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| Air Force Outside Gallery: Relic of one of the air crafts during the war. Below it is the famous Biafran Baby, according to the curator, that 'bird' almost changed the course of the war in favour of Biafra. |
Its brown rusted roofs, punctuated by few
corrugated aluminium roofs, are washed each morning by the rain of dews. The
ray of sun that sweeps the city at midday wrings wild fragrances from its
towering bushes. And at night, the castanet music of the crickets, the croaking
symphony of the frogs and the beautiful glimmers from the fire-flies lull its
inhabitants to sleep. This is Ebite –Amafor, the countryside in Umuahia, Abia
state that houses the National War Museum.
If you were not around during the civil war, you
might never be able to imagine the horrendous effects of a war that tore the
fabrics of this nation to shreds. This is because those who wrote it in the
textbooks and those telling the stories can hardly capture the true picture
with mere words.
The closest attempt to represent the Nigeria’s
Civil War in print is the work of the award-winning Chimanmanda Adiche in her
Half of a Yellow Sun. But the poor reading culture has damaging impact on
Adiche’s efforts to document history in fiction. Hence, we all forget in a
hurry.
