I
was 7 years old the first time I recognized political fear. My parents
and their friends were talking about the government, in our living room,
in our relatively big house, set on relatively wide grounds at a
southeastern Nigerian university, with doors shut and no strangers
present. Yet they spoke in whispers.
So ingrained was their apprehension
that they whispered even when they did not need to. It was 1984 and
Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was the military head of state.
Governmental
controls had mangled the economy. Many imported goods were banned,
scarcity was rife, black markets thrived, businesses were failing and
soldiers stalked markets to enforce government-determined prices. My
mother came home with precious cartons of subsidized milk and soap,
which were sold in rationed quantities. Soldiers flogged people on the
streets for “indiscipline” — such as littering or not standing in queues
at the bus stop. On television, the head of state, stick-straight and
authoritative, seemed remote, impassive on his throne amid the fear and
uncertainty.
And yet when, 30 years
later, in 2015, Mr. Buhari was elected as a democratic president, I
welcomed it. Because for the first time, Nigerians had voted out an
incumbent in an election that was largely free and fair. Because Mr.
Buhari had sold himself as a near-ascetic reformer, as a man so
personally aboveboard that he would wipe out Nigeria’s decades-long
corruption. He represented a form of hope.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most
recent novel, “Americanah,” won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle
Award for fiction. This article was written for The New York Times.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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