The idea of an extraordinary Nigerian destiny underwent a collective shock with the eruption of the Nigerian civil war. The high hopes offered by the departure of the colonialist from Nigerian's political scape were completely eroded by the crisis of the immediate post-independence era. What was initially a tribal military discord within the elitist cadre of the Nigerian military degenerated into a destructive tangle of national tragedy. Thus, after an inchoate euphoric ecstasy of self-rule, disillusion set in, resulting from what Neil Lazarus (1986) describes as Africa's ‘preliminary overestimation of emancipatory potential’ (p. 50).

The Nigerian civil war is about the ugliest moment in the history of post-colonial Nigeria – a moment of hatreds and sufferings. Benjamin Stora (1999) describes the war scape as a place ‘where gunpowder is in the air and where the combatants' weakness and heroism are revealed’ (p. 80). This period recorded a bumper harvest of artistic and imaginative creativity – most of which painted an apocalyptic vision. Numerous voices spoke of the tragedy and cruelty of the war. Commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the military cabal, Nigerian nationalists, scholars, students and politicians of all sides produced a plethora of print, ranging from autobiographies and memoirs to pamphlets, plays, poetry collections and poems, scattered across the pages of journals and anthologies.