Nigerian Times

Prof. Wole Soyinka and Prof. Chinua Achebe, the great titans of modern African Literature. The following news should not surprise those who are close to Kongi. Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has backed his literary colleague, Prof. Chinua Achebe, in the raging controversy over the roles of some prominent Nigerians during the Nigerian civil war. Soyinka, in an interview published in The Telegraph of London, but obtained by THISDAY yesterday, said the Igbo were victims of genocide during the three-year civil war, which was fought to break up Nigeria. Achebe had stirred the hornet's nest in his civil war memoir, "There Was A Country", when among others, he accused wartime Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon and the then Finance Minister, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, of carrying out a genocide against the Igbo. The claim has generated considerable controversy, with many commentators accusing Achebe of re-writing history. Click here for the complete report . Twee...

Chinua Achebe There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe The news of the much awaited Chinua Achebe ’s magnum opus on the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970 really excited me in the midst of the mourning for the passing of Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojuwku, the heroic and symbolic secessionist leader of Biafra , the raison d'être of that catastrophic uncivil war that claimed over a million lives of mostly helpless children who died from kwashiorkor caused by starvation which was used as a weapon of war by the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The late warlord himself promised to write his own authentic book on his leadership of the ill-fated Biafra, but till his death on Saturday November 26, 2011, there was no information on the fulfillment of his promise. Achebe’s Biafran war memoir would have been the kind of book Ojukwu should have written, but was either reluctant to do so or lacked the genius. Because the only published account of his historical role in t...

Photo of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu as the leader of the breakaway Republic of Biafra from 1967 to 1970. The Lion of Biafra is gone? And no comets seen? The sun has set in the land of the rising sun. And not even an echo of the sound of a gun? Alas! For the great man passes on and leaving behind all he has done. Now that the last true leader of Indigbo is no more, who will now be worthy of the mantle of his greatness? Tweet