Fiction Begets Facts: An Exploration of Trauma of Biafran War in Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn

Nasiru Yahaya & Amina Bello, Department of Languages, Niger State Polytechnic, Zungeru

John Olorunshola Kehinde, Newgate College of Health Technology, Minna

Abstract

War, a phenomenon of mass death, destruction, injury and loss has remained a veritable source of inspiration and materials for literary creativity. The period of , popularly called Biafran War was the most thriving epoch in the development of literature in Nigeria. The period has preoccupied creative writers in all genres of literature leading to the production of a corpus of fictions and non-fictions chronicling the events of the period. The agitation for and discussion on has refused to cease. There is therefore the need for a continuous discourse on the war. This work is aimed at exploring the portrayal of the Nigerian-Biafran War in Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn. The study adopts New Historicism reading as a fruitful theoretical tool for the analysis of the events in the text. The study argues that the Biafran novels are a blend of fact and fiction. The work depicts that the principal cause of the Nigerian Biafran War and even the current re-agitation for Biafra is the bitterness borne out of misunderstanding of one another. The study reveals that a study of the Nigerian war novels furnishes readers with sufficient information to make sense out of the current events and situation in Nigeria so as to avoid a repeat of the ugly situation.

Introduction The Nigerian Civil War popularly known as the Biafra War is often said to be the most fecund period in the literary history of Nigeria as it gives literary inspiration more than any other historical event in the country. The period brought about a long list of fictional, non-fictional and autobiographical works all chronicling the experiences of the period. Major actors in the war and creative writers were furnished with ample materials to produce their accounts of the war in different genres. The body of works that emanated from the war—mostly the novel genre—has come to be known as Nigerian war literature. Nigerian war novels, though fictions, are historical novels that are based on facts.

Immediately after the war, there was a curiosity to write and comment on the war. That possibly explained the large number of works that flooded the market in the first quarter after the war. The Nigeria Civil War constitutes an aspect of the history of Nigeria where every prominent writer in the country has written partly or even wholly about. This is indicative of the fact that the war is an important aspect of the development of Nigeria as a nation. This study is based on Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn. Ike, the writer did not only live the war time, he also participated in the war; the more reason his fiction Sunset at Dawn begets a lot of facts.

132 Over the years there have been renewed calls by some Nigerians of the Igbo extraction to be specific, demanding for the state of Biafra. The struggle has found favour among many Igbo youths so much that nasty and hate comments are usually exchanged on the slightest provocation between people of the eastern region and other regions when discussing issues of national concerns, especially on the social media. This has shown that the scores of Biafra have not yet been settled amicably. It reveals how bitter the Igbo ethnic group is with Nigeria. This poses a big challenge to the existence of Nigeria. This act is often perpetrated by youths who were not born or too young to have experienced the trauma of the civil war. Amidst the unending calls for secession amongst the easterners, there is a need to study the evils that underlie the Nigerian tragic thirty-month battle with her citizenry.

The Nigerian Civil War is laden with gruesome experiences which provided and still provide materials for writers for a body of works that form the Nigerian war novels/literature. These novels chronicle and recount personal and fictionalised experiences of the bloody encounters and the untold hardships and miseries suffered by Nigerians, especially the innocent victims on the Biafra side. These stories are intended to teach and warn Nigerians about the dangers and the aftermaths of war on all strata of the society—the children and women, the poor, the rich, the intellectuals, and of course the soldiers in the battle field. However, it appears as if lessons have not been learnt from these records as Nigerians are still engaged in, tribalism, hate speeches, and religious bigotries; the very reasons that led to the war in the first place. Going back to war now might be more deadly considering the technological advancement in warfare and the proliferation of small arms in the society.

This work attempts to explore the tragic experiences and discourses on the war. A study of the Nigeria-Biafra War novels is necessary, more so as the events of the Nigeria-Biafra War have continued to generate attention from literary artists, activists, historians, social and political analysts. Nigerians do not seem to have learned enough from Biafra War. Many Nigerians living today, especially youths, know little or nothing about Biafra War. Therefore, more studies should be carried out on writings concerning this war. This will enrich many Nigerians who wish to know about that unfortunate civil war with necessary information of what the experience of the war was like. This agrees with Udeze Edozie (27), who asserts that “war literatures, both fictions and non-fictions, should be studied regularly to know the kind of political and economic situations being addressed by these works. They will help the country to know what to avoid in order not to fight again” (The Nation Newspaper). War literature has been a neglected aspect in the study of literature in Nigeria. It is not taught in Nigerian universities even in the departments of English and Literary Studies. The war which was fought to checkmate the secessionist bid of the people of the Eastern part of Nigeria resulted in wanton loss of lives and destruction of properties, therefore, the renewed struggle to actualise Biafra by the people of the Igbo extraction calls for concern.

Theoretical Context As a theory, new historicism is the skeletal upon which the interpretive analysis of this text is based. The main aim of this theory is to understand intellectual history through literature, and literature through its cultural context. The theory holds that the truth of the history of an event is a matter of interpretation on both the part of the writer and the reader. This belief is hinged on the fact that the losers’ history is hardly heard. It is assumed that it is the powerful that possess the resources to record story. This played out in Iraqi when it was invaded by the US as well as in Libyan. All that was heard of is the story handed to people by the US because they own the most powerful media and the publishing houses. However, the Nigeria-Biafra story

133 has established that the history of the loser can also be heard, even more than the history of the dominant or the winner. Readers are more interested in the story of the defeated than the story of the winner because it helps the readers to understand the conflict better and perhaps why there is the reoccurring agitation for Biafra. Though, they may not have published their stories as official documents, or textbooks, they may have circulated them in the form of other discourses.

In the case of the Nigerian-Biafran War, Republic of Biafra (the supposed loser) has chronicled the events of the war more than the Federal Government of Nigeria (the perceived winner). The voice of the losers has been more audible than the voice of the winners. Although the Federal Government declared a situation of “no victor, no vanquished” at the end of the war, it is apparent that the war was won and lost. The new historicists would want to hear all the stories and recognise all the voices from both the winners and the losers.

According to new historicists, there never was, and there never is, a single history or a single worldview. Instead, many discourses come together in a complete cultural interaction. Some new historicists charge that the very notion of a standardised culture is a false one that has been imposed by powerful institutions and classes as a way of maintaining their own interests. Aware that no single discourse can explain the complexities of any event or artifact, new historicists search out sources that were overlooked in the past because of emphasis on finding an overall explanation of a period’s practices and products. Their investigations have led to an interest in the narratives of marginalised people as well as to some criticism for importance they give to non-mainstream materials. The quest of the new historicists is important because it is through the stories people tell about themselves that they come to know who they are. To hear only the narratives of the dominant groups would mean ignoring others that have helped shape people and would provide only a partial understanding of what and how ideologies operated and interacted to form personal and group identities.

The Nigeria-Biafra War and Literature As earlier mentioned, the Nigerian-Biafran War remains the most recreated historical phenomenon in postcolonial Nigerian literature. The reason for this is not farfetched. Events of wars have always been instrumental in producing literature and literary documents and discourses. What usually shape writers’ world view in literature are the gruesome experiences they had. For example, when at the end of the World War II, in 1945, the then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was asked by a journalist how he felt about the war. Edozie Udeze states that Churchill retorted: “Oh, the war? It was a beautiful war, a wonderful war” (6). An obviously flabbergasted reporter then asked why he said so. Churchill, who led the British forces to victory over the intransigent forces of Adolf Hitler and his allies, threw back his head and laughed. “Because we will write about the war ourselves” (6). They truly wrote about the war themselves because, a few years later, Churchill won a Nobel Prize in Literature following the many memoirs he produced on the war; how it was fought and lost (The Nation Newspaper, Sept 27, 2015). This is the extent to which literature has proven to be a worthy tool for documenting and preserving the culture and history of a people.

Literature influences and it is influenced by the happenings in the society. That explains why many scholars see literature as the mirror of the society artistically rendered in words and in a manner that is artistically pleasing and entertaining, in order to elucidate the human condition (Madubuike 1). Many Nigerian writers and even non-Nigerians have written on the Biafran War wholly or partly. Udeze estimates that “since the war ended over 200 materials in different

134 genres of literature by Nigerians and foreigners have been produced” (92). This corroborates ’s words in There was a Country that, some leading international thinkers of the era were so appalled by the Biafran tragedy that they decided to pay the breakaway republic a visit to get firsthand information on the sufferings of the Biafrans. He states that “Auberon Waugh came and afterward wrote a devastating book on Harold Wilson’s duplicitous policy. He also named the newborn child Biafra Waugh!” (105).

Long after the war has ended, younger generations of writers are still writing on the history of the war exploring new styles, themes and approaches. This is the reason Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo asserts that, writing on the history of the war will not cease. She is of the opinion that historical experiences will always continue to inspire writers, even future writers who have not been born today.

Flora Nwapa in her own account of the war entitled Never Again, examines the civil war from a civilian’s perceptive. In this traumatic but interesting narrative, she portrays the tension and trauma, the betrayal and the moral decadence of the war in a civilian enclave. Similarly, Belolisa’s Torn Asunder: A Nigerian Civil War Odyssey narrates the events of the civil war from one who was too young to participate in the war but who was not too naive to understand the psychological implications of a war as regards hate and attrition. What is evident in these works is that the Nigerian civil war was an avoidable war that did no one any good. It was a war of looting, plundering, betrayal, deceit and lies.

A Harvest from Tragedy edited by Chinyere Nwahunanya is a comprehensive and elaborate critical study on the civil war literature in Nigeria. In her editorial remarks, Nwahunanya gives an insight to the place of Nigerian war literature in the African political and literary experience. She states that,

In its re-creation and interpretation of history, Nigerian war literature has enriched the existing body of historical writing from Africa, especially historical fiction. In this way the writers have made literature continue to function as the mirror of the society. In the process of mirroring and criticizing its pitfalls, the war literature also serves as a compass for social redirection. (14)

Heerten Lase and Moses A. Dirke in their article “The Nigerian-Biafran War: Post Colonial Conflict and the Question of Genocide”, argue that the war is widely regarded as a watershed in the post colonial global order. They point out that scholars published profusely on the multifarious issues the Nigerian-Biafran War raise, juxtaposing the war with the bloody but successful breakaway of East Pakistan (Bangladesh) from Pakistan in 1971. They posit that the Nigerian-Biafran war is qualified to be considered as genocide for the fact that an induced famine was used as a weapon against the Biafrans. They are not however unmindful of the fact that two foremost experts in the field of genocide study in Africa Robert Melson and Leo Kuper, observed the war and drew formative conclusion about the nature of genocide which effectively excluded the conflict from the canon of twentieth century genocide. They point out that Chinua Achebe, the famous novelist who served as Biafran ambassador during the war raised the question of genocide in the Biafran conflict in his memoir, There was a Country. Stressing further that “another famous Nigerian author, Wole Soyinka, whose imprisonment during the war by the Federal Military Government is recorded in The Man Died , concurred that Biafrans had indeed been victims of genocide even though he did not support the Biafran Secession” (170).

135 Heerten and Moses see the 1914 amalgamation, the postcolonial splitting of Nigeria into three regions along tribal and religious divide, the January 1966 coup and counter coups, and the June to October 1966 massacres of Igbo living in the North as evolution and course of events leading to the Nigeria-Biafra war. They remark that “[t]he massacres were one of the key events in the unfolding of the Biafra War” (173). This violence, they observe, drove a stream of more than a million Igbo refugees to the Eastern region, their homeland; and amidst ubiquitous fear and distrust, the Eastern region began to call for autonomy. They conclude with a very significant comment that “whether the massacres, bombing and famine are named as genocide or not, dealing with the history of the war is important for an understanding of the fabric of postcolonial Nigeria and the international order in which the conflict emerged and unfolded” (192). They believe that, in many ways the Nigerian-Biafran War remains a crucial episode that can help make sense out of the current events in the country and also help in writing a history of the present happenings in Nigeria.

Iniobong I. Uko in her work entitled “Of War and Madness: A Symbolic Transmutation of the Nigeria-Biafra War in Selected Stories from the Insider” observes that “the defective healing process of the wounds on the Nigerian Psyche from the war has resulted in an extensive gulf between the people of the defunct Biafra and Nigeria” (49). She says that the way the Biafrans were treated before and during the war comes alive in the fiction on the war mostly written by scholars and intellectuals from Eastern Nigeria, specifically the Igbo who suffer the brunt. She sees a strong symbolic affinity between the Nigerian Civil War and madness. The author likens the Nigerian Civil War to Chinua Achebe’s short story “The Madman”. “The symbolism can be decoded through the formula of the civil war in Nigeria. The actual madman represents Nigeria. The insanity manifests itself in the way Nigeria was embroiled, following the attainment of independence from Britain in 1960, in excessive corruption, nepotism, a thirst for power, authority and dominance that bordered on audacious fatality” (51). This madness, Uko believes, degenerated into the 1966 coup and counter coup that resulted in the pogrom of the Igbo in Northern Nigeria. Biafrans fought like Nwibe in “The Madman”, who struggles unclad to get his clothes from the true madman (51).

She goes further to explain that after he is presumed mad and cured of his insanity; Nwibe is denied the privilege of having the ‘ozo’ title. If he had been given his rightful place in the society perhaps he might have become relatively pacified. Long after the Biafran War, Uko points out, “the Igbo are hardly fully accepted and integrated into the national fabric. However, as a strong willed, tenacious and ambitious people, they become energised to work and succeed to overcome all encumbrances and be recognised in society” (52). She concludes that the numerous fictions on the Nigerian Civil War “stress that as long as the Nigerian Civil War remains a potent source of outrage, inter ethnic hatred, discrimination, and intense nepotism, the bogey of insanity will remain among Nigerians, and the proper healing and development of the brutalized Nigerian mind and spirit, as well as the land will continue to be an illusion” (58).

Ogaga Okuyade observes that the historical events of the Nigerian Civil War have by far superseded any other event in Nigeria not even the events of the dark years of colonial rule. He concurs that the war has inspired many writers such as Chinua Achebe, thereby bringing them to the limelight in African literary scene. Okuyade observes further that it is not surprising that the Nigerian Civil War has preoccupied creative writers, critics and researchers. This he believes stems from the fact that conflicts have been veritable source for artistic creation. Invariably, literature is bound to bloom in Africa as there are many crises in the continent. He

136 remarks that, “beside sunshine and moonlight, one other thing Africa and Nigeria in particular has in abundance is crisis” (324). This is quite true considering the incessant violence the country is known with—the Nigerian Civil War, the Niger Delta crisis, numerous cases of kidnapping and ethnic clashes, religious violence and the dreaded Boko Haram insurgency.

What however preoccupies creative writers and scholars alike in their contributions to the ever-growing body of Nigerian War Literature is the overall trauma of deaths, sufferings and losses the country experienced during those trying periods. Given its serious undertone, discourses on the Nigerian war novels rarely concern themselves with aesthetics. Most of the discourses on Nigeria war literature explore serious thematic issues aimed at providing the emerging generation with necessary information to avert the painful but avoidable experience of the three years of the civil war. This study, in addition to exploring the trauma that underlies the Nigerian Civil War, looks at how Ike synergises the facts he got as a fighter on the side of Biafra in the thirty month-tragic war with fiction to produce the award winning Sunset at Dawn.

From Fiction to Facts: Trauma of Deaths and Cruelty in Ike’s Sunset at Dawn Ike in Sunset at Dawn garnishes his fiction with historical facts to sustain the interest of readers along the storyline. In the novel, it is found that the writers in addition to revealing the serious humanitarian crises the war unleashed on Nigerians, also ridicule a situation where a people in their bid to secede go to war without adequate preparation and dialogue with their mother country. Such ill preparedness only retard the region yearning to break off and results in wanton loss of innocent lives, displacement of millions of people, documents loss, and destruction of properties. The events chronicled in the novels are anchored on the realities of the war. Some events narrated actually happened but they are tailored, reshaped, and told with creative imagination using fictional characters. Most of the traumatic experiences and historical facts discussed in the novel are as contained in history books, biographies and testimonies of the soldiers who participated in the war. One of these testimonies of veteran of war is contained in President Muhammadu Buhari 2016 speech. The general, while addressing National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) members from eastern Nigeria in his hometown, recounted the trauma that characterised the war admonishing the corps members to,

Tell your colleagues who want Biafra to forget about it. As a military commander, I walked from Degema, a border town between the North and the East. I walked for most of the 30 months that we fought the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, in which at least two million people were killed. We were made by our leaders to go and fight Biafra not because of money or oil, because oil was not critical factor then, but because of one Nigeria. So, if leadership at various levels failed, it was not the fault of the rest of Nigerians who have no quarrel with one another. (Daily Trust, Wed Sept 14, 2016. (4)

It is evident from the above statement of Buhari that the internal war that claimed the lives of at least two million Nigerians is a war too many. Meanwhile, the principal cause of the war is the bitterness the various regions in Nigeria bear against one another. It is clear that even before the civil war; the north and the south misunderstood and bore hatred for each other. Ralph Uwechue asserts that “a misunderstanding of the motives behind the January coup led to the northern revenge-or-rather, “over revenge”—as witnessed by the May riots, the July Counter-Coup and the massacres of September – October 1966 (32). A similar misunderstanding of the intentions behind the actions of the Federal Government after the massacres led many Easterners, especially the Ibos to believe that what had happened was a planned attempt to

137 exterminate them (32). This kind of misunderstanding has continued to trail every action of Nigerians especially, decisions taken by leaders. People always misunderstand and react to decisions taken by leaders from other regions along ethnic and religious divide.

It may be said that those who did not experience the period of the war cannot actually express what the war was truly like. However, writers like Ike have used history and research coupled with the use of appropriate narrative and writing techniques and skills to produce interesting narratives that bring to mind the tragic events of those thirty months. Ike, who lived the realities of the war, is quite striking in the precision and the exactitude that he narrates events, often citing dates. His account is undeniably authentic, reliable, and often heartbreaking in its poignancy.

In Sunset at Dawn, death is a common occurrence. People die from shelling and others die in calculated and coordinated attack. The death of one prominent and important person or few individuals may be mourned and given publicity more than the death of a hundred ordinary people. And while some deaths are mourned, deaths of enemies are celebrated. People discuss the death of others (enemies) with joy and accomplishment. Cruelty is a common feature of Sunset at Dawn. It presents man’s inhumanity to man at the highest level. There is the total breakdown of law and order. Cruelty is largely portrayed and it is not only the enemies who inflict or suffer the cruelty, even brothers against brothers on the same side of the battle line. This cruelty is presented right from the early stage of Sunset at Dawn. Dr. Kanu, the Director for Mobilization suffers a great loss – he loses his first son, Ami Junior. The boy dies in the first shelling of Enugu by the Federal forces. The narrator says,

The sound which Dr. Amilo Kanu and the machete carrying young men heard as they prepared for defense of Enugu did not come from Biafran explosives. It came from the first Nigerian mortars to be lobbed into Enugu. Dr. Kanu’s wife, Fatima, and their elder son, five-year-old Amilo Junior, were standing outside their Progress Hotel Chalet, waiting for Emeka, the three-year-old son, who had gone to toilet. Something suddenly landed with a crash on the ring road in front of their chalet. Almost simultaneously, Fatima heard a whistling sound followed a split second later by a cry – cry of agony from Ami Junior, standing beside her. He was a bloody heap before she could wake up from the nightmare. (27)

At a camp where the Obodo refugees stay, people die in large numbers on a daily basis. While Mr. Nwosu, a refugee who has just returned from Obodo tells stories about the remains of their town, there is a dead body lying on the veranda. “The dead man’s corpse was still warm, he could not have been dead for more than an hour or two. He lays on his right side, his face to the wall and his back as it were, to the world, to Nigeria and Biafra, to a war of which he had become completely oblivious” (224). Other refugees go about with their preoccupations and are oblivious of the dead man and even those at the point of death. No refugee worries that a man is about to die as he is concerned about his own death which he is certain will come soon. “His fellow refugees took little notice of the corpse either, it had become routine to bury one or more every day. Two had been buried the previous day. It happened to be that particular man’s turn today, nothing more. A grave would be dug for him later—the camp officials would see to that. The next day it would be someone else’s turn” (224).

Achebe, recounting the big loss that the war brought to the nation, in a memoir says,

138 The psychologically devastated Biafrans were wrestling with two dire prospects in the later part of the Harmattan season of 1969: mass starvation or death by organized ethnic cleansing at the hands of Gowon’s military. A third possibility, surrender, was not in the cards. By this time, there was close to one hundred thousand men, women, and children mainly children, perishing every six weeks. (217)

Nigeria loses many eminent and talented individuals on Biafra’s side in the thirty months war. These people are assets to Nigeria and vital to her survival. Ike recreated this in Sunset at Dawn. When Dr. Kanu, the Director for Mobilisation offers to be enlisted in the Biafran army, the Biafran Leader (simply referred to as H.E in the novel) tries to persuade him not to: “I want to speak frankly to you. Biafra has wasted several of its intellectuals in this war. Chris Okigbo, Dr. Imegwu, Joy Uchendu, Amanchuku Okeke, Nathaniel Okpala, and so on. I do not want to waste any more if I can help it” (211). The Director’s for mobilisation’s plea lands on Dr Kanu’s deaf ear. The young medical doctor loses his life alongside other prominent people on the Biafran side of the war.

Apart from these tragic deaths, other victims of war that escape go through excruciating experience and suffer untold hardship. In Sunset at dawn, Bassey recounts his experience at the sight of the women and children discovered by Biafran troops’ in their attempt to recapture Ikot Ekpene,

It’s an experience I’ll never forget’, Bassey said. ‘The sight of those women and children. You couldn’t say they were ghosts: they were all filth, and ghosts are said to be sparkling white. You couldn’t call them witches: witches are said to be spritely while these women could hardly stand on their feet. If you can imagine the body of a car abandoned several months anywhere in Northern Nigeria at the peak of the harmattan haze, you would have an idea how filthy these women and children looked. You could not tell the colour of the rags they had on, those of them who still had rags. Their bones could be seen under their skin, more clearly than on an X-ray film. Most of the children had no energy left even to cry, they crouched on the floor at a corner of the transit camp, looking like diseased shrimps. The only two people who looked normal were the two children shriveled and weak that it was difficult to imagine how anything could have trickled into the mouths of their robust babies from those flabby breasts. (174)

It is in wartime that parents and children run their separate ways for safety, one not minding another when there is an attack. Bassey narrates the confusion that follows evacuation of Onitsha when shots are fired into the town,

No one had time to look for anybody. The traders in the all engulfing Onitstha Market fled, abandoning thousands of pounds’ worth of wares. It was more chaotic than the stampede which followed the unannounced total eclipse of the sun in Eastern Nigeria in 1947. There was no question of running to the house to look for your family or to collect your personal effects. Every child in Biafra had of course been drilled in what action to take in such a situation – to move with the crowd rather than to roam about looking for the parents or next-of-kin. (104)

That is why at the end of the novel, Mr. Akwaelumo, concurring with Mazi Kanu, goes philosophical in his statement against Biafran beliefs in war. “Mazi Kanu is right”, Akwaelumo muttered to himself. “War cannot be the answer. Every Biafran had seen from bitter experience that issues of morality do not necessarily affect the fortunes of war. God tends to fight not on

139 the side of the oppressed but on the side of the oppressor because the latter has the bigger battalions” (245).

War is indeed evil for the kind of sufferings it inflicts on innocent victims. The description of the gory sights of the dead and waiting to die people at the refugee camps across Biafra depicted this. Decrepit refugees at the camp die in quick succession as a result of hunger and diseases occasioned by the war. As one corpse is about to be buried another one looks ready to follow. Brothers walk past their own brothers who are at the point of death unconcerned as if it meant nothing to them if their brother did not see the light of the next day. (224 – 225). What else could make people so cruel as not to be perturbed by the plight of their own brothers if not war? It is not that the people do not actually care but because there is virtually little or nothing they can do to help one another.

The dialogue between Ifeji, Onukaegbe and Bassey following the capitulation of Onitsha also agrees with Mazi Kanu’s words above,

“War is evil”, observed Barsey. “It’s terrible”, echoed Ifeji and Onukaegbe, rising to leave. They had to return to Aba, forty miles away. It was unsafe and unwise to stay away from your station overnight. Anything could happen anytime. “You know one strange thing?” Bassey spoke slowly. It was evident that the idea was only just forming in his mind as he spoke. “I’ve lost a fortune at Onitsha. It’s almost what the Bible calls a baptism of fire. I’d never bothered to ask what a baptism of fire meant but I now feel that I’ve been through it. (104)

This is a caution on the futility of war; war is nothing but evil with many faces. Therefore, war should be avoided. War is indeed not good for any one and it does not resolve any conflict. Most often it retards rather than bring about progress or development.

Worthy of mention also is the synonymous of love and sex to warfare. Writers of war novels deliberately bring in love and sex episodes to dissipate the serious business of war and its attendant problems of rape, death, diseases, hunger and suffering. Violence and love seem to strike some balance in novels concerning warfare. The lustful thoughts of soldiers spending nights with their girlfriends or even imagination of being with their wives and loved ones are some of the forms of how love is integrated in war novels.

In Ike’s Sunset at Dawn, there is a deep bond of love between Dr. Kanu and Fatima. They are the epitome of true love devoid of tribal or ethnic bitterness. Even at the time they marry, there existed tribal and religious hatred between the eastern and northern Nigerians. Two of Fatima’s brothers are strongly opposed to her marriage to Nyamili. She is therefore excommunicated because of her actions. One would expect Fatima to return to the north as the east secedes from Nigeria and the looming war but Fatima remains with her husband because she believes this is the time they need each other’s support. Fatima cares so much for her husband. She chooses to neglect her parents and her Hausa culture rather than do anything capable of hurting or tarnishing the image of her husband. “At one time she had even contemplated using the medium of the BBC African Service programme, CONTACT, but the problem became how to reach the BBC in London and what the repercussion might be for her husband if the BBC carried her message to her relations in Nigeria” (98).

140 Fatima’s love for her husband is not stained by the former’s sexual relationship with ladies that are victims of war. She is quick to understand that such is the situation in a war time. She sends him two packets of condom. Part of the note she sends him from Libreville reads, “I would rather you keep yourself for me, as I am keeping myself for you. But remembering what I saw the day I arrived at Umudike without prior notice, I am enclosing two packets of Durex, so that if the devil proves too overpowering for you, you do not contract Bony disease or whatever they call V.D. in Biafra” (218).

Sunset at Dawn, also reveals the sexual pervasions of some religious leaders. It is said in the text that, “If you go to Prophet James, shut your eyes to what he does with women and take what he tells you about God” (118). It is true of Prophet James that which is true in the hackneyed expression, ‘Do as I say, don’t do as I do’. Prophet James also takes advantage of the young ladies who are victims of war. The narrator says “[a] dark-skinned woman, whose youth, good looks and deliciousness defied the amorphous white robe she wore, walked shyly towards Prophet James prayer house. The prophet asks the young lady, ‘Sister, the Lord requires you to meet the needs of the flesh’. The young lady responds ‘If it is the will of God’… may the Holy Spirit enter me through you. The Prophet led her away to the Inner Room.” (119)

These are past-times activities soldiers and people who are occupied with war functions engage in to take a break from the trouble of the war. Dr. Kanu’s invitation of his girlfriend, Love, to his house also attests to this. “The idea to take her home that fateful day had come to Dr. Kanu when he saw her at Ikot Ekpene Road Roundabout on his way to Umudike shortly after the air raid earlier on. At the time he made the proposal to her, it had sounded an excellent idea for brightening up a day that had been clouded by the visit of the dreaded enemy planes” (155). Most war novels are linked to bars and whore houses because those ‘joint’ play significant role in relieving the veteran of war the burden of battle ground and the scent of deaths. The young prostitutes “true role[s] became obvious – to fill the vacuum left by absent wives who had fled to the remote villages or even out of Biafra with their children, to escape the air raids, leaving their husbands to attend to affairs of state in the big cities of the war” (184).

It should be mentioned that good lesson that war novels teach readers is the futility of war. There is no better alternative to round table discussion to resolve differences. No war ever fought, won or lost has been fruitful. There are no winners in a war. All sides emerge from the war counting their losses. Biafra may have suffered more because of her military and diplomatic disadvantages, but Nigeria also suffered great losses as a result of the war. There is no good lesson to be learnt in violence. In fact, the only lesson Biafra and Nigeria have learnt in this violence is how cruel and disheartening it is to learn in violence.

Conclusion Sunset at Dawn competes favourably with memoirs, biographies, and history books because it incorporates historical facts, figures and memorable insights of the Nigerian Civil War in its narration. The fact is that while history books may simply tell about the war, novels have the power to show how and make the readers active participants in a drama of imagination of how the war was fought and the experiences of veterans and victims. Eventually, a reader of a fiction on the Nigeria-Biafra War can no longer act as hearer but would have visited Biafra, he would have seen the war being fought and would have lived the experiences of the soldiers and the sufferings of the civilians. He would have encountered himself in the war. As Achebe puts it, readers suffer alongside the hero and are branded with the same mark of punishment and poverty (110).

141 The beauty of the Biafra war novels as against biography and history is that they never ask the readers to believe. A writer of history would always believe he is dealing with the truth and would want readers to believe him/her. However, reading Biafra War novels explains so much to the readers and they affects their (readers’) perception of the conflict clearer than what history has offered. Furthermore, fictions have special appeals to readers more than the true story itself. In Sunset at Dawn, readers read about events they know actually happened, but with a fictional tone that makes them feel they are mere tales which might never have happened. Lastly, in spite of the loss and the suffering the Nigeria Civil War (tagged Biafran War) caused Nigerians, it provides a fertile ground for literature to boom in Nigeria just like the Apartheid System inspired literary creativity in South Africa. Events of the war have given many creative writers, novelists and memoirists jog to document the war in fictitious stories and biographies more than history which seeks for nothing but the truth of the events that actually played out. There is however no very thick line between history and fiction in this novel that have been studied concerning the main theme of war and its attendant trauma—deaths, suffering, hunger and disease—as the storylines are hinged on the history of the war. The events chronicled in the Nigerian war novels, to a great extent, are facts.

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