DELTA State Commissioner for Basic Education, Prof. Patrick Muoboghare, has defended the controversial memoirs of the 1967-70 Nigeria Civil War by celebrated writer, Prof. Chinua Achebe, saying they are needed for the unborn generations to learn the lessons of the fratricidal war.
But a former National Publicity Secretary of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA), Lisa Olu Akerele, described Achebe's book as an attempt to resurrect the issues of the war, saying its debut is "unnecessary now and can heat up the polity."
Muoboghare, a former chairman of the Delta State University, Abraka (DELSU) branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) told reporters in Asaba at the weekend that the publication was healthy for the polity in spite of its denunciation by some Yoruba leaders and loyalists of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
Achebe, in the book, There was a Country, had accused Awolowo of perpetrating genocide against the Igbo during the war.
Muoboghare said although he was yet to read the book, but he added that from the criticisms it has generated, it was clear that Achebe and Awolowo were both right as "all is fair in warfare."
He added: "If somebody uses a bullet to kill so that the other party could surrender and the other man uses withdrawal of food to make the other man surrender, the bottom line is surrender. If the action indicts you, the outcome exonerates you. That action could have indicted Awo in the eyes of the Igbo, but the outcome, which was the end of the civil war exonerated him in the eyes of Nigerians. Achebe was right because he suffered during the war in Igbo land, more so in Biafra. Awo was right because he caused an early end to the war by starving the people."
However, in a statement, Akerele, who is a media consultant, said the book came at a time Nigeria was seeking reconciliation among the various ethnic and religious groups, and thus ill-timed.
He accused Achebe of diminishing the late Yoruba leader whose role during the civil war, Akerele stated, was well documented. He queried why the author "did not refer to the facts in the book."
Describing the renowned writer as "a local champion of the Biafran cause," Akerele remarked that, "the Achebe memoirs will add nothing new to the historic perspective of the Nigerian civil war."
He affirmed that the Yoruba would remain proud of the role Awolowo played in Nigeria before and after independence, warning that any attempt to denigrate the late sage would be strongly resisted.
