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.