nigeria), on May 30, there was a 'stay at home' protest where many people across southeast Nigeria stayed at home as a way of indicating the levels of support for Biafran independence, or at least dissatisfaction with the status quo. Other signs of this were apparent even to a clueless white guy like me: at the post office a woman told me she believed Biafra would come some day, though she hoped it would be without violence; and in possibly half the taxi drivers' windows, I would see a sticker like this one:
After two months in Ibadan, in early May I flew to Nigeria's eastern region, where I primarily worked in the city of Enugu. Enugu used to be a coal mining town, but since the discovery of vast oil reserves a bit further south on Nigeria's southeast coast, the coal business has dried up in favor of oil. When British forces fired on a miners' strike in Enugu in 1949, it nearly prompted an anticolonial insurgency in the country. The intervention of Nnamdi Azikiwe helped prevent further violence, to some activists' chagrin at the time. When Cyprian Ekwensi described the incident in his 1954 novel, People of the City, he referred to a thinly veiled Enugu as the "Eastern Greens," which sticks with me, thanks to images like these taken near my hotel.
The city's other claim to fame is as the former capital of Nigeria's Eastern Region, which in 1967 seceded as the Republic of Biafra. The ensuing war, alternately called the Biafra War or the Nigerian Civil War, raged until 1970 and resulted in millions of casualties and a humanitarian crisis. (More on this below.)
For my immediate purposes, Enugu was the site of an important period in Nnamdi Azikiwe's political career. So, since I'm studying Azikiwe, I figured I had better go to his old stomping grounds. Much of my time in the city was spent at the branch of Nigeria's National Archives in Enugu--which, perhaps in a spirit of federal unity, looks exactly the same as the branch in Ibadan.
I also spent a good bit of time at the Polo Fields Mall (built, unsurprisingly, on an old polo field), which provides a useful landmark in Enugu: just go towards the big Ferris wheel. |
| Bust of Azikiwe at the stadium. |
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| It was tough to get a good shot of the stadium. |
I apologize for the poor picture quality, but in my defense, the taxi was moving. The sticker shows an imagined nationalist international, with the current leader of Biafran nationalism alongside Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump, under a banner of fighting terrorism. I believe this is a thinly veiled critique of Nigeria's current government, and especially its president, Buhari, for failing to eradicate the Boko Haram extremist forces in the country's north. But I think that by grouping Nigerian local politics with Israeli, Russian, and now U.S. hardline politics, a sort of anti-Islamist message is implied. I found these stickers fascinating, but sadly my lack of Igbo language skills prevented me from asking about how the taxi drivers interpreted this really interesting read on world politics. I'm afraid the international alliance portrayed will remain quite imaginary: I would be rather surprised if President Trump knows what, or where, Biafra is.
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For my random video, I offer a slightly less random video, since the music video for Dire Straits' 1980 song "Skateaway" featured none other than Nnamdi Azikiwe's daughter as the "roller girl." Sadly, Jayzik Azikiwe passed away in 2008.
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