Saturday, January 12, 2013

Genocide: Fireworks over Achebe’s There was a country…

Written by Linus Obogo, Assistant Editor



The Nigerian Civil War may have ended about 43 years ago, but the ghost of the three-year-old conflict resurfaced, strangely in October, following the release of a book, There was a country: A personal history of Biafra, written by renowned novelist, Prof. Chinua Achebe.
In what was conceived as Achebe’s personal recollection of what went down during the war, turned out, ironically, a re-opening of old wounds.
While the conflict which formed the raw material for Achebe’s memoir was between Nigeria and the Igbo, the alleged genocide controversy as captured by the world celebrated story teller in his latest work ended up pitching not just a few of the disciples of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, one of the alleged perpetrators of genocide, but also some participants in the war from other zones of the country.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

There is a dark cloud hovering over Nigeria, but we won’t break up




Pastor Ayodele Oritsejafor is the General Overseer of Word of Life Bible Church, Warri, Delta State. He is also the President of the Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), the first to hold the two offices simultaneously. Pastor Oritsejafor is a man of God known for his bluntness and blistering comments on national and religious issues. He is usually not given to yearly predictions, but this seems to have changed in 2013, as he has reeled out predictions about the nation. In this interview with Assistant Editors, LINUS OBOGO and GBENGA ADERANTI, Pastor Oritsejafor spoke on sundry issues and at a point, wept over the anguish brought on the Christian North by Boko Haram Islamic sect. Excerpts: