Biafra War was the reason I was born – Ejiofor

For Oscar-nominated British actor Chiwetel
Ejiofor, starring in a film about Nigeria’s civil war was
“incredibly personal”, as the conflict both affected close
relatives and determined the country where he was born.
His own grandfather had lived through the nightmare played out
in “Half of a Yellow Sun”, which premiers in Nigeria on Friday,
and spent long hours years later recounting the painful
memories to Ejiofor.
While the actor
won his Academy
Award nomination
for “12 Years a
Slave”, 2014′s
Best Picture
winner, he said he
felt particular
“connective
tissue” with the
lead character in
the Nigerian war
film.
The movie — now
showing in Britain
and Australia and
opening soon in the US and other countries — is based on the
best-selling novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the
1967-1970 Biafra War, which began after the eastern region
tried to secede from newly independent Nigeria.
“The Biafra War was a seminal part of my upbringing and my
family history,” said Ejiofor, 36, the first black actor from Britain
nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.
“In fact, I would say that the Biafra War was the reason I was
born in London and not in Nigeria,” he told journalists in Lagos
earlier this month.
His parents, natives of eastern Nigeria, left the country after the
horrific conflict that killed more than one million people,
including many from starvation.
The war was a regular family discussion topic throughout his
upbringing in London, but Ejiofor said he acquired a fuller
understanding of the conflict during a visit to Nigeria six years
ago.
- Grandfather’s memories -
At independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria was divided into
three geopolitical zones: the north, dominated the mainly
Muslim Hausa tribe, and two predominantly Christian regions,
the west where the Yoruba were the majority and the east, led
by the Igbo people.
In 1967, Igbo leaders declared independence after claiming that
their tribesman living in the north were being massacred by
Hausas. They charged the federal government with failing to
provide protection.
Ejiofor’s maternal grandfather was among the Igbos based in
the north during those violent, chaotic years.
The actor said he recorded 10 hours of conversation in Nigeria
with his grandfather — who died three years ago — and played
the material for “Half of a Yellow Sun” director Biyi Bandele and
other cast members.
“It was an extremely powerful and moving account of an
ordinary Igbo man in the north,” Ejiofor said.
“An ordinary Nigerian experiencing this extraordinarily turbulent
time, from the hope of independence to the seismic cost of the
war.”
The attempt to create an Igbo-led republic was crushed by the
British-backed Nigerian federal forces, who had military
superiority and used scorched earth tactics, including the
blockage of all food imports to the breakaway Biafra region.
In “Half of a Yellow Sun”, Ejiofor plays Odenigbo, an idealistic
math professor at the University of Nigeria in the eastern town
of Nsukka.
Odenigbo hosts colleagues and friends for long-nights of
drinking and discussion about Nigeria’s immense promise
following the dismantling of colonialism.
His dreams are destroyed by the massacres and ultimately by
the civil war.
“I had Chiwetel (Ejiofor) in mind for the part of Odenigbo,”
Bandele told AFP.
“I did not have to audition him. I knew that he was going to be
perfect. And he was.”
- ‘Helpful’ typhoid -
“Half of a Yellow Sun”, produced by Andrea Calderwood who
also made “The last king of Scotland” about the Ugandan
dictator Idi Amin, was filmed entirely in the southeastern Nigeria
city of Calabar and a nearby village called Creek Town.
The latter half of the film, which unfolds after the Biafra War has
broken out, was shot first and the cast’s war-ravaged look was
a product of more than just make-up and strong acting, Bandele
said.
“Some of us had typhoid,” and likely contracted it on the first
day of filming in Creek Town, he said.
“People started falling like flies three days into the shoot.”
Female lead Thandie Newton was among those who got sick
and looked like “something the cat dragged into the house.”
“And it’s because she had typhoid! And her character is
supposed to be going through a tough time here, so it actually
worked really well!” Bandele said.
“I mean I wouldn’t recommend that as a way of making movies,
but it worked, it really worked for us.”