Memories of Biafra can't be erased by removal of history from schools' curriculum. Biafra can never be defeated and wiped away - Soyinka

-

 

Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka has said that the removal of history from the curriculum of Nigerian schools by the government is a criminal act. 

 

Speaking at the 24th edition of the Lagos Book and Arts Festival organized by Book Kraft, Soyinka stated that memories of Biafra can't be erased by the removal of history from schools' curriculum as the agitation can never be defeated and can never be wiped away.

 

He said; 

 

“Collective memory is the key because it is that memory which is related to the mechanisms of relating reality to whatever narrative is given to us. It is far more important and it is more dangerous because you can get trapped in it because it is collected as a community activity and some of that I think is happening to us here in Nigeria.

“I’m referring of course to Biafra. 

“The collective memory there is very strong, even before the war, I warned that this collective memory might remain to plague efforts at nation being and that therefore, everything should be done to avoid that war.

“When I use expressions like, Biafra can never be defeated can never be wiped away, people thought I was talking about just the battlefield.

“I was talking about, a notion, a passion which enters the collective memory in active life not just as a past narrative. this is what I was warning against. And we’re seeing it today.

 “Governments sometimes think that by undertaking the criminal act of removing history from schools, something which I never believed could ever happen to us. The government actually stopped teaching of history in schools.

“So naive, so stupid as not to recognise that there is something called memory, collective memory, active memory in the present. 

“If the purpose was to obliterate the war or memories of the war, what about events that led up to the war? What about the position, the narrative of existence in relation to the outer world? How do you obliterate for heaven’s sake?

“Yet people sat down and went about their business when they removed history from the curriculum.

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Message Sent

Popular posts from this blog

Meet the world's hottest transgender - Amiyah Scott

-
Image
Yep, all that used to be male. Her name is Amiyah Scott, but she was born ‘Arthur Scott’ in New York in 1988. She's a transgender model and make-up artist. Arthur started the process of turning into a woman when he was 17. He got breast augmentation, booty shots, light filler in the cheeks etc etc.  by linda ikeji       
Read more

Man shot dead by police officer who tried to jump fuel queue in Lagos; police identifies officer responsible

-
Image
  A police officer has gunned down a Lagos resident who prevented him from jumping the queue to buy fuel at a Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) filling station at Obalende in the Ikoyi area of Lagos State.    Toheeb Eniafe was in the queue to get petrol on Wednesday evening, May 1, when two men, said to be police officers, attempted to drive into the station to buy petrol even though they were not in the queue to get the product.  This attempt by the police officers to jump the queue was met with stiff resistance from people in the queue who had been waiting for hours.   Eniafe was at the forefront of the resistance, telling the men to join the queue like everyone else.   This degenerated into a physical fight and one of the men shot Eniafe before fleeing the scene.  An angry mob was said to have chased and caught up with one of the officers but he later escaped after firing shots in the air.  On Thursday, May 2, the La...
Read more

Ugandan President Museveni claims IMF, World Bank and Western countries purposely keep African countries in perpetual poverty (video)

-
Image
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has claimed that the West and various international monetary lenders keep Africa in continuous poverty. Speaking at the World Bank’s International Development Association summit for African Heads of state, held in Nairobi, Kenya, Museveni took a bold swipe at world leaders saying that most of Africa’s problems predicted over 60 years ago were a result of philosophical, ideological, and strategic economic mistakes. He claimed that a fundamental African problem is that aid from the World Bank and other Western bodies was majorly for profiteering. “The crisis which is in Africa today is because of philosophical, ideological, and strategic economic mistakes which we have been talking about since the 1960s. It is not an accident when you see the crisis in many African countries, the collapse of States. We predicted this in the 1960s – philosophical, ideological, and strategic mistakes. I don’t have time to amplify each one but I was very happy to hear the...
Read more