Nigeria: When Odumegwu Ojukwu Visited My Village

29 November 2011
analysis

As a primary school kid, the only history of Nigeria I was taught officially was the amalgamation of the Southern Protectorate with the Northern Protectorate to form a variegated entity called Nigeria. So the national heroes we knew included Zik of Africa, Herbert Macaulay, Abubakar Tafawa Belewa, Obafemi Awolowo, Akanu Ibiam, Michael Okpara, Ahmadu Bello and so many others. On the side of Nigeria, 'they' more or less canonized the likes of Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Hassan Katsina, Olusegun Obasanjo, and many others who fought on the side of Nigeria to end the civil war.

But I and many other kids in my stead who were born after the Biafran war had a different hero we so revered. We heard legendary tales of the bravery of the "Uguta Boys" and how they stood against the marauding Nigerian army supported by the enemies of Biafra. We were regaled with tales of how men of my Igbo stock fought the war with little or nothing, and how their scientific ingenuity led to the manufacture of the legendary 'Ogbunigwe", that crude weapon of mass destruction that Igbo scientists at the University of Nigeria Nsukka developed out of the exigencies of the time. How about the 'Ojukwu Bucket' and other contraptions that made the Nigerian army fight a war from 1966-70!

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