Biafra Was Not A Country, But A Suicidal Mission

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I have read several reactions to Chinua Achebe's controversial memoir There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra and said that the great Nigerian writer is entitled to his own pains and tears and so is every living victim of that suicidal mission called Biafra. My memories of the nightmares of the Nigerian civil war are well illustrated in my Memories of A Refugee Child included in my true life confessions Diary of the Memory Keeper published on Amazon Kindle Fire.

The worst victims of that war were the innocent children and their mothers. And they were more in the figures of over 1,000,000 military and civilian casualties of Biafra. There were survivors, but there were no victors, because we all lost more than what caused the war; the massacres of the Igbos in the northern regions of Nigeria and even though the civil war officially ended on January 15, 1970, after two years, six months, one week and two days of the worst conflict in Africa since World War Two, Igbos are still being attacked and murdered in the northern states till date.

It is a waste of time to wrestle with the ghosts of the past by digging up the skeletons of the dead. As we say in Igbo, "Nkiruka", meaning the future is greater and the sooner we face the dawn of a new day, the better and stronger we would be in the nation building of a New Nigeria for our mutual benefit. God bless Nigeria.

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