Author’s keynote speech calls for preservation of Igbo worldview, culture and traditions amid separatist movement turning increasingly violent

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie took to the stage in a hall in the south-eastern Nigerian city of Enugu, dressed in a vibrant burnt orange African-print outfit, her hair styled in an elegant afro, the audience clapped and ululated in appreciation.

“It’s always a homecoming when I return to the south-east,” the novelist, who was born in the city, began. “But it no longer feels like home – the calm, the warmth, the essence seems to have faded,” she added, in an allusion to the violence associated with an armed separatist movement in the region – where 90% of people are from the Igbo ethnic group – and a recent rise in ritual killings.