Christopher Okigbo, (born Aug. 16, 1932 at Ojoto, Biafra—died August 1967, Biafran)
Christopher Okigbo, (born Aug. 16, 1932 at Ojoto, Biafra—died August 1967, Biafran), Biafran poet who is one of the best and most widely anthologized African poets. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Western classics at the University of Ibadan in 1956, Okigbo held positions as a teacher, librarian at the University of Nigeria, private secretary to Nigeria’s federal minister of research and information, and West African editor of Transition, an African literary magazine. He was awarded first prize for poetry in the 1966 Festival of the Negro Arts in Dakar but declined the prize because he felt that writing must be judged as good or bad, not as a product of a specific ethnic group or race. In 1967 Okigbo’s efforts to launch a publishing company in Enugu with the novelist Chinua Achebe came to an abrupt end after his death while fighting in the war for Biafran independence from Nigeria. Okigbo published three volumes of poetry during his short lifetime: Heavensgate (1962), Limits (1