DIDN’T remember to tell you yesterday, but I’ve just finished reading Achebe’s THERE WAS A COUNTRY. I’m amazed at his cavalier attitude to basic facts of history and the strident tone of victimhood along with the inability to see anything wrong with Biafra.

THE current tribal face-off between Igbo and Yoruba commentators over Professor Chinua Achebe’s book: There Was a Country is an automatic reflex.

FORMER Aviation Minister and historian, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, has asked literary giant, Prof. Chinua Achebe to apologise to late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s family and the Yoruba race over comments that Awolowo, alongside General Yakubu Gowon, implemented genocidal policies that killed millions of Igbo during the Civil War.

I am a historian and I have always believed that if we want to talk history we must be dispassionate, objective and factual. We must take the emotion out of it and we must always tell the truth. The worst thing that anyone can do is to try to re-write history and indulge in historical revisionism. This is especially so when the person is a revered figure and a literary icon.

A group, Biafra Zionist Movement, BZM, yesterday, defended Professor Chinua Achebe over his comments on the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, in his book, There was a Country.