Contested Memories: An Interview with Richard Ali

Two themes in the growing field of third generation/contemporary Nigerian literature, especially fiction, are the Civil War from 1967 to 1970 and negative effects from the long years of military dictatorships. The physical strife, otherwise known as the Biafra War, ended in 1970, but it is still recounted in Nigeria’s postcolonial literature so that there is no shortage of memories of how or why Biafra emerged and fell. In this interview, Richard Ali recounts the background to his novel, City of Memories, and challenges narratives that have portrayed the Muslim-dominated Northern Nigeria as the assailant of the Igbo ethnic group, whose attempt to secede from the federation led to the clash in Biafra. Ali contests the conclusion of these narratives of victimhood and suggests that critics and historians look elsewhere for the causes of the bloodshed, including ethnic divides, corruption, mismanagement of power, poverty, and other problems that plague post-independence Nigeria.