When Elephants Fight: How the “Ruling Establishment” Turns People into Grass
There’s an old African proverb: When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. My guest Dr. Chinyere “Chi” Egbe took that proverb and turned it into the organizing metaphor for his memoir of the Nigerian Civil War: Elephants, the Grass, and a Teacher. It’s a story of generals and presidents making decisions in cozy rooms—and privates, villagers, and schoolchildren paying for those decisions with their blood. It’s also the story of one family’s survival through a conflict they did not start and did not benefit from, a survival that, in Chi’s words as a statistician, can only be called “divine intervention.”
When he talks about war, he does it with the precision of an economist and the moral clarity of a man who has seen battle up close. Chi asks a question few war planners ever do: “What percentage of major generals die in a war? And what percentage of privates, corporals, sergeants?” The answer, of course, is obvious. The generals sit behind desks, counting casualties like nickels and dimes. But those “dimes” are somebody’s son, somebody’s father, somebody’s uncle. They are the grass.
Underneath that statistical observation lies a deeply biblical one. James asks, “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” and answers his own question: from our lusts, our cravings, our greed (James 4:1–3). Chi said the same thing in different words: “God has provided enough for everybody to have enough. The only reason you have wars comes from the fundamental instinct that leads to greed. And it’s the ruling establishment that very often starts wars.” In his telling, war is not something that mysteriously descends on humanity like a storm; it’s something chosen by specific people in specific rooms, usually in pursuit of power, wealth, or both.
In Nigeria’s case, the story is layered. On the surface, there’s a straightforward timeline: independence from Britain in 1960, a relatively peaceful transition, elections, then disputed elections, then coups and counter-coups, ethnic massacres, secession, and a brutal civil war from 1967 to 1970. But behind that, Chi sees two deeper dynamics at play.
The first is ethnic. “In Nigeria and in many African countries,” he told me, “these election turbulences are maybe 10% ideological and 90% ethnically based.” One region—one tribe—wins office, and another feels cheated. Old grievances are stirred up. Leaders tell their people that the other ethnic group is the reason for their poverty and suffering. And the ordinary people, the grass, believe it. They turn their anger laterally, toward their neighbors, instead of upward, toward the elephants who are actually controlling the resources.
The second dynamic is elite self-interest. In theory, leaders on all sides claimed to be acting for their people. In practice, Chi’s analysis is merciless: he sees men who looked at the crisis as their ticket to personal aggrandizement. Eastern Nigerian leaders dreamed of a sovereign Biafran state, of becoming heads of state, ministers, international figures. Federal leaders in Lagos saw a chance to crush eastern influence and secure control over oil wealth. On both sides, he says, there were “war mongers,” not statesmen—men who undermined every serious attempt at dialogue, peace, and compromise.
This is where his elephants-and-grass metaphor bites hardest. The “ruling establishment” in each camp made choices about war and peace, about negotiations and ultimatums, about secession and suppression. The masses had virtually no say in when the war started, how long it continued, or how it ended. But they paid every cost.
If this sounds uncomfortably familiar, it should. I asked Chi if he sees any parallels between Nigeria in the 1960s and America over the last couple of decades: disputed elections, polarization, even political violence and assassination attempts. His answer was nuanced. He doesn’t see a simple one-to-one. Here, he said, the conflict is “almost always ideological,” not primarily ethnic—though race and identity are certainly used as leverage. In Nigeria, it has been overwhelmingly ethnic. But in both places, there is a constant: members of the ruling establishment “seeking to dominate, seeking to appropriate for themselves whatever resources are available in society for their own advantages,” using identity—tribe there, race and culture-war categories here—as a tool.
In other words, the elephants are different, but the grass feels very much the same.
This takes us back to a theme that has surfaced in several recent conversations on Created in the Image of God: language as an operating system. The stories we’re told about who “we” are, and who “they” are, become the software we use to interpret reality. In Greg Coles’ case, that played out in how we talk about sexuality—“gay Christian,” “othering,” “love the sinner, hate the sin.” In Chi’s case, it’s how Nigerians talk about “Northerners” and “Easterners,” about “our leaders” and “their leaders,” about “federal” and “secessionist,” and even about “war” and “peace.”
If you can convince a village that their misery is caused by people who speak a slightly different language or belong to a different tribe, then you don’t have to answer hard questions about what you’ve done with oil revenues, development funds, or political power. If you can persuade citizens that the other party, the other race, the other religion is the existential threat, then you don’t have to explain why the poorest neighborhoods in your own stronghold are still poor after decades of your own party’s rule. The software does the work for you.
Chi described how, in contemporary northern Nigeria, some of the most honest critiques of the status quo are coming from within the north itself. Enlightened northerners are saying to their own people: “Our elites have held power more than any other group, but our masses have the highest indices of poverty, disease, homelessness. The issue is not the other ethnic group against you. These people are using religion and ethnicity to make themselves wealthy at your expense.” That is a rare moment when the grass starts to see the elephants clearly.
And yet, for all his hard-headed realism about power and war, Chi is not a cynic. He’s a man who believes in divine intervention—not just as a theological concept, but as something he has lived.
In the interview we only had time to touch briefly on some of his family’s close calls: the day the entire Egbe family was ordered to be arrested and executed, only to be spared because a commander recognized himself in a family photograph with Chi’s father; the time Chi was captured and tortured, and survived again because of his father’s reputation and connections; the day his sister was lost in the chaos of war, and he “stumbled” upon her in a forest where there was no rational reason to expect she’d be.
As a statistician, he looks back over those events and says the probabilities don’t add up. There is, in his view, no honest way to describe their survival except as “divine intervention.” Coming from a man trained to think in terms of distributions and sample sizes, that confession carries weight. In a world where elephants treat human beings like nickels and dimes, someone was counting his family differently.
That conviction—that God is not absent from history, even from its ugliest chapters—shapes the way Chi talks about the future. On the one hand, he’s blunt about leadership failure. He expects backlash from both sides in Nigeria if his book ever becomes widely read there, precisely because he refuses to tell a flattering story for either camp. Most histories, he says, are written from one side’s point of view; his is not. He asks, again and again, “If you were on the other side, what would you think? What would you do?” That kind of empathy is dangerous to propaganda. It’s also the only path away from perpetual conflict.
On the other hand, his final appeal to the audience was simple and deeply hopeful: “Let us as human beings think and understand that dialogue is very important. There is enough provided by God Almighty that we all can be comfortable if we just share. And if we have differences, there is opportunity for dialogue. Dialogue is far superior to conflict. Even in economic analysis, in von Neumann game theory, you find out at the end of the day that cooperation is superior to competition.”
Notice the convergence: an economist citing game theory, and a believer citing Scripture, arriving at the same conclusion. The Bible says, “If you have something against your brother, go and be reconciled” (Matthew 5:23–24). It tells us, “A man who has friends must show himself friendly” (Proverbs 18:24). Game theory models show that in the long run, cooperative strategies dominate purely competitive ones. Both agree: when elephants insist on fighting, everyone loses. When they learn to talk, the grass can finally breathe.
None of this is abstract. Most of us are not presidents, generals, or oil ministers. But we are all capable of becoming small-scale elephants in our own spheres—at home, at work, in church—using our little bits of power in ways that trample rather than nourish. We are also all capable of being grass: letting ourselves be swayed by the winds of fear and resentment, absorbing stories about “them” that harden our hearts and close our ears.
Being created in the image of God means we are called to something higher than either role. We are not meant to be predators or passive victims. We are meant to be stewards: of power, of words, of each other’s dignity.
The real question, then, is this: when conflict comes—and it will—will we default to the operating system of the world, which says, “Secure your advantage, win at all costs, blame the other tribe”? Or will we accept the upgrade the gospel offers: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”?
As we continue this journey on Created in the Image of God, that question will keep coming back in different forms. In fact, as you heard in the sneak peek at the end of the show, next week we’ll be looking at conflict and cooperation in two very different arenas.
On Sunday, I’ll be talking with author and ordained minister Jocelyn Jones of Faith on the Journey Counseling about healing from trauma, grief, and shame—how the wars inside a person, and inside a family, can be transformed through forgiveness and emotional freedom in Christ. Then on Tuesday, I’ll sit down with Eric Davis, a Christian author and storyteller whose dream of restoring a historic plantation led him into a terrifying encounter with spiritual darkness—and then into deliverance and freedom.
Different guests, different battlefields—Nigeria’s civil war, inner trauma, spiritual warfare—but the same underlying issue: when elephants fight, does the grass have to suffer? Or can we learn, in our nations, our communities, and our souls, to lay down our weapons, change our stories, and choose the costly, beautiful path of dialogue, cooperation, and trust in the God who still intervenes?
If this conversation about elephants, the grass, and war stirred something in you, I’d encourage you to join us for next week’s shows as we explore conflict, healing, and deliverance in very different arenas.
On Sunday, May 31st at 7:00 a.m. Central, I’ll be joined by Jocelyn Jones—author, ordained minister, and founder of Faith on the Journey Counseling. We’ll talk about a Christ-centered approach to healing from trauma, grief, and shame: breaking the power of hidden pain and helping women step into purpose, healing, and ministry.
Then on Tuesday, June 2nd at 8:00 p.m. Central, I’ll sit down with Eric Davis, a Christian author and storyteller whose dream of restoring a historic plantation turned into a terrifying confrontation with spiritual darkness—and then into deliverance, healing, and freedom through Christ.
Different guests, different kinds of battles—national, emotional, spiritual—but the same conviction runs through them all: you are created in the image of God, and God loves His creation. Join us live Sunday and Tuesday on Created in the Image of God.
