BIAFRA (SONNETS ON POST COLONIAL AFRICA'S FIRST GENOCIDE) XXIV

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"BIAFRA is NIGERIA'S good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over - thus the IKEMBA NNEWI spoke of it all by the time of his return from exile. By then he was a changed man, EZI-NNE. By turns voluble, taciturn - those long periods of silence. We that are of BIAFRA'S hungry dead would gather - a skeletal chorus round the IKEMBA NNEWI - and we would marvel at the depth of his reading. If he was a man who read books before and during the BIAFRA WAR, this returned exile read something astonishing: the IKEMBA NNEWI read books. And chronicled the dead: from ZARIA to ABEOKUTA - 1945, 1955, 1966, the BOKO HARAM killings. Good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over."

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