I was born in 1966, at the beginning of the Biafran-Nigerian Civil War, and the war ended after three years. And I was growing up in school, and the federal government didn't want us taught about the history of the war, because they thought it probably would make us generate a new generation of rebels.
Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future.
I'd always been interested in Nigeria's past.
I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.
While the majority of my childhood memories are beautiful, I also have experienced the challenges that Nigeria has faced since independence.
The Egba kingdom was one of the very last to be ceded to the British protectorate. It remained almost an independent entity within what is now known as Nigeria, simply because of its own traditional structure of governance.
I can guarantee you that at least 90% of my people that are my age group in Nigeria - who are considered the youth - had no clue about how Nigeria, the real origins of Nigeria.
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres.
When I was young, and I wouldn't eat, my parents would say, 'Eat, or else you're going to become a little Biafran.'
