Obama is wrong to say that the country must remain united at any cost because he does not understand that underlying the fear of violence is the fact that Nigeria is a failed colonial fiction. Break up is the only way.

To achieve the seemingly elusive African renaissance, the leaders have to steer the societies and the peoples away from the current practice of reliance and expectation from the outside, to a firmly rooted belief in self and local solutions.

For the cultural initiative to accomplish its good intentions in Africa, it needs to take into cognizance in its plans the cultural and ethnic diversities as well as the size of Africa. The continent is too big and diverse to be treated as a mono-cultural entity

Nigeria is unworkable as one nation-state because of intractable internal ethnic rivalries and the deeply rooted determination of the north to Islamise everyone.

Achebe fought to dissipate and disabuse the numerous misconceptions that the rest of the world held about Africa and its peoples. He was an incredible truth teller and moral bearer of our time.

Just as secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu moved in 1967 to declare the independence of Biafra to protect his people from genocidal killings, the group is asking ICC to intervene on their behalf before they are completely exterminated.

The problem of Nigeria is one-Nigeria. The state structure is wrong. The solution is restructuring; separation of the warring peoples, cultures and religions into independent countries.

The deniers of the Nigerian genocide may deny it as much as they like, but their denial will never erase the fact that this heinous crime occurred.