Icheoku says Professor Chinua Achebe's progression into eternity is now complete with his burial at his ancestral home in Ogidi Anambra State on May 23, 2013. The burial was well attended with Presidents Jonathan of Nigeria and his Ghana counterpart in attendance among other dignitaries. However Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka was conspicuously absent at the burial of a fellow literary giant leading Icheoku to query whether it is the Yoruba unforgiving propensity that conspired to force Soyinka to stay out the burial; possibly because Achebe called out their Papa Awolowo on the role he played during the Biafran genocide supervised by Yakubu Gowon in his last work "There was a country."
Icheoku says whatever be the case, Professor Chinualumogu Achebe was uneventfully buried and what he said about and concerning Awolowo remains a truism; and as far as Icheoku is concerned, the Yoruba antagonists can stuff their anger in their you know what for crying out loud. What kind of people holds grudge against the dead simply because he memorialized the truth about the role played by their tribal lord Obafemi Awolowo during the conspiratorial Biafran genocidal war? Icheoku was around during the war, Icheoku read the book and adds that Achebe was even too respectful in what he said about Awolowo as Icheoku could have done worse were places traded.
"There was a country" is a good book and every Nigeria should read it for an insight into what went awry and spoiled the country that once was - NIGERIA. Icheoku had an opportunity to take it to one so called Egbe Oduduwa in Diaspora legal adviser who mistook the "country" that once was for Biafra instead of Nigeria. Anyway, Icheoku says adieu Prof and thank you for the good fight.
