If Chinua Achebe was alive today. He would be 83 years old today. One of the most important legacies of this global icon of the African literature was his last book which he titled "There Was A Country:A Personal History of Biafra". This book was a direct product of the over 40 years of detailed and deep academic research that was never driven primarily for financial gains, cheap national and international recognitions or for any literary awards. I consider this book after my personal perusal of it and in my own personal judgement as a Nigerian to be one of the Bibles on the Nigerian state and her deep crises in the colonial and post-colonial dispensations that linger till today.
Chinua Achebe never personally risked his own international reputation and global recognition as an icon of human literature that covered over half of a century by intentionally documenting a fabricated historical account of the history of the Nigerian state and he never left behind any shady legacies of his colorful, controversial and very eventful life or times. Chinua Achebe remained until his death as one of the few Nigerians in powerful and influential positions that had refused to be corrupted by the Nigerian state with her juicy political appointments, national awards, inflated contract allocations and official bribery.
The biggest threat in the Chinua Achebe's last book on the Biafran war to the Nigeria's state and her questionable unity in 2013 is the fact that Chinua Achebe asked the boldest, the most honest and the toughest questions about the current Nigerian state affairs and the Biafra war at the international level, such as:(i) Was the Biafran war not an act of genocide against the Igbos from all the evidences that are available today on that war? (ii) Were General Yakubu Gowon and Chief Obafemi Awolowo
not directly guilty of genocide against the Igbos in the ways and in the manners they decided to prosecute this brutal war through the use of economic blockage like the food starvation that led to the unnecessary physical deaths of about 2-3 million of those defenseless Igbos children, women and the non-combatant men?
(iii) Has Nigeria as a nation ever truly learned any vital lessons from this brutal past with the determination to prevent it from happening again in our lifetime? (iv) Are the present events in Nigeria today not very similar to those events of the 1960s that gave birth to the Biafran war? (v) Why is the Biafran war and its most important hard lessons of life kept away from the public and from the young Nigerians today without teaching these things in any of our public educational systems? (vi) Why did all the successive governments in Nigeria to date have all attempted to suppress the whole truth or the important information about this terrible war that killed more people in the entire history of Nigeria as a developing country?
not directly guilty of genocide against the Igbos in the ways and in the manners they decided to prosecute this brutal war through the use of economic blockage like the food starvation that led to the unnecessary physical deaths of about 2-3 million of those defenseless Igbos children, women and the non-combatant men?
(iii) Has Nigeria as a nation ever truly learned any vital lessons from this brutal past with the determination to prevent it from happening again in our lifetime? (iv) Are the present events in Nigeria today not very similar to those events of the 1960s that gave birth to the Biafran war? (v) Why is the Biafran war and its most important hard lessons of life kept away from the public and from the young Nigerians today without teaching these things in any of our public educational systems? (vi) Why did all the successive governments in Nigeria to date have all attempted to suppress the whole truth or the important information about this terrible war that killed more people in the entire history of Nigeria as a developing country?
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