You Must Set Forth at Dawn

by Wole Soyinka

  I would occasionally accompany him, but only to those preliminary, informal meetings, where the various regional groups tested one another’s positions and traded tactical moves. It all took place in an atmosphere of indescribable tension. Delegations stayed in fortified apartments, went about under the protection of armed police and army squads. Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military governor of the Eastern Region, used the alibi of this insecure environment to stay put in Enugu and refuse to participate in any of the meetings, even symbolically, by sending observers. It was a ploy—Ojukwu was already making plans to secede—but I had personal cause to agree with his dismissal of any notion of a secure environment.

  ONCE BOLAIGE nearly got us both killed in the sedate residential part of Ikoyi, where we had gone to consult with the leader of the Tiv delegation, J. S. Tarka. The Tiv are a people who live within what is known as the Middle Belt of Nigeria—hence the name of their political movement, the United Middle Belt Congress. Politically merged with the Northern Region, they chafed under domination by its ruling oligarchy and commenced armed resistance long before the nation’s full independence, continuing, albeit underreported, even for some years afterward. In later years, one of the officers who commanded the pacifying forces of the Tiv uprising publicly lamented his contribution to their subjugation.

  Tarka, a figure of unquestioned charisma, led the Middle Belt Congress, a traditional ally of the Action Group of the West. Tarka and I were not close, but we seemed to respond to each other through some hidden waves. On the way to my assignation with the radio station in 1965, I had made a brief stop at Bola Ige’s house to let Bola know that I might be away for a while, although I did not tell him why. It was there that J. S. Tarka and I met for the first time. I was instantly drawn to this man of very gentle bearing, sensing that behind a face that smiled so readily were a cast-iron will and a radar mind that constantly scanned his environment and its occupants. We spoke briefly in the living room while I waited for Bola to emerge.

  Suddenly Tarka’s demeanor changed; it was quite sudden and startling. He looked at me very strangely, broke off in midsentence, and did what, to me, was even stranger. He thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a slim wad of currency notes, which he offered to me. I looked at him, questioning, but he insisted that I take the money. I was naturally taken aback but finally accepted a pound note. It was a spontaneous gesture, lacking any explanation, except that he seemed to obey an inner impulse. We had only spoken briefly of the political situation; nothing in our exchanges had suggested my being in need of money or on the verge of plunging into some dangerous straits. But he had looked at me as if he knew that he was supposed to help me in some way, was not sure what form the help should take, and could think only of the money in his pocket. Now, a year and a half later, I looked forward to seeing him again, smiling to myself at the thought of what his reaction would be when I solemnly handed back his pound note. I had no thought that I would nearly get killed before I settled my unsought indebtedness.

  Bola was at the wheel. At the end of a long driveway into the block of Lagos apartments where Tarka was staying, off Glover Road in Ikoyi, soldiers suddenly emerged from behind the shrubbery. One of them barked out some orders, gesticulating in a manner that was open to myriad interpretations. Bola thought that he was being ordered to go back. Ramming the car into reverse, he began to tear off at full speed. His neck twisted around to maneuver through the driveway, he failed to see the rage-distorted face of the foremost soldier, but I saw him. He slipped off the safety catch of his gun and leveled it at the car, screaming and swearing at us to stop or else! I did not understand the words, but the language of all his body parts was most eloquent! The more the soldier screamed, the faster Bola drove, and my transmission of what I understood as the soldier’s wishes appeared to confuse Bola even more. All this took place in seconds, but it was sufficient to instruct me in the often-understated measure of eternity. In desperation I hit Bola on the chest, screaming at him to stop, and this finally gained his attention. He stepped on the brakes, perhaps just in time. The soldier caught up with us, his body convulsed with violence, coiled up for a release that could be obtained only by pulling his trigger. Then Bola remembered that he spoke fluent Hausa and plunged into a torrent of explanation in that language. It calmed the man somewhat, and only then was Bola able to state our business. It was a very relieved Tarka who opened the door to us, having watched the scene, horrified, from the balcony of his third-floor apartment.

  Such scenes were being enacted all over Lagos—indeed, all over the country—many of them ending tragically. The cheapest recruit held the power of life and death, not merely through accidents or misunderstandings, as in our case, but through cold-blooded executions carried out with the confidence of impunity. The nation teetered on the edge of disintegration. I continued to write in the media, debate in private. At campus encounters, open-air bars, and other informal gatherings, at which the secret service made no pretense of disguising its presence, we railed at the government’s lukewarm concern for the plight of the Igbo. The meetings of the Leaders of Thought continued, but it was clear that any national gathering was incomplete without Igbo participation.

  Within my own caucus, our suspicions of Gowon’s ultimate goal also continued to deepen. The underlying agenda had begun to emerge, the signals had become more overt: the military was digging in and would remain in power indefinitely. It was being encouraged to do so by the North, but also by a handful of Western politicians—the remnants of the NNDP faction who had now lost out in the politics of the West, and even groupings of Western professionals and intellectuals, such as the Committee of Ten, who for reasons of their own began to work for Yakubu Gowon’s continued stay in office. The British government, acting through its high commissioner, had long since committed itself to a military-dominated agenda, as long as it was led from the North.

  After the first military coup, on January 15, 1966, the North had raised the shout of araba—“secession.” Indeed, at the first Leaders of Thought meeting in Lagos, the Northern delegation’s position paper was based on its right to secede from the nation. However, the North was now beginning to lose its secessionist craving. The halfway house of a loose federation, or confederation, was also nixed—governance was to remain under centralized control. Actively prodded by the British government, the North gradually abandoned its secessionist agenda. “You have the whole cake in your hands,” the high commissioner admonished Gowon. “Why do you wish to settle for half?”

  It did not take long for me to regain my place on the security list. Our friends within intelligence soon let me know that I had been classified as hostile to the government, someone to be closely monitored. Nothing of this, however, deterred Femi Johnson from remaining openly identified with me. That his brother, a staunch military loyalist, had been retained by the new regime as military administrator of Lagos—Lagos was not yet a full state, so it did not merit a governor—meant little to him. Femi was uninterested in ideologies, but we shared a common political principle: justice as the basis of society. The Igbo, he felt, had been cruelly and unjustly treated.

  The prospect of war between the East and the federation loomed larger every day. A last-minute effort to avert it took place in Aburi, Ghana. Since the Igbo leadership remained adamant in its refusal to participate in any meetings outside its Eastern enclave, persisting in its plaint of a lack of security for its people, the avuncular military dictator of Ghana, Lieutenant General Joseph Arthur Ankrah—military dictatorship was now in vogue everywhere!—stepped in and offered the disputants the facilities of his famous retreat at Aburi.

  They met over several days in this soothing arena, away from the volatile atmosphere of Nigerian coups, countercoups, and massacres, away from the intrigues and self-serving counsels of still-active colonial powers and other behind-the-scenes interests, especially of the business world. In Aburi, those who were enemies within Nigeria embraced, saluted, and he
ld dialogue in a reportedly constructive and pragmatic manner without. They exchanged notes on resources, boundaries, military rankings, and pecking order; they even yielded up the locations of missing bodies—the hasty burial grounds of assassinated national leaders, military officers, and other casualties of the various coups, including former heads of state. When their reinternments took place some weeks later, many in the nation clung to the belief that the remains were not truly those of the victims, that a symbolic farce, with a laudable goal— reconciliation—had been staged. All parties agreed to a solemn undertaking not to resort to violence in the resolution of yet-outstanding disputes. It was an undertaking as empty of substance as some of the caskets that were solemnly interred after Aburi.

  THERE WAS A MARKED difference of approach for the Aburi encounter, one that already signaled the certain repudiation of whatever agreements were made. The federal side, led by Yakubu Gowon, attended the meeting with an open book, a laissez-faire state of mind. By contrast, Odumegwu Ojukwu, still governor of the Eastern Region and de facto leader of the Igbo, had arrived meticulously prepared. Not surprisingly, he largely had his way. The protocols and agreements were signed to fanfare and popping champagne corks, and everyone returned home with the map of the nation superficially intact but visibly shredded.

  On his return, Yakubu Gowon was assailed by his people for having given away far too much to the Igbo, who continued to press for the implementation of all agreements to the letter, screaming bad faith at any seeming delay. By now, the victims of both the January and July coups had received their ceremonial burials. That ritual appeared to douse political passions for a while, but it was clear that this was only the lull before the storm. Soon enough, Nigeria experienced its first aerial hijacking as a federally owned plane was seized in flight between Lagos and Benin and piloted to Enugu, capital of the Eastern Region. Gowon retaliated by freezing a number of assets that belonged to the rebellious region. A Nigerian Navy vessel went the way of the purloined plane—a mere sharing of joint assets, the Easterners crowed. The drums of secession were beating loud and clear. A mass exodus of Easterners began from all parts of the nation. Once again the roads were clogged with laden vehicles, but this time in all directions; the regional leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu, had announced that he could no longer guarantee the safety of non-Easterners in the region under his control. Some weeks later, he formally ordered all “foreigners” to leave.

  It was obvious: the secession of the East was only weeks away. Yakubu Gowon had terminated the meetings of the civilian “Leaders of Thought” and told the bigwigs to remain in their constituencies until further notice—which would never arrive. All talk of a return to democratic rule, on which the Leaders of Thought had spent so much time in sterile debate, was formally abrogated. The military was now free to act as it pleased, without any pandering to the civilian constituency. With every act and public pronouncement, the breach between the federal government and the East widened. A delegation of public figures—politicians, crowned heads, prelates, and others—made a last-ditch effort to head off what now appeared inevitable: declaration of independence by the Eastern Region. They were courteously received by the leadership but returned empty-handed. The position of Yakubu Gowon’s federal government hardened.

  Consolidation of military power would be inescapable once war was declared. In the thinking of many of us, a military dictatorship with no foreseeable end appeared to be the worst of all possible evils, including even the “evil” of secession. The West, untainted by any coup initiative and blameless of any genocidal participation, still held the few potential checks on the slide toward the precipice of war, but that potential was fast diminishing.

  With the dissolution of the Leaders of Thought, Bola Ige now spent even more time with our ad hoc group. This was an eerie period when nothing seemed to be happening; the heart of the nation appeared to have stopped beating, while its body remained suspended in a void. In grim reality, however, the military leadership was extremely busy, vetting names for a civilian-military cabinet and consulting with the nation’s former colonial master, the British High Commission. It was during this seeming suspension of reality and intense speculation that we decided that the state of mind of Obafemi Awolowo had to be ascertained, and urgently. As I was an “outsider”—that is, not a member of any official group—that task was given to me. Bola set up the appointment with the leader of the former Action Group, now bestowed with the superfluous and unenviable title “Leader of the Yoruba” by the governor of the Western Region, Colonel Adeyinka Adebayo.

  The question on our minds was straightforward: How would Awolowo respond to the looming offer of a position in Yakubu Gowon’s government? It was clear that if Awolowo became a part of that government, the last restraints on its policy toward the East would be removed, with the predictable consequence of a civil war. There was, however, a subsidiary question, one that arose from the first—we were deeply apprehensive for his safety, perhaps no one more deeply than I. Had a swaggering officer, a major and of the same Yoruba stock, not boasted to my face that he would personally take Awolowo to the nearest crossroads, tie him to a stake, and shoot him as an example because “we know what he’s up to, he has not yet given up his tribal games”? The officer’s definition of Awolowo’s “tribal games” was so simplistic it was frightening, being none other than the Old Man’s reported reluctance to serve under Gowon’s government if it was bent on war and his insistence that the West of the Yoruba should not become a war zone if that prospect did materialize.

  That Major B.M. should have spoken to me in such a manner was in itself revealing—he could not conceive, even for a moment, that, as a “social critic,” and one with supposedly progressive credentials, I could be anything but the loudest voice in the unreflective chorus of “One Nigeria!” The two concepts— progressive politics and national unity—were so thoroughly conflated in his mind that to be progressive or radical was to reject the possibility of perceiving any flaws in the very basis of national being or question the structural arrangements that held the nation together, however precariously. The same officer, like many others, has since repudiated such mindless adherence to the unqualified mantra “ One nation, right or wrong.” At the time, however, he was totally ensnared in such rhetoric and blissfully indifferent to whatever political ideology such a “unified entity” espoused.

  Awolowo received me in his office, which was dominated by a massive desk. It seemed even more substantial than it had two years before, when I had slept under it, keeping vigil with others over the radio transmitter as we anticipated an attack by the police and prepared to repulse it. I could not resist a sneak caress of the desk, like a long-missed comrade, then succumbed to the temptation of regaling the Old Man with an account of the episode.

  Awolowo’s eyes lit up with childlike mischief, eager for details. At the mention of Mazi Ukonu, the leader of the broadcasting team and a well-known radio comedian, he burst out excitedly, “Ukonu? In this study? You mean, in my study? And you under this desk? This very desk? Both of you in here? The election broadcasts were transmitted from here? And by Ukonu himself? I used to listen to his shows over the radio in Calabar [prison]. He has a great sense of humor!”

  I satisfied his curiosity for all the juicy details, then we settled down to business. I restrained myself from telling him that I knew that the letter from General Gowon inviting him to serve was already in his possession, that in fact I knew its contents. It was a secret I felt bound to respect—I had kept it even from Bola Ige, a close lieutenant of Awolowo but not a member of CWIL. On the way to the Old Man’s home in Ikenne, the courier, a highly placed police officer, had stopped to see his lawyer friend from Abeokuta whose chambers were in mainland Yaba, Lagos. Together, they had opened the letter—yes, the old-fashioned way, steamed it open—read, and copied it. The lawyer, S.S.—a member of the volunteer Committee of Ten that had been formed to drum up support for Gowon’s regime and who had fanatically assigned himself
the mission of my own conversion—revealed the contents to me shortly afterward, perhaps in an endeavor to make me believe in Gowon’s goodwill toward the “Leader of the Yoruba.” Many years, coups, and revelations would pass before the same lawyer found himself renouncing every act that he had done to win support for the regime, advocating nothing less than a separate, independent existence for his own Yoruba portion of the nation. His mantra, which no one could have believed possible in those nationalist 1960s, had become “K’olukaluku ma lo n’ti e.”24

  As I sat across the famous desk in Awolowo’s study, however, my mind was not on my “elder brother” from my hometown but very much on the encounter with the young major who had threatened summary execution for the politician—among several other ominous signs. I asked Awolowo, “Sir, I think you’ll agree that Gowon is bound to offer you a cabinet position. Suppose you decide to decline the offer; you realize that your life may be in danger?”

  Awolowo looked at me, paused thoughtfully, and nodded. “Yes, I suppose I could find myself in that situation.”

  My next statement to him was made with great hesitation, since I could not be certain that he would not begin to have doubts about my sanity. “If you decide to refuse,” I stammered, “have you thought of going underground? I’m sorry, sir, I know that after such a long spell in prison, it is a hard prospect to even consider, asking you to resign yourself to another kind of prison, but I still have to ask it.”

  Awolowo sat bolt upright at this, then relaxed, again thoughtfully. “Well, I have never thought of that. But I’ve always insisted to myself that my first duty is to the Yoruba nation. We are a nation, you know. And I put that nation first, then the one called Nigeria. If the moment comes when I firmly believe that it is in our interest for me to disappear, of course I will not hesitate. But, you young radical people! What could have moved your mind in such an extreme direction?”