JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2019.1571936

The Politics and Poetics of Ethnic Bordering: Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn Mary J. N. Okolie English Department, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The vastness of politics as a subject of discourse can best be grasped Border; ethnicity; identity; in border studies because politics encompasses both spatial and inclusivity; Chukwuemeka Ike imaginary borders that distinguish one nation/state from another. The existence of spatial borderlines creates territorial demarcations that differentiate geopolitical settings within which policies that establish national identity are forged. But where the disparity in policy exists, national identity tends to fall apart. This is the case with Nigeria whose national identity was built on a questionable colonial policy which neglected the diversity of interests and cultures among the various ethnic groups hastily amalgamated into a single political entity. Literature grapples with political complexity and makes it easily comprehensible through narrative performativity. Chukwuemeka Ike’s novel Sunset at Dawn delineates the intricacy of bordering and debordering that shaped (and continues to shape) the Nigerian nation. I argue here that the identity formation in Nigeria is largely a function of the tensions that characterize both spatial and ideological borders of ethnicity, highlighting the novel’s exposure of the nuances of socio-spatial negotiation which calls for ethnic inclusivity in nation-building.

Introduction The notion of ethnic borders is both symbolic and spatial, suggesting a correlation between ethnicity as a social construct and geo-political demarcations. In Nigeria for instance, ethnic groups are geographically dispersed and the borders between ethnic groups seem to be clearly mapped. In Nigeria, there are three major ethnic groups – Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo – and more than 300 minor ethnic groups. However, literary rep- resentations which involve the performativity of border spaces expose the complexity of ethnic bordering. Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn (2014) delineates and simul- taneously challenges ethnic bordering. It shows the making and the unmaking of ethnic borders through characters’ identity negotiation, occasioned in the literary instance of the novel by the Nigerian-Biafran war. The paper examines the tensions that characterize the in-between spaces of ethnicity which affect individual and communal identity and belonging. Thus, while historical documents relate ethnic divisions, the novel captures the possibilities and intimacies of ethnic interaction and identity formation, exposing

CONTACT Mary J. N. Okolie [email protected] © 2019 Association for Borderlands Studies 2 M. J. N. OKOLIE the nuances of socio-spatial negotiation, thereby calling for ethnic inclusivity in nation- building. By engaging a novel that speaks to national concerns, this paper examines how narra- tives conceptualize and engage the lived experience of shifting borders – the social and ethnic distinctions – that attend historical changes in the national and ethnic sphere. It examines the characters’ ability to negotiate their identity at the point of confrontation with spatial shifts and with socially and culturally created divides. Thus, it suggests an alternative imagining of ethnic borders and identity in the text – one that takes into account the complex, emotional, psychological and social experience of resisting or main- taining a delimited identity while living in a border zone. This paper also highlights that borders in Nigeria (and elsewhere in Africa) function differently to the traditional borders discussed by established border scholarship. This is primarily due to the complex, shifting and entangled nature of borders in Africa – borders which came about as a result of colo- nialism – and are marked by social and cultural distinctions such as language, ethnicity and religion. Consequently, while a great deal of work has been undertaken in literature using the frameworks of postcolonial studies, conflict and trauma studies, memory studies, ecocriticism, cultural studies and so on, my paper draws from the perspective of border criticism which very few literary studies in Africa, to date, have employed as a primary lens. Moreover, since this paper focuses on inter-ethnic strife with the Nigerian civil war as the temporal setting, it is necessary for the sake of contextualization, to briefly recapture the historical period that builds up to the civil war.

The Politics of Ethnic Bordering: From the Scramble to the Civil War (1885– 1970) From the moment Britain was officially apportioned the territories originally known as the Colonies on the Niger in the wake of the 1885 Scramble for Africa, the physical boundaries of the country that would later become known as Nigeria had transformed through bor- dering, rebordering and debordering. Before 1906, the three British territories on the Niger – Lagos colony (mostly populated by the Yoruba ethnic group), Northern Protectorate (mostly populated by the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group) and Southern Protectorate (mostly populated by the Igbo ethnic group) – that make up present-day Nigeria had existed as independent territories, each administered by a British representative called the High Commissioner. The independence of these territories was evidenced by policies that regulated inter-territorial transactions (Geary 1965, 238–9), sustaining the powerful alienation of the regions from each other “except for uneasy party alliances at the Federal Assembly in Lagos which provided a veneer of unity but could not conceal the deepening external and internal divisions” (Ikiddeh 1976, 162). On 26 February 1906, the first act of debordering was carried out by the Governor of the Lagos Protectorate and Southern Protectorate, Sir Walter Egerton, resulting in the merging of the two Protec- torates, named the Southern Protectorate (Geary 1965, 123). Consequently, between 1906 and 1914, Nigeria operated two independent territories: the Northern and the Southern Protectorates. Finally, on January 1 1914, a total debordering of the internal physical boundaries that separated the Northern and Southern Protectorates was achieved and Nigeria was officially JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 3 created as one country under British colonial rule with Sir Frederick Lugard acting as the first Governor General. This amalgamation was essentially for administrative and trade convenience, as Britain recorded “astonishing progress and prosperity” (Geary 1965, 50, 124) and a massive rise in revenue eight years after the amalgamation. Consequently, there was no consideration for the geographic and ethnic composition of the territories and the inhabitants, evident in the colonialist’s claim: “the progress achieved was not by any way of conquest, the land and the people were ours for the taking, and the Secretary of State gave orders” (Geary 1965, 1). What is absent from this account, of course, is any consideration of the indigenous people affected by the colonial management of Nigerian physical and ethnic borders which continued till Independence in 1960 and beyond the Independence. Hence, in 1939 there was a reversion to three ethno-regional divisions, then named the Provinces of the North (Hausa), the West (Yoruba) and the East (Igbo) in consideration of the three major ethnic groups. In 1954, after a constitutional confer- ence held in Lagos, the federal territory of Lagos and Southern Cameroon were created out of the three provinces, thereby dividing Nigeria into five parts with federal status (Burns 1972, 16; Ekundare 1973, 13). In addition, the Mid-Western Region was created on August 9 1963 (Burns 1972, 17). During this period, the geographical definition of the internal borders of the three major ethnic groups that make up Nigeria remained unstable because territories with exclusive territorial and cultural characteristics were forced to amalgamate. Many critics have asserted that Nigeria is founded on arbitrary contract and irrational bonding which continues to threaten the unity of the nation, after more than a century of existence. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the then Sardauna of Sokoto, one of the very prominent leaders of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), described the amalgamation as “the mistake of 1914” (Pereira and Ibrahim 2010, 923). This mistake is aptly described by Obi Nwakanma (2008, 2) as the “colonial fiat” that willed into being the Nigerian nation – a nation which, in Ntieyong U. Akpan’s(1978, 19) terms, is “fragile and superfi- cial”, owing to its artificially imposed foundation. For Adebanwi and Obadare (2010, 388) as well as many other critics of the Nigeria amalgamation, the consolidation of territories evidence “colonial violence and metropolitan arbitrariness”. The arbitrariness of the national boundaries and heterogeneity of the citizens, traditions, cultures, and languages of the three major, and multitude of minor ethnic groups, have remained a flashpoint of internal divergence in terms of inter-ethnic relationships in Nigeria. Worthy of note, with respect to ethnic politics in Nigeria, is the contribution of Lugard’s administrative formula in enhancing the spirit of ethnicism in the new nation. Lugard’s imposition of the administrative and judicial system of the North (which was formerly under his administration) on the South after amalgamation, exercised a long-term effect on the political development of the nation (Crowder 1986, 29) and gave rise to enmity between the two regions. The imbalance in the amalgamation, articulated in Lord Lewis Harcourt, the then Colonial Secretary’s words, reflects in the colonial consideration of Northern Nigeria as the “husband” in the union metaphorically referred to as “marriage” between the Protectorates:

We have released Northern Nigeria from the leading strings of the (British) Treasury. The promising and well-conducted youth is on an allowance “on his own” and is about to effect an alliance with a Southern lady of means. I have issued the special licence and Sir 4 M. J. N. OKOLIE

Frederick will perform the ceremony … May the Union be fruitful and the couple constant. (Akpan 1978,6) This discriminatory characterization of Northern Nigeria as the “husband” and Southern Nigeria as the “wife” in the analogy, despite the fact that the North depends on the finan- cial revenue from the South, makes it obvious that the fusion of the two territories is not contracted on the basis of equality. By implication, the amalgamation is the subjugation of Southern Nigeria by Northern Nigeria (Ojo 2014, 71), since the latter found more favor with Lord Lugard. This is evidenced also in the fact that Lugard’s primary intention for merging the two regions, aside from financial expediency and settlement of the Railway problem within the two Protectorates, was to bring Northern Nigeria to the same level of development as the South (Geary 1965, 213, 250; Crowder 1986, 26). We can, therefore, say that while the amalgamation achieved a debordering of the three territories to form one nation, the privileging of one region over the others consequently provoked new forms of ethnic consciousness and strife. Over the years, this unequal foundation has con- tributed to the political and economic imbalance in Nigeria and the constant struggle by the Southerners to oppose marginalization and political suppression by the North. Towards 1960 however, the desire to gain independence from Britain inspired the spirit of nationalism amongst Nigerians (Awoyemi-Arayela 2013, 30) and set in motion a reim- agining of the colonial master as the Other in the new national imaginary. The racial line between Nigeria as one nation and the colonial master as the Other became more visible, although its visibility did not reduce the presence of ethnic divisions. In fact, ethno- regional lines manifested in the three political parties that ran for the first national election in 1959. These parties – the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC) representing the North; the Action Group (AG) representing the West; and the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) representing the East – evidenced a clear ethnicization of politics and a mistrust that later resulted in the bloody civil war of 1967–1970. Critics like Alexander Madiebo (1980) and Olaniyan and Asuelime (2014) believe that the fight for independence had an introverted effect in that instead of unification, the nation drifted further apart along ethnic borders, with the Northern party strongly supported by Britain. The introverted effect of the pseudo-exit of the colonial master at the Independence was also reflected in the institution of neo-colonialism. To indirectly remain in control of Nigeria and her economy, especially the oil discovered in the eve of independence, Britain is alleged to have masterminded the election that instituted a Northerner, Sir Abu- bakar Tafawa Balewa, as the first Prime Minister of Nigeria alongside an Easterner, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, as the ceremonial president of Nigeria. This arrangement, as well as the excesses of the politicians immediately after Independence negatively affected the young nation and its determination to survive. Internal rancor and mistrust among ethnic groups and among civilians continued until the military coup of 1966, which was misconstrued as an Igbo (Eastern) coup since most of the politicians killed during the coup were Northerners. The coup led to heightened tension between the Northern and the Eastern regions, finally culminating in the counter-coup of July 29 1966 that brought back a Northerner, General Yakubu Gowon, as the military Head of State, as well as triggering the Pogrom, an anti-Eastern genocide which resulted in the massacre JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 5 of more than 50,000 Igbos living in the Northern part of Nigeria between May and October 1966 (Ekundare 1973, 12). On the 27th of May 1966, contrary to the agreement reached between the Head of State, General Gowon, and the aggrieved Premier of the Eastern Region, Major General Chuk- wuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu whose term was the enactment of a degree of autonomy to the Eastern Region, Gowon divided Nigeria into twelve states. Three days later, General Ojukwu reacted by declaring the secession of the Eastern region from the Nigerian nation. Ojukwu named the Eastern region the Independent Republic of Biafra. This rebor- dering of the Nigerian nation 52 years after amalgamation was intolerable to the Nigerian government. Supported by Britain and Russia, Nigeria (the Hausa and the Yoruba) engaged Biafra in a deadly civil war that lasted from May 1967 until January 14 1970, when Biafra surrendered and reintegrated into Nigeria. Considering these historical developments, Nigerian borders since the invasion of the British, through its inception as a nation in 1914, to the post-Independent era, have remained zones of ethnic and political contestation. And because the Nigerian writer is particularly a product of his or her community and its concerns, literary creations of the era not only reflect the tensions that characterized this historical period, it also com- plicates and questions defined ethnicity, thereby creating a reordered ethnic space that allows for inter-ethnic collaboration for nation-building. Literature, therefore, engages with society in a symbiotic relationship (Awoyemi-Arayela 2013, 28), taking the data of ethnicity from society and giving back to it a performativity that questions national assumptions, especially regarding ethnic incompatibility. In this paper, I examine Chuk- wuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn (2014) not only in its recounting of the civil war as a con- sequence of fragile ethnic bonding but further as a work that ridicules the war and ethnic divisions: in other words, its political orientation is articulated in its distinctive satirical form. Sunset at Dawn has received insufficient attention by literary critics, despite its engage- ment of salient Nigerian history. The author has been sparsely engaged in scholarly dis- course unlike his counterparts, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka (Oguzie 2000, 365; Egejuru 2007, 145). While B. E. C. Oguzie (2000) expresses his surprise at the paucity of “full length critical works on Ike” despite his prolific output, Egejuru (2007, 145) indicts educational stakeholders and scholars of African literature for this lack, since according to him, they “get stuck on one or two authors and refuse to make room for others no matter the level of their achievement as writers”. Ike’s Igbo cultural background and civil war experience greatly influenced his style of writing and his story. He had first hand encounter with the war, having escaped Nsukka, the first Eastern town overrun by the Nigerian army. His narration exposes the war as detrimental to Nigerian unity but at the same time an acknowledgement of Biafran resilience and creativity in the face of uncertainties. More than other novels on the Biafran war, such as Elechi Amadi’s Sunset in Biafra (1973), Okechukwu Meze’s Behind the Rising Sun (1972), Ekwensi’s Survive the Peace (1976) and a few others, Ike’s Sunset at Dawn categorically presents characters’s movement from natal belonging to ideological affiliation. These characters depict an ethnic allegiance conditioned by experience and by conviction. My analysis of Sunset at Dawn as border fiction, premised on Nigerian history, employs the concepts of border and the dynamics of bordering (as obtained from Border studies) as analytical tools. David Newman’s conception of borders and border-crossing as spatial 6 M. J. N. OKOLIE categories or cultural affiliations and identities that create and reflect difference presents the idea of “border” as a line, not only on a map but in-between binary oppositions necessitated by social and cultural differences. They are lines where “categories, spaces and territories interface” (Newman 2011, 36) and around which borderlands exist as areas of negotiation and possible hybridization. Historically, territorial locations of North and South are the basic determinant of belonging especially during the Nigerian civil war. One is either born a Northerner, a Westerner or a Southerner, and birth into the geographical spaces correlate with one’s ethnicity. However, in relation to border, according to Newman, and as aptly represented in the fictional narrative of Sunset at Dawn, “there will always be groups or individuals who desire to cross the border … leaving one form of social behaviour behind, while taking on another” (2011, 44). These individuals are motivated sometimes to resist or cross borders due to the dissatis- faction that lies in the creation or management of borders, and/or times when borders outlive their importance due to changes in social realities. Reactions to ethnic barriers in Sunset at Dawn (Ike 2014) highlight a notion of challenges as a result of dissatisfaction with the superimposed nature of borders, which in Newman’s argument has plagued Africa and parts of Asia to the present, and contested ethnic borders especially at war times (2006, 174). Letting Sunset at Dawn, an ethnic border narrative, engage a “deeper understanding of boundary perceptions [and affiliations]” further tallies with Newman’s argument that popular representations such as literature, media, lyrics enable cultural, social and political imaginations of difference (2003, 20). Through a fictional art, the author overtly re-creates the historical event of the Nigerian civil war, retaining, except for the name of the char- acters, the actual incidents, places and dates of the war. Typical examples are dates of the coups, the pulling back of Biafran troops to Opi (Ike 18); the condemnation to death in Biafra on September 23 1967, of the “commander of the triumphant Biafran forces who had proclaimed the Republic of Benin” (Ike 28); the peace talk organized by the Organisation of African Unity in August 1968 (Ike 271) and many others. Despite its historical correspondence, the text constructs an aesthetic narration of the struggle to define physical, ethnic, and ideological territories. It explores the place of characters in the struggle to maintain or resist categorized identity and its imbrication in the pro- cesses of bordering. I posit that ethnic structures create borderlines between characters and groups, partitioning them into conflicting and contested territories. However, I contend that the negotiation of ethnic identity is not directly related to biological belong- ing. In this case, the novel calls for inter-ethnic debordering and a “balanced marriage”, considering Harcourt’s analogy, of the ethnic groups for communal and national cohesion.

The Poetics of Ethnic Bordering in Sunset at Dawn The ethnic border in this text is both linked to and delinked from geographical lines of demarcation. It is both territorial and ideological. It is territorial because it seems to be provincially based, and it is ideological in the sense that it impedes individual’s freedom to decide where their affiliation lies, irrespective of natal affiliation. My analysis, therefore, presents a form of arbitrary ethnic belonging (that relates to the arbitrary national cre- ation) in characters whose belonging is relational and situational, which is a positive pointer to ethnic debordering. JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 7

Sunset at Dawn opens with the military training of groups of young volunteers from various parts of Biafra taking place in the Biafran capital, Enugu. They have responded to the call for volunteers to fight the enemy with bare hands by catching them while they sleep in their trenches. This idea is initiated by Dr Amilo Kanu, the Biafran Director for Mobilization, who is portrayed in the novel as very idealistic and fanatical about Biafran survival as an independent Republic. The young volunteers from twenty provinces of Biafra parade with zest as they sing in the declaration of their belonging to and readiness to defend Biafra:

We are Biafrans Fighting for our freedom In the name of Jesus We shall conquer. (Ike 2014,1)

Their song depicts belonging: “We are Biafrans” is an assertion of identity, indicating a distinction between the singers and their oppressors, whom they desire to conquer (Ike 2014). In this assertion of “what we are” is also the renunciation of the Other, “what we are not”; a divide which, although has long existed in the history of Nigeria, is fortified by the war. The song, by declaring the divide, presents a defined identity. However, by referring to all as “compatriots” before the war, the narrator acknowledges the historical moment in Nigeria when the colonial administration was Othered for the common purpose of achieving Independence. But with the civil war, the nation divides into ethnic territories, Biafra and “Nigeria”, into “we” and “our enemies”. Immediately after this declaration of belonging, the text presents the reason for the div- ision: “they [Biafrans] remembered the fate of so many Eastern Nigerians in one of the incidents that had prompted the breakaway of Biafra from Nigeria some months earlier – the 1966 pogrom … nauseous scenes of gouged eyes, ripped wombs and headless bodies” (Ike 2014, 3). And this reason remains a motivation for the insistence on non- negotiable borderline and the secession of Biafra from Nigeria. Thus when, at the end of the training, Dr Kanu requires that those who are daunted by the resolution to defend Biafra with their bare hands and machetes should stay back in the hall, “all thou- sand volunteers joined in the march. Not one remained in the examination hall” (9), deter- mined to guard Enugu (the Biafran capital) against the Nigerian army that had already captured two Biafran territories, Ogoja and Nsukka. The struggle to define belonging, therefore, straddles who one is, and where one pro- fesses to belong. Before the outbreak of the war, Dr Kanu, while living in Ibadan in the Western part of Nigeria with his Northerner wife Fatima, wishes that the Biafran war could be averted. However, when he sees war impending, he reasons that if the federation is bound to break up despite him, it was crucial that he (an Easterner) should be found on the proper side of the River Niger when the moment of separation comes (Ike 2014, 36). This decision to be properly positioned underpins his dedication to the Biafran struggle. In his case, there is a correspondence between spatial belongingness and biological identity. Dr Kanu believes the “proper side” to be the place where one belongs by virtue of birth, and when he is made the Director for Mobilization for the war, he gives all, including his life to ensure that Biafra wins the war. 8 M. J. N. OKOLIE

Dr Kanu’s life establishes the traditional notion of ethnicity as tied to geographical spaces. He believes that he belongs to the Biafran territory and thus will fight on the side of Biafra. He relocates from Ibadan (the Western part of Nigeria which during the war unites with the North as a common enemy to Biafra) to Enugu at the onset of the war. Ironically, his physical border-crossing with his Northern wife implicates his declara- tion for and his belonging to Biafra. Thus, although he leaves Ibadan for the East as a mark of identity assertion, symbolically he remains at the border by virtue of marriage. Never- theless, his commitment to identity assertion leads to the sacrifice of his life for Biafra. As the Director for Mobilization he discovers that Biafra runs short of human capacity to keep up its resistance as a community, he metamorphoses from requiring volunteers to volunteering himself to the war front. Dr Kanu resonates an inability to see the changing border. And his friends, Akwaelumo and the H. E. (the head of the Biafran State), try to convince him of the futility of self-sacrifice at the inevitable fate of the Biafran nation. His inability to reconcile his idealism with the reality of a defeated territory leads to his death since he goes to the warfront an amateur and sustains an injury which keeps him in the hospital where eventually an enemy bomb kills him. The novel juxtaposes Dr Kanu’s decision with that of his wife Fatima and other char- acters, like Halima and Bassey, in order to question the assumption of lines on the map border. Unlike Dr Kanu, whose decision to be properly geographically situated is tied to biological belonging, the process of negotiating ethnic belonging in the text is not always biological. On the physical boundaries, Biafran borders and territories are clearly defined with military actions expedited to save it when it is captured by the enemy, and inventions of ammunitions and establishment of new airports in Biafra territories all geared towards guarding the physical borders. But for ethnic belonging, it does not strictly follow that characters’ belonging is defined by their inclusion within a physical boundary due to birth. Thus, a character who is Biafran by birth decides to fight on the side of Nigeria and vice versa. In this case, the border is complicated and belonging implicated. Belonging ceases to be defined within the paradigm of nativity and physical territories. Fatima’s narrative devel- opment depicts this notion of ethnic belonging as not tied to natal territories. At first, when the war forces them to leave the Western part of Nigeria and return to Enugu, Fatima retains her natal affiliation to the North since the metropolitan nature of Enugu asserts no pressure on her to declare where she belongs. But when Fatima loses her son to the first air raid on Enugu, carried out by her people, she physically relocates with her remaining son to her husband’s village Obodo, where she encounters the typicality of the opposing territory (Biafra) in her father-in-law Mazi Kanu Onwubiko and in the people of Obodo who initially consider her an intruder and a memory of the enemy. Fatima also feels that she has no need to integrate herself in the village with whom she shares no ethnic or linguistic traits. A process of ethnic deterritorialization is enacted at the moment of Fatima’s encounter with Halima. A visit by the latter, a Hausa woman like herself, gives her a sense of identifi- cation with her kind. But this identification is troubled after listening to Halima’s trau- matic stories about her narrow escape with her two sons after the ruthless murder of her Biafran husband by her Hausa brothers during the 1966 pogrom and massacre of Igbos in the North. Halima further narrates how the food blockade on Biafra and the bombing of her husband’s village in the East by the Nigerian army killed her son and JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 9 forced her to take refuge with her remaining son in Obodo (ike 2014, 126-136). Fatima grieves with Halima and decides to help her and her remaining son, as well as other star- ving children in Obodo. As part of the process of debordering with Biafra, Fatima opens a relief center to mitigate the effect of hunger on children, caused by the blockade. This gesture endears her to the people and invariably breaks the ethnic barrier between her and her husband’s people. Fatima gradually realizes that she is becoming more Biafran than Nigerian (Ike 2014, 124) and decides to fully border-cross from Nigeria to Biafra, following Halima’s resol- ution to become Biafran despite her traumatic experiences. Finally, the devastation caused by the bombing of Obodo which kills Halima and her only son, as well as many innocent people, seals Fatima’s resolve. Halima’s death becomes a marker of Fatima’s total disconnect with her Hausa ethnic identity. She, therefore, gives her total support to Biafra in the war and later travels to Libreville to support the propaganda for the Biafran state. The idea that ethnic bordering is not necessarily a product of biological belonging is also evoked in Bassey, an industrious businessman from Akwa Ibom who loses his wife and children due to the sabotage of his kinsmen who dissuade him from evacuating his family at the approach of the Nigerian army. This loss almost deranges him, but for the early intervention of his Igbo friends Prof Emeka Ezenwa and Mr Onukaegbe and Barris- ter Ifeji, who take Bassey to the hospital for treatment and ensure that the H. E. (the gov- ernor of the Biafran state) recognizes his financial contribution to the war. Having been helped to overcome the trauma caused by his kinsmen and the war, Bassey affirms his brotherhood with his Igbo friends: “when I call you my brothers, I mean it literally. I feel towards you as though we are of one blood. There’s nothing I’ll keep a secret from you” (Ike 2014, 245). Ethnic/tribal borders for Bassey, therefore, cease to be kith and kin. In Fatima, Halima and Bassey, the text establishes a border-crossing that results from experience and conviction, and an ethnic belonging that transcends spatial territories. Borders are accorded the dual functionality of inclusivity and exclusivity. While Fatima, Halima, and Bassey negotiate their inclusion in the Biafran border, an old Biafran man whose name is not mentioned, as the war winds up, presents a clear-cut territorial exclu- sion. Psychologically, he negotiates his identity as an outsider within, having suffered the traumatic experience of the

unprovoked midnight massacre of his people by a neighbouring Igbo village, on the flimsy and unfounded charge that they were saboteurs [sabotaging the war against Biafra]. His wife and four teenage sons – his entire family – were slaughtered in one night. (Ike 2014, 326) Coincidentally, this incident occurs when the old man is out of town negotiating for relief materials for Biafran refugees. Thus, with the slogan “we shall win” he mocks Biafra, and though territorially he is Biafran, ideologically “he excludes himself [from its border] and prays for the collapse of Biafra” (Ike 2014, 326). He does not believe in the ability of Biafra to sustain its borders independently of Nigeria since he holds that “a nation founded as a protest against genocide could not condone genocide within its own borders” (326). Sunset at Dawn, therefore, shows the multiplicity and equally complex nature of border where belonging is simultaneously spatial and ideological. Other literary works on the civil war also questioned familial attachment to ethnic group. For instance, Sunset in Biafra: 10 M. J. N. OKOLIE

A Civil War Diary (1973) which presents Elechi Amadi’s personal experience of the Biafran war, depicts a delinking from biological connection to ethnic divide. Even though Amadi is from the Southern part of Nigeria, he is ideologically opposed to the South; indeed, he aligns himself with the North during the war. Amadi addresses Biafran secessionist group as rebel thereby indicting Biafrans for fighting a war of blame. Ike’s Sunset at Dawn satirizes the war and questions its essence in national history. It exposes the bane of ethnic division, thereby ridiculing the idea of war as a solution to the problem of ethnicity in Nigeria. In depicting characters who despite their territorial iden- tity as Biafrans suffer exclusion within the Biafran territory, the text trivializes the call for secession when the center is still too weak to be one. It, therefore, indicts the ill-prepared- ness of the Biafran “societal managers” for the war, which costs Biafra both physical and human resources:

Nigerians did decide to go to war, and when the fighting began on 6th July 1967 the hollow- ness of Biafra’s confident proclamations of its readiness to crush any Nigerian invasion – be it land, sea, or – became obvious. The first week of the war had hardly ended before the tragic fact was established that Biafra had neither the trained military men nor the military hard- ware to repel any serious invasion. The pattern was consistent in each of the three initial sectors of the war – on the Nsukka, Ogoja and Bonny sectors. The hastily assembled and ill-equipped Biafra forces could not dig in anywhere. Biafran territory shrank like a cheap fabric after its first wash. The yellow-on-black Sun lost its dazzle and much of its authenticity. (Ike 2014,14–15) This indictment is also depicted in the character of Dr Kanu who, though an amateur, gives his life to the war, even after the H. E. and his friend Dr Akwaelumo tell him how suicidal his decision is. Here, the rhetorical question asked by Dr Kanu’s father –“will Biafra’s salvation come from the battlefield?” (Ike 2014, 349) – speaks to the central issue that preoccupies this study, namely a questioning of the realization of ethnic borders or other forms of bordering through war. It foregrounds the jeopardization of national unity by ethnic fragmentation and war. By implication, it asserts that to achieve national unity, the idea of ethnic identity must not be mutually exclusive of national identity. Furthermore, the text also ends with afterthoughts that reflect the futility of the struggle for ethnic independence where national unity is a viable option, as well as the irrationality of human sacrifice as the best option against violent binary opposition. Dr Kanu’s death, which symbolizes the death of Biafra and possibly an end to the struggle for secession, pro- duces nothing but an eclipse of the soul of Biafra: “the soul of Biafra ascending into the heavens … like a soul journeying to another world … [and] Akwaelumo, Dike Bassey, Bar- rister Ifeji, Onukaegbe, etcetera. From Biafranism back to Nigerianism. Each person sought his own hideout to bury his discarded Biafran skin” (Ike 2014, 358–9). Yet, the end of the war does not necessarily mean the end of divide. The Nigerian civil war as an ethnic divisive marker echoes the idea of “emotional landscapes of control” as held by Anssi Paasi, a Finnish geographer (2009, 225; 2011, 23); it is a situation which according to Passi suggests a reposition and transmission of memories into national his- tories or iconographies. In this case, border figures, such as the civil war, even when they are physically removed or stopped still leave in people’s mind the sense of division. And the traumatic residue of the war becomes generational transmission of sensitivity to ethnic borders. Thus, the Biafran war remains a “dividing line that exists deep in the national JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 11 memory and even in the national iconography” (Paasi 2011, 23). One of the major char- acters, Dr Akwaelumo, retains strong conviction that the division already created by the war will continue even when borders are bridged (Ike 2014, 93). His conviction corre- sponds to Nigeria’s historical moment.

Sunset at Dawn and the Persistence of Borders in Nigerian Political Imagination Presently, Nigerian political and national life continues to suffer bordering and duplication of identity in the proliferation of separatist groups that threaten national unity. Nigeria and Biafra seem to have exhumed its “discarded skins” in many shades of territorial and ethnic struggles manifest in the present-day Nigerian political landscape. According to Okpewho, “the last few years have seen the rise of ethnic organizations in Nigeria […] each one adopting a name that announces a separatist identity: in the Hausa North, Arewa; in the Yoruba West, Afenifere; in the Igbo East, Ohaneze” (Okpewho in Eze 2005, 110). These separatist groups, as well as other dissent groups from the main- stream ethnic territories such as Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Oduduwa People’s Congress (OPC), Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), have continued to fight towards self-determination, independence and ethnic purity by calling for the break-up of Nigeria. The latest call for the break-up of Nigeria was the ultimatum issued by the Coalition of Arewa Youth of the Northern State on June 6 2017 in response, according to them, to the “forceful lockdown of activities and denial of other people’s right to free movement in the South-East by the rebel Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its overt and covert sponsors” (Tekedia 2017). This ulti- matum which required the Igbos to leave the Northern part of Nigeria by October 1 2017, triggered fresh agitations and subsequent quelling of the situation by the federal gov- ernment halting temporarily the drift towards disintegration and possible ethnic war thereby reassuring the nation’s commitment to unity. Hence, if we must learn from the historical import of the civil war, a call for unity instead of breakup seems more realistic for Nigeria as a nation. And though the colonialist amalgamation of Nigeria was for pur- poses of administrative convenience, void of considerations of ethnic difference, every effort must be made towards survival as one nation. Although Sunset at Dawn is born out of twentieth-century Nigerian history, it resonates with the twenty-first-century call for a rethinking of African (Nigerian) national and ethnic identity which, according to Eze,

[is] one of the greatest challenges facing African societies … to go beyond the vestiges of rela- tivism associated with the anticolonial struggles and which have become embedded in paro- chial ethnic and tribal loyalties. The challenge is to weave a more universal solidarity that can accord individuals anywhere in Africa [in Nigeria] their rights and dignities regardless of their gender, [ethnicity] and ancestry. (Eze 2014, 236–7) Meeting with this national (as well as global) challenge transforms borders into frontier spaces that enable positive encounters, interactions and exchanges, “a crucial condition for openness and cooperation” (Kolossov and Scott 2013, 13). It enables transcendence beyond the injection of divides and intolerance created by the arbitrary national creation 12 M. J. N. OKOLIE and the lopsided colonial management of amalgamated ethnic groups. This transcendence is achievable “only through multilevel, multi-sectoral and long-term approaches that involve transformation at the international, national and local levels. This, in turn, demands cultural changes and new kinds of thinking on both sides of any given border” (Kolossov and Scott 2013,13–14). It entails the decoding of the characteristics of social differences that encourage exclusive ethnic relationship, and an embrace of the elements that unite.

Conclusion Ethnic borders are dynamic. They simultaneously relate to both symbolic and spatial con- structs. Ethnic bordering in Nigeria reflects in other forms, beyond lines on the map and biological affiliation, as aptly captured in Sunset at Dawn. Its multi-dimensional possibi- lities impact society and spaces of belonging. Nigerian history typifies the fluidity of borders and the ability of border imposition and border proliferation occasioned by the colonial scramble that sutured ethnic groups of distinct cultural orientations in religion, language, appearance and form, together into one nation. The nature of African colonial- ism gave no room for consideration of geographic and ethnic composition of the African territories and their inhabitants. Thus, while borders create a binary distinction between the “here” and the “there”, the “us” and the “them”, the “included” and the “excluded”, the distinctiveness of the border is challenged in everyday interaction, made possible through the narration of everyday life. This paper has engaged Sunset at Dawn as border fiction, premised on Nigerian history, particularly the Nigeria-Biafran war, which some critics have termed ethnic war. The paper has utilized border conceptualizations and the dynamics of bordering (as obtained from Border studies) as analytical tools. In so doing, the analysis achieves a disciplinary border-crossing in line with the proposition it upholds of the novel. Sunset at Dawn con- ceptualizes the lived experiences of shifting ethnic borders and establishes that ethnic borders in Nigeria (and by extrapolation, elsewhere in Africa such as Rwanda, Cameroun, Zimbabwe who have experienced the colonial effect of arbitrarily sutured ethnic borders and discriminatory colonial administration that ensured the thickening of the ethnic and clan differences) which though conceived in-line with traditional notion of borders as fixed lines between ethnic groups manifest also on the realm of personal conviction and affiliation. There is constantly a performance of bordering, rebordering and debordering that continues to challenge the fixity of the border. Though many critics assert that the arbitrariness on which the Nigerian nation is con- tracted and irrationally bonded will remain a threat to the unity of the nation, this paper’s re-reading of Sunset at Dawn, which has received insufficient attention by literary critics despite its engagement of salient Nigerian history, challenges an age-long linking of dis- turbed national unity to ethnic differences. The novel calls for an ideological shift in ethnic consciousness; a total delinking from the matrix of coloniality and a complete “de-colonial epistemic shift” (Mignolo 2007, 453) which in the Nigerian instance is a rethinking of the amalgamation. The novel calls for a disconnect from the pessimism of amalgamation which hitherto conceives Nigeria as an impossible whole. The novel con- tributes to the on-going discourse on national stability geared towards building a nation “bound in freedom, peace and unity” (Nigerian National Anthem). By projecting the JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 13 gallantry of Fatima, Halima and Bassey’s ethnic debordering, hinged on the course of reasoning and comradeship, against Dr Kanu’s notion of “proper situatedness” informed by natal affiliation, the novel debunks ethnic fixity, thereby creating a reordered ethnic space that allows for inter-ethnic collaboration for nation-building. In Fatima, Halima and Bassey, the text establishes a border-crossing that results from experience and convic- tion and an ethnic belonging that transcends spatial territories. The novel, also, by gener- ally satirizing the war and questioning its essence in national history, exposes the bane of ethnic division and criticizes the use of force in conflict resolution. Sunset at Dawn, by suggesting alternatives to ethnic identity as shown in this study, suggests a discarding of “war skins” similar to the one achieved by Biafran soldiers, but this time a discarding that relates to both (and all) sides of the borders. The processes of discarding in present-day Nigeria involves a disengagement with everything that stirs ethnic conflict, such as corruption, unequal national distribution of any sort, and finally, nepotism. Overcoming this national challenge increases the dynamism of ethnic differences and transforms borders into frontier spaces of positive encounter, interaction and exchange.

Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID Mary J. N. Okolie http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7896-2726

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