–A Review By Chuks Iloegbunam
Authors: S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli.
Publishers: Cambridge
University Press (2017).
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We find this introduction
in the book:
“In October 1967, early in the Nigerian Civil War,
government troops entered Asaba in pursuit of the retreating Biafran army,
slaughtering thousands of civilians and leaving the town in ruins. News of the
atrocity was suppressed by the Nigerian government, with the complicity of Britain, and
its significance in the subsequent progress of that conflict was misunderstood.
Drawing on archival sources on both sides of the Atlantic and interviews with
survivors of the killing, pillaging, and rape, as well as with high-ranking
Nigerian military and political leaders, S.
Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M.
Ottanelli offer an interdisciplinary reconstruction of the history of the Asaba Massacre, redefining it as a
pivotal point in the history of the war. Through this, they also explore the
long afterlife of trauma, the reconstruction of memory and how it intersects
with justice, and the task of reconciliation in a nation where a legacy of
ethnic suspicion continues to reverberate.”
Having read the book,
I attest to the veracity of the above claim. The credibility of the publication
is grounded in the impeccable academic credentials of the authors. Bird is
Professor of Anthropology at the University
of South Florida. She has
to her credit more than 80 articles and chapters on popular culture, media,
heritage, and memory, as well as five books, two of which are award winning.
Ottaneli, her
co-author, also of the University
of South Florida, is
Professor of History. He has authored and co-authored four books and several
articles and essays on radical movements, ethnic history, and comparative
migration in the twentieth century.
Yet, credibility often rides on more than the currency of
academic triumph. On Africa, for instance,
notable literary voices like Chinua Achebe and Ngügï wa Thiong’o have argued
that the continent’s stories are better rendered by Africans and in their own
tongues. But their standpoint does not invalidate the benefit of detachment
often achieved by non-partisan non-Africans. This point profits from the
consideration that, through half a century, Nigerians have failed to agree on
what actually happened in Asaba on October 7, 1967.
The authors are mindful of the fact that they are liable
to the charge of appropriating and running with a story not their own, a charge
that, of course, pays scant attention to the reconstruction of today’s world as
a Global Village in which what happens in Alaska is much the business of its
denizens as it is the concern of the inhabitants of Sarawak. Thus, they take
the pains to state that funding for their book did not come from Africa, while the story they have told is the result of
extensive research, and the aggregation of the voices of massacre survivors,
the relations of the victims and other assorted quarters. All told, 77 people
were interviewed. The result is a 239-page book of six chapters:
