Chidi Giniji

A Biafran Odyssey Chidi Giniji

At the turn of the year, 1966, Nigeria was thrown into an awful turmoil by a military coup that exacerbated the existing but cryptic ethnic resentments, precipitating the hostile environments, which necessitated the secession of Biafra, and a year later, ushered in a bloody three-year-war! A Biafran Odyssey is the story of a Biafran youngster, Chidi, who, convinced about the unequivocal legitimacy of Biafra's claim to self-determination, left home to join the army, but returned two years later, at the end of the war, with many unanswered questions and a sobering notion about his world. Chidi tells his story of Biafra, the way it was never told, featuring the emotional vagaries to which his comrades and himself were subjected to; their woes, their cries and, ironically, their laughs too, revealing some of the weird aspects of one of the most brutal ethnic conflicts of post- colonial Africa. With short poems and love scenes like the short-lived affair between himself and Bernadette, Chidi portrays, without being too salacious, albeit unique with African stories, some of the discomfits of transforming from adolescent into adulthood on a fast lane.