For over 40 years, Nigeria has tried to bury its head in
the sand as if nothing genocidal happened during the war. The facts remains
that a most wicked and atrocious violence was unleashed against a people, with
all manners of weapons (inclusive of starvation, mass murders and mass rapes
and kidnappings). The records are there for all to see. In any sane society
interested in ‘nation building’, the evils of the past are openly discussed
with a view to understanding mistakes made, seeking atonement and restitution
of past wrongs so that similar mistakes are not repeated. In the USA, the
reason, course and outcomes of the American Civil War is a constant part of
primary and secondary school curriculum. Germany, Japan, South Africa and other
countries interested in moving forward, similarly, teach their youths, their
future about their past. The lessons of the Nigerian Civil War are ominously
omitted from Nigerian school curriculum – pretending that over 3 million Igbo’s
killed during the genocidal war between 1967 and 1970 did not happen.
And now the sage, Chinua Achebe, in his book, ‘There was
a country’, writes what he knows about what he experienced to educate and
inform others, and some have the temerity to cast aspersions? Gosh!
What I would have expected from those who had any issues
with Chinua Achebe’s expressions to do was to reply to the facts raised, and
not to resort to name-calling – which is really most unfortunate.
The fact that starvation was used as a potent weapon
during the Nigerian Civil War by the Nigerian Government against the Biafran
side is a fact enshrined in history! The picture below and thousands which are
available at various repositories are not ‘artist impressions’. Who knew what
about the genocide can thereafter be a subject of historical and factual
analysis.
Picture:
Starving Biafran children at a Refugee Camp (1969)
