Chimamanda Adichie is Nigerian the author of Half of a Yellow Sun and on Forbes Top 40 Celebrities in Africa. Here is her review of Chinua Achebe's There was a Country: A personal History of Biafra
Nigeria, at independence from British rule in 1960, was called the Giant of Africa. With a large population, an educated elite and many natural resources, especially oil, Nigeria was supposed to fly the flag of democratic success. It did not, and it is clear now, in retrospect, that it could not possibly have done so. Colonial rule, as a government model, was closer to a dictatorship than a democracy. Nigeria was a young nation, created in 1914, as Nigerian children would learn in history class in the endlessly repeated sentence: ‘Lord Frederick Lugard amalgamated the northern and southern protectorates to form one country and his wife gave it the name Nigeria.’
It is debatable whether, at independence, Nigeria was a nation at all.
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