Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra.

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra.

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the 20th century.

Despite his father’s devout Christianity, Okigbo had an affinity, and came to believe later in his life, that in him was reincarnated the soul of his maternal grandfather, a priest of Idoto, an Igbo deity. Idoto is personified in the river of the same name that flows through Okigbo’s village, and the “water goddess” figures prominently in his work. Heavensgate (1962) opens with the lines:

Before you, mother Idoto,
naked I stand,

While in “Distances” (1964), he celebrates his final aesthetic and psychic return to his indigenous religious roots:
I am the sole witness to my homecoming.

Okigbo was a good friend and a Political soul mate of Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna and it is common knowledge that both shared the same ideology and a reformative mindset about the state of the country prior to the 1966 January coup

When General Ironsi knocked the bottom out of the coup, Okigbo smuggled Ifeajuna into safety across the Nigeria-Benin border to Ghana. Interestingly, Okigbo was also instrumental to Ifeajuna return to Nigeria.

Okigbo has always been in true patriot as a writer and as a fighter for the liberation of his motherland. In the quest for defending his motherland, he dropped the pen and he picked up a gun instead. Having escaped an assassination attempt in Lagos, he returned to Enugu to join the fight for the liberation of Biafra.

The tale of Okigbo’s exploits should be immortalized into Movies/Documentaries/Short Films. The story of one of Africa’s brilliant writers is yet to be told. One of his many exploits was the almost hijacking the Eastern Radio House to declare the Republic of Biafra, before he was stopped.

He was so eager to join the fight that in so many ways Okigbo was always running towards the blazing gun. He died on September 1967 at the age of 34. Two months to his 35th Birthday
During one of the many frontal assaults to retake Nsukka, a shot fired to his fore head brought down the great Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo. He was killed before the real war started.

Okigbo was one of the many few that read the “Unpublished Manuscript” of Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna.

“We begged the gods for a miracle, they gave us Okigbo. We asked our nation for salvation, it took Okigbo”- (c) ASIRI Magazine 2021.