World renowned poet and African respected writer, Chinua Achebe, has taken The minds of Nigerian back to the hard times of the late 60’s during the Biafran War or the Nigerian Civil War, in a book titled There Was A Country. The book, which is a personal history of Biafra as remembered by Achebe, described in detail and personal words the describtion of how the events during the war came about.
He said in the book that: “My aim is not to provide all the answers but to raise questions and perhaps to cause a few headache.”
Those headaches have started and are already being reported as some individuals have faulted his description of then-Yoruba leader Awolowo, as being responsible for starvation of the Igbos during the war. The book may also bring the latent ethnic divide affray. Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and forty years of research and reflection.
