Adichie on "Chimamanda," Arts, Igbo, Biafra, et al.

Biafra: We Remember and We Pray #Ozoemena

(By Emmanuel Iduma) – ‘Gone Like a Meteor’: Epitaph for the Lost Youth of the Biafran War

In 1967, Nigeria had been an independent country for just seven years. The declaration of secession that year by an Igbo majority in the southeastern region of Nigeria, and the war that followed when the federal government decided to keep the country as one, was already the culmination of a bloody sequence of events. By May 1967, two coup d’états had taken place, and the Igbos of northern Nigeria had been killed in the tens of thousands. 

The Biafran War, otherwise known as the Nigerian Civil War, lasted from July 6, 1967, until January 15, 1970. The men who led each side—Yakubu Gowon on the federal side and Chukwuemeka Ojukwu of Biafra—were in their mid-thirties. Boys, some barely teenagers, volunteered to fight for the breakaway Republic of Biafra. Many of the civilian casualties were children: in September 1968, the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that almost ten thousand people died daily from starvation caused by Nigeria’s blockade of Biafra. An entire generation was wrenched from the future.

Just Before You Say Biafra

(By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo) - Just before you say Biafra, know and remember that the ideals of Nigeria have not been tried and found wanting. Instead, they have been found difficult and left untried.

Remember that Nigeria is a failed state that works for those who failed it. And these people who failed Nigeria can be found across every ethnic group in the country – and so are the casualties of this failed state.

Remember that Olusegun Obasanjo, who should have known better, failed to reform Nigeria structurally and permanently and as such set the stage for the failure of other leaders that followed.

Remember that the APC with its intellectual base in the South West again missed an opportunity to restructure Nigeria, so set the stage for many more wasted years of a nation in limbo.

Discovering Things Fall Apart

Source: reading.cornel.edu

(Chinua Achebe)--"Soon after [an] encounter with my future father-in-law I moved to Lagos to interview for a new position at the headquarters of what was now called the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). The Talks Department hired me to maul over scripts and prepare them for broadcast. A tedious job, it nevertheless honed my skill for writing realistic dialogue, a gift I gratefully tapped into when writing my novels.

In my second or third year at University College, Ibadan, I had offered two short stories, 'Polar Understanding' and 'Marriage is a Private Affair,' to the University Herald, the campus magazine. They were accepted and published. I published other stories during that time, including 'The Old Order in Conflict with the New' and 'Dead Men's Path.' In my third year I was invited to join the editorial committee of the journal. A bit later I became the magazine's editor.

At the University College, Ibadan, I was in contact with instructors of literature, of religion, and of history who had spent several years teaching in England. Studying religion was new to me and interesting because the focus went beyond Christian theology to encompass wider scholarship--West African religions.

Mazrui Got It Wrong on Okigbo, Ekwe-Ekwe

Rudolf's "Memo To My Fellow Ndi-Igbo"

Igbo drummers

I write you all with great humility. I forgot how much I missed you all and missed engaging in the all-important conversation we need to have within our “mkpuke” (inner chamber) and the ones we need to have in the square.

As a kid, I was once marveled by the sight of a large cart kept in the church premises on which it was written, “Ọ bụ m, ka ọ bụ gị?” I asked my parents what it meant. They explained that the cart was used to push coffins into the church for funeral mass and was simply asking the question, ”Would it be me or you?” In other words, for whom does the bell toll?