Ojiofor:


I know you gonna bring Igbo into this as usual as if Reno Omokri and Farooq Kperogi even Sowore are all Igbos and those who leaked the video to mock Tinubu are all Igbos.Shame on you too.We are already used to your hate.Nigeria will not survive another Buhari in the person of Tinubu.As for Osinbajo he is more than qualified to be president of this great nation.

I am ashamed of these Yoruba lovers of Tinubu, they are an embarrassment to us children of Oduduwa. Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa is not the problem, bad and corrupt leaders are. U have done well not to engage in the same ethnic bigotry of the poster.

Ojiofor:


Is it Igbo people or his back-stabbing Yoruba brother that leaked the video to the public?
Tinubu peed on his body in Oba's palace in Yoruba land where there was no Igboman present instead of Yoruba people to cover up Tinubu's shame they leaked the video to the general public and you dare call Igbo into his mess.
Tinubu was betrayed by his own people.

Everything reduced to ethnic bigotry when Nigerians are talking politics. You are just as bad as the poster of that ethnic bigoted comment on Ibos. Yoruba this, igbo that. Let's deal with the good and bad of politicians without putting our ethnic bigotry into it.

ERockson:
You ibos are doing yourselves. The reason most of us like Tinubu in this 2023 race is because ibo hate him without reasonable reason. It's better you guys change your political strategy. When ibo like you, you are doomed politically and economically the opposite it is for you if they hate you

Nairaland Rule 2 is broken here. Ethnic hate crime

You sound lika an ethnic bigot full of hate. Many Yorubas like me don't like Tifnubu. Tinubu is only liked by those that are lacking in critical thinking or getting a piece of the loot. He and his party only win in Lagos and some Yoruba state because of the thugs that go around stealing the peoples votes and stuffing ballot boxes in favour of his candidates. Dislike for a bad and currupt politician like Asiwajo of thieves as nothing to do with where u are from, just common sense.

This post is so off the mark and ridiculous at best. Story for the gods, is simply about enjoyment, what guys do on a weekend. Getting high on weed and alcohol, picking up girls. And telling us of the way some girls in Nigeria talk when having sex, like u don kill me o, it's getting late, stop now while stroking u. Story for the gods pretty much tells of the fake talk that takes place when having sex.

Hate and our inability to respect our fellow brothers is the disease killing the black nation. Should I write about how horrible and evil the whole ndigbo is, would my fellow igbo brothers like it? I am sure not. There is good and bad in all of us, no group as a monopoly on either. Most countries around the world have fought wars at one point in there history to keep the Union, the Biafran war was no different. Please stop hating a whole race because of the acts of a few, Ojukwu included. Have u haters heard, don't jump in the water if u can't swim or don't do the crime if u can't take the consequences. Yorubers just wanted peace, but the igbo and Hausa (leaders )wanted to rule at all cost, even if people had to die. No blame we owanbe people, blame the ambition of Ojukwu and Gowan.

Birth and death certificates registration is compulsery in most countries and this is enforced, so it's not possible for a country like Sweden to field over age players. This is not the case n Nigeria, hence the reason it's so easy to lie about age and get away with it, we simply don't keep these records.

@adimsmt, I think u Meant to say they leave the se for lack of opportunities, hence the need to go elsewhere e.g Lagos and Abuja to make a living. Going to develop lagos and Abuja comes from the government, most individuals move to these cities to make a living or look for business opportunities. Development na government and indigenes thinking, we all just Come to lagos for the money.

Good to see criticism of a governor without it turning to ethnic bashing. It will be nice to keep this up when governors from other regions are being criticised. I think two years is too soon to expect every bad roads to be fixed, just too many things to fix all over the county, not just IMO. Lets wait until towards the end of his tenure, before judging the man.

Church na shopping mall, where people go for endless reasons. Some go buy miracle, some na to look for clients, me na to connect with Nigeran society.

I am confused as to what the argument is all about, are some upset by the fact that destitute s are being deported to their state of origin or just by the mare fact that these particular group happen to be igbos? If we are sincere and being fair it shouldn't really matter if the people deported are igbos or Yorubas, but more about our fellow human beings. If that was the case then y have we not heard those screaming now, defending the human rights of the thousands of Northerners and yorubas who have suffered the same fate? It will be nice if people can see a fellow human being instead of just their ethnic group. Sometimes it feels like some of us are still trapped in the Biafran civil war. Many other ethnic groups, including Yorubas have been repatriated back to their state, but non as come out to accuse Fashola of picking on them because of their ethnic origin. The truth is that their are more Northern and Yoruba beggars than Igbo beggars in lagos who have gone through this forced relocation. If we are against this policy, please let's not fight it based on ethnicity but on what we thing is right and fair to all. To those ethnic champions that love to claim they built Lagos and the north, wouldn't it be better to develop your own land instead of another man's home. The fact of the matter is most people come to lagos to look for opportunities they couldn't find at home. It's like nigerIans claiming they built London, when the reality is that most moved their for a better life. Eko ONI baje.

Got paper and plastic waste, inbox me ur details and prices paid.

@shymexx:
Olajuwon was great in college and that was the reason he was the number one draft pick and he was only a junior, chosen ahead of the great michael Jordan and charles Barkley. If only u had seen the dream in his college playing days, the guy was amazing. Olajuwon won the 1983 NCAA Tournament Player of the Year award, as a junior in college and took the cougars to two finals in three yrs.

"No compulsion in religion" but the holy prophet {pbuh} upon conquering mecca destroyed all the idols of the pagans. Actions speaks louder than words, there is compulsion in Islam. If no be by force he would have let the pagans do their thing, who is he to force his religious believe on others. He was complaining of being prosecuted but when he got power he did the same thing he was complaining about. So in a nutshell Islam was founded on hypocrisy and the use of force. Back to the topic, Islam was spread in west Africa through brutal force and trade.

I expect to be insulted and called names as that is the only way our muslim brothers on Nairaland know how to debate.

Unjust law should never be respected. Why should FIFA respect a law that discriminates against lesbians? Live and let live.

@sagamite, flogging obviously has not made you a polite or civil person instead its turned u into a verbally abusive and probably violent persona. Sad that as an adult with all that beating u received growing up this is what u learned to say when debating or discussing issues.

"You are a person.
I asked your dumb arsse a question, you can not answer it and you post some dumb link with a moronic conjecture"

Will answer your questions when u learn the act of debating without the need to insult others. Have a good evening.

@Sagamite, I don`t want to be rude, but you are a good example of the fallacy of flogging children. In your comments all you do is insult and call people names instead of putting your points across in a civil way, that says so much about the impact of flogging in your life and the Nigerian society at large where violence and disrespect rules.

http://codenamemama.com/2010/08/26/corporal-punishment-fallacy/

The culture of violence continues, so sad to hear so many of our people especially those living in western Countries where good parents normally communicate with their kids by talking and the bad ones use violent. Those raised with violence end up being violent, so its no surprise Nigeria is such a violent society, everywhere you turn violence dey plenty.

If beating kids was what makes people turn good as adults, then we Nigerians should be the most law abiding people in the World, but we all know that in fact its the opposite, a lawless one. We don`t think we just follow what our parents thought us even if its poo, the same reason most of us are religious freaks. Poo passed on from one generation to another, when will Africans wake up and join civilization. In Scandinavia they don`t beat kids yet they are better behaved and more law abiding than us.,Nigerians.

‎"When it comes to "faith", if you don't get people young, you probably won't ever get them. Very few people are, as adults, persuaded of the idea that (say) a Messiah was born to a virgin and managed to bend the laws of physics, or that we should revere a man who at the age of 53 Were Intimate with a nine-year-old girl"

Brain washing in Islam is more severe, kids are forced to memorize the Koran starting from the age of five until they are about sixteen and in many cases that is all they learn. The poor Almajiri kids fall into the later. By the time they are adults its usually too late to develop any form of critical thinking. That is why the average Muslim is usually easily offended, he can`t think outside the box. Think of sweetna and u get the picture of mild Islamic brain washing.

We need not look further than all the former and present Transport ministers who failed in their duties and responsibilities. I remember driving to Ota few months just after Pres Obasanjo just finished his 8th year rule, yet the road from lagos to his ota farm was in total disrepaire, well maybe the road is not as important as the Niger bridge but at least one gets the picture of the sort of environment we live in, people in power just don`t care. We all know how important the Niger bridge is, that is the only link connection the west to the east, for me its a shame, we should be celebrating at least 10 years of a second niger bridge by now. Those that rule us have failed miserably, lets be honest and accept they are from the four corners of the federation. We are being led by the blind, Name and shame all the transport ministers of the past 25 years, they are responsible. We are sometimes too quick to turn the collective shame of of are leaders irrespective of origin into an ethnic finger pointing. .

Those of you passing judgement on the victim of this heinous crime should remember it can be u someday. Let`s even assume she was sleeping with a married man or another girl`s boyfriend, does that justify these evil act? Where is the love and empathy in our society? We want a better Country yet in our deeds and thoughts we are as evil as those that we condemn.

Where is the love, it seems there is non in our society. I wish the lady full recovery and pray that the culprit of the crime is apprehended and convicted

@Ijebabe, As mentioned by Afam, there are many societies where walking naked in public is part of their culture and way of life, but I am sure this isn`t allowed in most parts of the World and certainly in all muslim countries. Based on your logic, shouldn`t these people be allowed to follow their tradition of wearing very little or nothing in Mecca and all the other Countries where it`s not allowed? But since it doesn`t affect you, u don`t care about tradition in this case. Atleast they are not using it as a cover to commit a crime.

Covering up of the face is a difficult thing to ban but it should be looked into.

@ijebabe:, Tradition does not make everything right, was it not tradition to use human beings as sacrifice in most parts of Africa until the Europeans banned it, was it not the tradition in calabar to kill twins until our colonial masters stopped it. Please lets look at issues based on logic not because it`s our tradition, culture or religion. These things are meant to be dynamic not stagnant, change is part of growing up. We can`t keep on holding on to things just because our forefathers did it that way. Based on your reasoning maybe we should go back to the culture of enslaving our fellow black brothers since it was our tradition before Britain put a stop to it by force. We should be governed by reason not tradition from the dark ages.

interested for 1.75

interested if available for 1.35m

need 2002/4 highlander toyota my budget is 1.2 m

Ojukwu Made Biafra Fail? by naijaking1: 4:06am On Oct 24, 2009
Raph Uwachue is not just another Igboman who doesn't know what he's saying, the former ambassador is even the President of Ohaneze Ndigbo. His latest comment about the unsuccessful Biafran attempt to seperate from Nigeria, and Ojukwu's role are surely going to add a new dimension for historians of that era. All said and done, nobody should be surprised that Igbo leaders do challange each other, because at the end of the day, Igbo ama eze


Uwechue’s bomb on Biafra
• The making of sensational civil war revelation
By ONUOHA UKEH
Saturday, October 24, 2009

Elder statesman and President-General of the pan-Igbo socio-cultural organization, Chief Raph Uwechue, has sensationally revealed, in a book, how ego and quest for absolute control by Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu ruined Biafra.

He said, in the book, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War – Facing the Future, that Ojukwu adopted a maximum ruler posture, shunned advice as well as believed in his won judgment, factor, which he said, caused the failure of the break away of the Eastern Nigeria.

He said: “By keeping Ojukwu constantly enveloped in an atmosphere of superiority, it made him, as a matter of habit, distrustful and disdainful of other people’s judgment, impatient with their opinions and finally simply authoritarian.”

Uwechue had visited the corporate headquarters of The Sun sometime ago and while fielding questions from a team of senior editors, he spoke about pre-independence Nigeria, the politics after independence, civil war and the country after the war. He had promised to send to The Sun copies of his book: Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War – Facing the Future, a revised and expanded edition of his previous book, Reflection on the Nigerian Civil War – A Call for Realism. The book was reprinted in 2004. True to his promise, the elder statesman sent copies of the book, which turned out to be expository.

Indeed, the 199-page book told the story of the first military coup in the country, the second military coup, the crisis after the second coup, the meetings to forestall a war, the secession of the eastern part of the country and the efforts to end the war. The book also has two epilogues, where the author analysed the fall of Biafra, in the topic: The Genesis of Failure and also there is the examination of government structure, in the topic: An Elastic Federal Union.

Reading Chief Uwechue’s book, we found The Genesis of Failure very interesting and, therefore, decided to reproduce it. The chapter talked about the things, in the author’s opinion, caused the failure of the Biafra Republic. He pointedly laid the blamed on Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who led Biafra. He said that Ojukwu lacked tact, never took advice, suffered what could pass for inferiority complex and was power drunk. In the opening paragraph of that chapter, Uwechue said: “It is a sad but instructive irony that Lt. Col Odumegwu Ojukwu, one of Africa’s one-time most brilliant political promises, was the man that led his own people with such a lack of ingenuity into what was clearly a foreseeable disaster.” He said that the personality of Ojukwu robbed off negatively on Biafra, adding: “It can be said for the Nigerian Civil War that the personality of Odumegwu Ojukwu more than any other single factor determined much of the course and certainly the character of the end of the Biafran adventure.”

The elder statesman said, in the book, that Ojukwu was ambitious and, therefore, paid attention only to the “politics of the war” instead of the security of the people he led. He said that owing to Ojukwu’s interest, two wars were fought with the territory of Biafra then: “The first was for the survival of the Ibos as a race. The second was for the survival of Ojukwu’s leadership.” He said that Ojukwu was more interested in the survival of his leadership at that time, which, he said: “Proved fatal for the Ibos” during the war.

The Ohanaeze chieftain said that if Ojukwu were smart enough to understand the politics of alliances in the country, Biafra could have survived. According to him, there was an opportunity for Ojukwu to align with the Western Region then, but he did not see the necessity for that. He said that this opportunity came when the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was released from prison by General Yakubu Gowon and he declared: If “the Eastern Region was pushed out of the federation, Western Nigeria would quit the federation as well.” According to him, Ojukwu should have taken that declaration as a cue and wooed the Western Region.

Uwechue said that another opportunity also came the way of Ojukwu to forge an East-West alliance when Awolowo visited Enugu, as Gowon’s emissary. According to him, what Ojukwu needed was to bring Awolowo to his side, but he did not utilize the opportunity and ended up describing the meeting as “ill-conceived child.”
He had revealed: “When on 7th May 1967 the Yoruba leader (Awolowo) came to Enugu at the head of a reconciliation committee, Ojukwu had a handsome opportunity to play his card. He missed. Dr. Michael Okpara, who still enjoyed popular support in Eastern Nigeria and whose friendship with Chief Awolowo had sustained the UPGA alliances, was not even invited to meet Chief Awolowo. After a hurried reception, Chief Awolowo’s delegation left Eastern Nigeria.”

He said that Gowon, understanding the way alliances worked in the country, had wooed Western Nigeria, first by releasing Awolowo from prison and second, by not only offering him an appointment, but also making him the highest civilian in the government as the vice president of the Federal Executive Council. According to him, by this appointment, there was an “unspoken understanding that Nigeria was his (Awolowo’s) as soon as the war was over and the army withdrew.” He said that this cemented the relation between the Northern Region and Western Region and, therefore, left the east in the lurch.

Uwechue said that within Biafra, Ojukwu alienated talented Igbo, using iron hand to establish his authority. Towards this end, he said that Dr. Okpara, former premier of Eastern Nigeria, was jailed as well as others. “These political figures were to remain out of favour and far from the corridor of power, except for their occasional utility as window dressing, such as posing for photographs with General Ojukwu or flanking him on ceremonial occasions,” he wrote.

He said that the same thing happened in the army, as Ojukwu suppressed officers and, therefore, had a “timid army tamed to unquestionable obedience.”

The elder statesman said that Ojukwu had the opportunity of using the diplomatic front to sell Biafra, but that instead of doing this he shunned advice, especially on the need for compromise. He said that when the war dragged, many eminent Igbo advised Ojukwu to asked for a confederal nation, which would keep Biafra within Nigeria and also give it adequate local autonomy, but this was not only rejected but also those who suggested it were witch-hunted.

He said: “The climax came on 7th of September 1968, just before the OAU summit meeting in Algiers. A number of anxious Ibos, including Dr. Azikiwe, former president of Nigeria, Dr. Michael Okpara, former premier of Eastern Nigeria (Biafra), Dr. K. O. Dike, former rector of Ibadan University and myself made a formal recommendation in which we told General Ojukwu that as Africa was sympathetic to the Ibo cause, but at the same time opposed to secession, he should use the opportunity of the Algiers meeting to seek OAU guarantee for a confederal arrangement, such as was agreed at Aburi (Ghana). General Ojukwu not only rejected this advice outright but also asked some of us to recant or resign. Dr. Azikiwe left Paris in disgust and went to London in voluntary exile. I myself chose to resign.”

Uwechue said that Ojukwu saw himself as a supremo during the war and only trusted his own judgment. In trying to explain why this could have been so, he said: “To this special development of his ego and the feeling of self-sufficiency was added the confidence acquired from an Oxford University milieu and from the fact of his father’s great wealth. Back to Nigeria, Ojukwu soon joined the army, where, as an officer, he got more accustomed to giving orders and receiving prompt obedience than meeting opposition and arguments.” He said that Ojukwu found himself always at the “giving end” rather than at the “receiving end,” adding: “By keeping Ojukwu constantly enveloped in an atmosphere of superiority, it made him, as a matter of habit, distrustful and disdainful of other people’s judgment, impatient with their opinions and finally simply authoritarian.”

The elder statesman concluded that owing to Ojukwu’s attitude, Biafra failed. He said that the failure was mainly a “political one,” which, according to him, “was, in turn, the failure of the leadership, which firstly, made a wrong tactical choice – outright secession – instead of maneouvring appropriately for vital political alliances within Nigeria and exploiting in that context the numerous weaknesses of its opponents.” He said that by breaking out of the country, “the Biafran leadership abandoned the Nigerian field to those who had then only recently wrenched federal control from the Ironsi government, thus uniting various shades of political opinions in the country behind the new federal authorities, as had never been the case before in Nigeria’s political history, in defence of Nigerian unity.”

http://www.nigeriamasterweb.com/paperfrmes.html

BOOK REVIEW

In his book about the Biafran war, Achebe veers towards partisan politics rather than a personal memoir or balanced retelling of the history.

In the opening pages of his new memoir, There Was A Country, Chinua Achebe lays claim to 'story', as an almost proper noun in the grandest, most comprehensive of definitions. This story is not just for audiences in the West, with their long history of partial, often reductive interest in Africa, but also for his country of Nigeria and the continent that contains it, as well as for his children and grandchildren - for, basically, everyone.

It is the story of Biafra he proposes to tell. In 1967, after seven years of shoddy nation-building, three eastern states lumped together and broke away from the federation of Nigeria. Achebe, who had come to international attention with his first novel Things Fall Apart, published nine years before, went to work for the secessionist government's Ministry of Information. He travelled around drumming up support for the break-away nation, telling its story to Westerners and Africans alike. He also helmed the National Guidance Committee, which wrote up high-concept ideology to brand what at first seemed like an emerging nation.

History or his story?

In many ways, There Was A Country can be read as a continuation of that mission. The book approaches the story under the auspices of three genres: memoir, poetry, and academia. Achebe begins with a coming-of-age routine, recounting his early life of scholastics, his passion for literature, his burning desire to elevate African stories to a narrative tradition then burdened with cliché, misrepresentation, and outsider exposition. Tucked in between these and other pages are poems, previously published in some form, conjuring the horrors ordinary Biafrans experienced during their three years at war with Nigeria.

But the main mode of narration is academic. Achebe posits that the civil war was touched off by the genocidal ambitions of leading Nigerians, such as the late Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba who allegedly could not tolerate the presence of Igbos in the upper echelons of society. He also charges members of the mostly Hausa and Muslim north with systematically killing Igbos in their midst after a tit-for-tat series of coups in 1966.

Achebe details the international reaction to Biafra, the cynicism of leading Western powers who were mostly interested in supporting the most-likely-winner of a fight that had ramifications for the global oil industry. On the other side of the issue was the support of the international artists' corps, as well as national creative figures like Wole Soyinka.

Achebe also outlines the starvation tactics launched against Biafrans, lamenting the sad icon of children with hunger-swollen bellies, and the indiscriminate bomb raids perpetuated by Nigeria's air force.

In the end, he continues, two million people were dead, most of them Igbos who dreamed of a homeland that would foster the freedom to achieve. Survivors were inadequately reintegrated into the federation, with legislation and compensation conspiring against Igbo equality. Achebe decries Nigeria's present condition and makes recommendations for stronger public institutions, freer elections, and ethnic and religious tolerance. That's his story.

There was an imbalance?

That Achebe, who won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007, might be the man to tell this story - to tell any African story - is taken for granted. Things Fall Apart, for which he is still best known outside of Nigeria, has had a staggering reach since its publication in 1958. It has been translated into at least 50 languages and revered by critics on both sides of the global hemispheric divide. It remains go-to reading for outsiders visiting Africa for the first time and looking to gain the kinds of insight more readily available in fiction than non-fiction.

And, in addition to the dozens of other books Achebe has written, and to the scores of articles, he has worked hard as an editor connecting other African writers to international readerships. The London-based publisher Heinemann Educational Books tapped Achebe to edit a book list called the African Writers Series, for which, from 1962 to 1972, Achebe worked as an advisory editor.

Meanwhile, There Was A Country has, perhaps unsurprisingly given the sensitivity of its topic, rankled its fair share of Nigerians, some of whom have spoken out against the author in the national media.

Certainly, Achebe's memoir smacks hard of ethnic nationalism. Never does he directly disparage anyone of Yoruba or Hausa descent, Nigeria's other two most populous peoples, but his celebration of the Igbo as enterprising and industrious and common descriptions in Igbo identity-construction sometimes teeters into jingoism, if only because the rest of the country is portrayed as unable to achieve much of anything without Igbo contributions.

Biafra itself is presented as a utopia, a Mecca of freedom and a manifestation of pan-African independence. That its leader, Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, was an early participant in the country's decades-long issue with military dictatorships is not directly mentioned, even though it is obviously incongruent with Achebe's rhetoric of freedom. Likewise, allegations of human rights violations against Biafran soldiers are brushed off by the author as simply unlikely, not the sort of thing he saw personally.

Painting a partisan picture

It is hard not to think of Achebe acolyte and fellow Igbo Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, also explores the Biafran war. This account seems to offer a much more realistic story, one complete with the moral degradation of the Biafran army, which is smeared with rape and child soldiering. Compared to her story, Achebe's seems like propaganda, which is fitting considering his role in the secession but nonetheless dangerous stuff in a country that continues to experience tensions along the same lines as in the late 1960s. Even Adichie, writing recently in The London Review of Books, seems disappointed in her mentor, though for reasons she suggests more than explores.

Finally, storytelling is hard work, no matter where the teller was born. In There Was A Country, Achebe spends too little time with the memoir trope of his project. The pro-Biafra academic treatise is the focus of his energies, while the poems offer nothing especially new, well-written as they are, and were the first time they were published.

Achebe dispenses with key events in his life in just a paragraph or two, seldom inviting the reader to touch or smell or hear much of anything. His traditionally laconic prose style does no service to these brief treatments, and what usually comes off as a sparse but meaningful approach to language here often reads as clumsy and incomplete, leaden with passive constructions and, for a man who boasts of being nicknamed Dictionary, much too reliant on vague verb choices.

If telling an honest and true story is the business of the writer, and Achebe would attest that indeed it is, then one of Africa's most celebrated tellers of truth has missed his mark. What we have here instead is mostly a partisan story about politics, rather than a sound contribution to the bigger picture.

Paul Carlucci is a Canadian writer and journalist. He's reported from Ghana and Ivory Coast for Think Africa Press, IPS Africa, Al Jazeera English, the Toronto Star, and the Toronto Standard. His short fiction has been published in Canadian journals and magazines, and a collection of his stories will be published by Oberon Press in Fall 2013. Follow him on twitter @PaulCarlucci.

A history of person, country in 'There Was a Country'
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe ('Things Fall Apart') mixes memoir with history lessons, creating a mired, frustrating story of the author and the eastern Biafra region, which declared itself a republic in 1967, and the civil war that ensued.



Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author of the groundbreaking 1958 novel "Things Fall Apart," is widely considered the most influential African writer of the 20th century. A staple in school curricula worldwide and with more than 10 million copies in print, Achebe's novel is an African story told in an African manner by an African — remarkable for colonial times.

While Achebe identifies himself as a Nigerian author, he is also Igbo, one of the three most dominant tribes in the vast country of more than 200 million people. It was the Igbo who led the cessation from Nigeria in 1967, forming the Republic of Biafra, resulting in a nearly 3-year-long civil war that killed more than 2 million people, mostly Biafran, who were starved to death by the Nigerian government's food blockade. While recently teaching in Lagos, I could still feel the reverberations from the international disaster, including lingering ethnic tensions and reports of the Boko Haram, the violent northern jihadist separatist group, spreading terror nationwide with what many see as governmental support.

In "There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra," Achebe — now nearly 82 — attempts to reckon with his own dashed expectations as well as those of the Igbo and all Nigerians and Africans. It is an odd, frustrating book, with elements of memoir mixed with a history lesson and accounting of those responsible, including the foreign countries that aided the attempted genocide, and those that tried to end or alleviate the bloodshed.

The early part of the book provides some welcome personal context. Nicknamed "Dictionary," as a boy Achebe was encouraged by his parents, Christian converts, to pursue an education. A member of the so-called Lucky Generation, Achebe took full advantage of the British-built school system. Graduating at the top of his high school class earned him entrée into Ibidan's prestigious University College, where he would become editor of the school newspaper and begin writing fiction.

Spurred by a British English professor's criticism that his writing lacked "form," Achebe writes, "I was moved to put down on paper the story that became 'Things Fall Apart.' I was conscripted by the story." Achebe recounts how he sent the handwritten manuscript, his only copy, to be typed up in London, where it was promptly misplaced. It was only months later that a colleague at the Nigerian Broadcasting Company, on business in London, was able to retrieve it.

Not surprisingly but ironically, Nigeria's best and brightest, including Achebe, pushed against their educators and joined other Africans demanding independence, which was finally granted in 1960. Achebe rightly points out that British rule had sown the seeds of ethnic and geographical tension, and by 1966 there was a military coup, which many in the northern Islamic territories blamed on the Igbo, who, because of their education and ambition, had a disproportionate number of quality jobs in the new country.

The resulting counter coup unleashed a wave of terror that left 20,000 northern Igbo massacred with no intervention by the new government. By the following year, many Igbo had fled to the eastern Biafra region, where they declared their own republic. Achebe, ever hopeful, stayed in Lagos until the outbreak of the war when his life was threatened by rogue soldiers, whereupon he fled to Biafra for the duration of the conflict, leaving only to act as an ambassador, traveling around the world to help bring attention to the humanitarian nightmare.

When writing about the Biafran conflict, Achebe switches from a personal and engaged mode to what feels like an attempt at reasoned, unbiased historian. Considering that Achebe was deeply involved with the government of the breakaway republic and fled Nigeria in 1972 for the U.S., where he has lived on and off ever since, this objective stance is strained at best.

What Achebe does well is document the personality struggle between the opposing leaders, Nigeria's ruthless Gen. Gowon versus headstrong Biafran Gen. Ojunkwu, former Nigerian military men locked in a game of brutal one-upmanship, "blinded by ego," which undoubtedly prolonged the suffering on both sides.

Clearly it is Achebe's intent to show not only the devastating toll the Biafran conflict took on Nigeria but to hold up the Biafran experiment as a noble enterprise, a truly democratic, humanistic model for what could have been in Nigeria, and also perhaps the rest of Africa. Achebe draws a sharp line between the corruption and incompetence plaguing post-colonial Nigeria to the Biafran conflict.

Unfortunately, his argument is muddled by exhaustive, somewhat stultifying sections about the makeup of the Biafran government, committee deliberations over creation of Utopian laws, and the derivation of the national flag and anthem. Much of the prose here is flat and uninspired (and seemingly unedited). To whit: "Food was short, meat was very short, and drugs were short." It is a slog through this messy yet heartfelt hybrid memoir-history for anyone not completely versed in Nigerian history.

The ruthless and reckless decisions that fueled Biafran conflict, mostly swept under the historical rug, are well worth documenting, and Achebe's book is an imperfect attempt at revealing the truth. Just as "Things Fell Apart" blazed the path for more African writers to write their own stories, hopefully "There Was a Country" will bring about more rigorous, soul-searching calls for historical reckoning, a necessary step toward true African democracy.

Spillman is the editor of Tin House and edited "Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing."

3.0 out of 5 stars there was a country that wasn't, 10 Nov 2012
By Mr Nice Guy - See all my reviews
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This review is from: There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (Hardcover)
Chinua Achebe's reflection on the ill-fated Republic of Biafra could have been a good read but fell short in my opinion. As is to be expected, it is an intellectual exercise by the author full of his trade mark use of a mixture of his native language Igbo and a clear demonstration of his perfect use of English language. what I found disappointing is the lack of details of events in the book, for example, he did not give much details of his involvements, his activities and personal experience. the book lacked research evidence and detailed analysis using his personal experience to convey to the reader what really happened in the war and the role he played in it. It was almost as if he was telling a story that he heard from people who were there or took part. He failed to give details about the main characters or protagonist of the conflict notably Major kaduna Nzeogwu where he came from, his family and military background, Ifeajuna, Banjo, Ojukwu etc (he did a little bit that of Ojukwu. On the ingenuity of Biafrans and their inventions notebly the famous "Ogbunigwe" WMD, he started with an apology about his dislike for war and of being a man of peace. There was no reason for that, he is without a doubt a man of peace but one wanted to know more about the war and his reflection of it. He could have spoken about other inventions of the Biafrans such as how they refined petrol and made beer from cassava leaves etc., the role played by other Igbo people, and scientists, non intellectuals; what led to the disagreement between Ojukwu and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe . In short, more details was expected by me from the book especially as I was only six years old when the war started and and an Igbo man myself, I would have loved to hear more and know more from someone who was there in person and a participant. I am a fan of Achebe, his style and simplicity of writing of and his intellect I also think that the book is somewhat one-sided in favour of the Igbos albeit that should be be expected. A good book nonetheless
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
Festus Peace Ozor
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@Purist, Thanks for your post, you said it all, Nigerians are mostly ruled my emotions and this is regardless of ethnicity or religion. The nigerian culture if there is one is dominated by violence. To deal with issues we are trained from youth to resolve it through violence, This culture of violence needs to be addressed, the sad bit is the fact that we love pointing fingers at the North, failing to see the savagery in our own society. Life means nothing to us, North or South. How many times have people been lynched in Lagos, Onitsha and many other Southern states, but we love to demonise or Northern brothers, at least they have the excuse of religious brain washing that turns the youths into Zombies ready to be unleashed by our oppressors, but what excuse do we in the South have? It can only be culture and this culture as got to go

What I have learnt is that we need to address our culture of violence as a Nation instead of pointing fingers at the North. Violence breed violence.