Some years ago, in the din of the conflict that had marred its promise, I had written a piece titled “the world Igbo confusion” in great frustration about the direction of the American-based World Igbo Congress (WIC). It had structural problems. Its raison d’etre had also become profoundly watered down to the point where the Igbo in the United States began to see no point in the thing.

Last week was a hard time for my colleagues in the Vanguard office. Although I was not physically present, I felt their loss nonetheless. Our entertainment editor, Ogbonna Amadi succumbed to asthma related complications. His death was so sudden that colleagues can barely take in his absence.

A prison can come in many shapes and forms. There are the physical prisons that people get sent to as a punishment for breaking the law. They are made of bricks and mortars; meant to trap people in confinement. Those prisons are institutions and infrastructures of dread; no normal person wants to end up there.

Sometimes in science, when a researcher discovers a hitherto unknown phenomenon or invents a theory that sheds better light on a phenomenon known already, the phenomenon in question is named after him or her, essentially in recognition of such an accomplishment. Thus we have the Hall Effect, the Zeeman Effect, the Compton Effect and so on. Extrapolating from the practice in science, we can name a behavioural pattern or trait after an individual whose conduct epitomises it.

“The climax of every tragedy lies in the deafness of its heroes”. Albert Camus, I903-I960. (VANGUARD BOOK OF UOTATIONS p 90).