By Chido Nwangwu, Publisher of USAfrica, Houston. •Follow Twitter.com/Chido247, Facebook.com/USAfricaChido
For how long
should I appease those/
all-knowing gods of mediocrity?
For how long
should I be that/
sacrificial, monthly burnt offering to their
peaceful gods of mayhem?
For how long
should I be that/
target of some reptilian, choking, bloody
dances of death, in my own village by these/
gentle troops of lethal impunity?
For how long
should I be that/
brave one without means and things to
defend the herd of goat in the homestead/
protect the frontline stock of
the courageous, at home and elsewhere?
AHAMEFUNA-AFAMEFUNA-AHAMEFULE
For how long
should I be that/
Overcomer who, continues to fall
for the instigation to cast all
my survivalists’ discretion to their whirlwind,
foxtrotting, into their deathly reptilian dances?
For how long/
should I forget/
For their fear of Biafra,
targeted persons, we’ve become; all
offsprings of Odumegwu, the Lion of Biafra!
we’ve become; all
witness bearers and truth-tellers/
in unapologetic agreement with
Ugonabo Chinua Achebe who wrote:
There Was a Country!
I say, it was not Wakanda; it was Biafra!
AHAMEFUNA-AFAMEFUNA-AHAMEFULE
———
•Dr. Chido Nwangwu is Founder & Publisher of Houston-based USAfrica multimedia networks, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com; and recipient of several journalism and public policy awards. He has been profiled by the CNN International for his pioneering works on multimedia/news/public policy projects for Africans and Americans. He worked previously for the Nigerian Television Authority, Platform magazine, and the Daily Times of Nigeria; and has served as adviser on Africa business to Houston’s former Mayor Brown. USAfrica, CLASSmagazine and USAfricaonline.com are assessed by the CNN and The New York Times as the largest and arguably the most influential African-owned, U.S-based multimedia networks. USAfrica established May 1992.
2018 book: In this engaging, uniquely insightful and first person reportage book, MLK, MANDELA & ACHEBE: Power, Leadership & Identity, about three global icons and towering persons of African descent whose exemplary lives hold lessons for humanity and Africans, the author Chido Nwangwu takes a measure of their works 
and consequence to write that Martin Luther King, Jnr., Nelson Mandela and Chinua Achebe have left “footprints of greatness.”
He chronicles, movingly, his 1998 reporting from the Robben Island jail room in South Africa where Mandela was held for decades through his 20 years of being close to Achebe. He moderated the 2012 Achebe Colloquium at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.”I’ll forever remember having walked inside and peeped through that historic Mandela jail cell (where he was held for most of his 27 years in unjust imprisonment) at the dreaded Robben Island, on March 27, 1998, alongside then Editor-in-chief of TIME magazine and later news chief executive of the CNN, Walter Isaacson (and others) when President Bill Clinton made his first official trip to South Africa and came to Robben Island. Come to this island of scourge and you will understand, in part, the simple greatness and towering grace of Nelson Mandela”, notes Chido Nwangwu, award-winning writer, multimedia specialist and founder of USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned U.S-based newspaper published on the internet, in his first book; he writes movingly from his 1998 reporting from South Africa on Mandela. http://mlkmandelaachebe.com/
