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.

Nnewi, Nkwo Market, and Biafran War

(By Azuka Onwuka) – How the Civil War aided Nnewi’s Industrial Transformation 

Before the 1966 pogrom against the Igbo and indigenes of the former Eastern Nigeria, Nnewi in Anambra State was under the shadow of Onitsha. The markets in Nnewi were like the typical Igbo markets that were in session every four days, depending on which name each market bore. The Nkwo Market, which was situated at the centre of the town, was in full session every Nkwo day, even though some isolated traders could sell some petty things, especially food items, on other days. Anybody who wanted to buy anything of substance went to Onitsha, some 20 kilometres away.

On religious matters, the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church (the two big churches in Nnewi) had their diocesan headquarters in Onitsha. So, the bishops resided in Onitsha and were seen occasionally in Nnewi. To travel to any part of Nigeria from Nnewi, one had to get to Onitsha first. If the trip was to the North or West, one had to cross over by boat to Asaba (before the construction of the Niger Bridge in 1965). But after the bridge was constructed, Onitsha became the connecting city to other parts of Nigeria for most towns and villages in the current Anambra State.

Adichie, Achebe, and A Country

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - Chinua Achebe at 82: “We Remember Differently” 

I have met Chinua Achebe only three times. The first, at the National Arts Club in Manhattan, I joined the admiring circle around him. A gentle-faced man in a wheelchair.

“Good evening, sir. I’m Chimamanda Adichie,” I said, and he replied, mildly,  “I thought you were running away from me.”

I mumbled, nervous, grateful for the crush of people around us. I had been running away from him. After my first novel was published, I received an email from his son. My dad has just read your novel and liked it very much. He wants you to call him at this number. I read it over and over, breathless with excitement. But I never called. A few years later, my editor sent Achebe a manuscript of my second novel. She did not tell me, because she wanted to shield me from the possibility of disappointment. One afternoon, she called.  “Chimamanda, are you sitting down? I have wonderful news.” She read me the blurb Achebe had just sent her. We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria’s civil war. Adichie came almost fully made. Afterwards, I held on to the phone and wept. I have memorized those words. In my mind, they glimmer still, the validation of a writer whose work had validated me.

Celebrating Achebe: The Man, His Work, & His World

The Magical Years

On November 16, 1930, in Nnobi, near my hometown of Ogidi, providence ushered me into a world at a cultural crossroads. By then, a longstanding clash of Western and African civilizations had generated deep conversations and struggles between their respective languages, religions, and cultures.

Crossroads possess a certain dangerous potency. Anyone born there must wrestle with their multiheaded spirits and return to his or her people with the boon of prophetic vision; or accept, as I have, life’s interminable mysteries.

My initiation into the complicated world of Ndi Igbo was at the hands of my mother and my older sister, Zinobia, who furnished me with a number of wonderful stories from our ancient Igbo tradition. The tales were steeped in intrigue, spiced with oral acrobatics and song, but always resolute in their moral message. My favorite stories starred the tortoise mbe, and celebrated his mischievous escapades. As a child, sitting quietly, mesmerized, story time took on a whole new world of meaning and importance. I realize, reminiscing about these events, that it is little wonder I decided to become a storyteller. Later in my literary career I traveled back to the magic of the storytelling of my youth to write my children’s books: How the Leopard Got His Claws, Chike and the River, The Drum, and The Flute: A Children’s Story (Tortoise books).

Chibok Girls and the Conquered Women of Biafra

“Stop pretending that you are a human being!” a victim of sexual abuse tells her abuser. They might not exactly be able to utter such words to their captors, but this is likely the thought that would be going through the minds of hundreds of the students of Government Girls Secondary School, Borno State, who were abducted by the Boko Haram insurgents since two weeks [six months] now.

Perhaps, the only trauma that would make these innocent girls even sadder in their captivity is the absence of news of any attempt at their rescue. According to the parents of the abducted girls, so far, there had been no known official effort at rescuing the girls, despite the enlarged security meetings.

The Day Prof. Ali Mazrui Cried

Prof. Mazrui

Kwaheri, Mazrui arap Mombasa.

You reached your destination-

A thousand miles beyond the boundary.

I was a witness.

Now, you’ve set forth

On a trip across the sacred cloud.

Sorry, I couldn’t deliver

"The Trial of Ali Mazrui"

Before the bracket closed.

But you can be sure

It has set sail,

Far beyond the bondage

Of our triple heritage.

As we mourn the passing of a great African intellectual, Prof. Ali Mazrui, I present to you a 2007 dispatch from Christopher Okigbo International Conference at Harvard University.

Before then, I had met and interviewed Professor Mazrui twice. But on that day, I saw an Ali Mazrui that I had never seen before.

For many scholars of African literature, Ali Mazrui was an outsider who crashed into the African literature party on the wings of Christopher Okigbo. His one and only novel, “The Trial of Christopher Okigbo,” made him a factor in literary discourse.

With notoriety comes despise. Mazrui is so despised that more scholars are not on talking terms with him than those who are.