Charlton Heston’s Misinformation on Nigeria In The Arena

Without doubt, Charlton Heston is one of the greatest American actors of all time. He was a living legend until he passed on to eternal glory in April 2008. He was world famous for his heroic roles of Moses in The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur and The Planet of the Apes among many other classic films. He remains my favourite American actor and when I got a gift of his bestselling In the Arena: An Autobiography from one of my clients I was glad to include it as one of the most treasured books in my private library. But I discovered some very disturbing errors in Charlton Heston’s information on Nigeria, one of the many countries he had visited as a culture ambassador for his beloved country the United States of America. From pages 354 -356, he recalled his dramatic experiences whilst visting Nigeria after the country gained independence from the colonial British Empire.

The Estate of Charlton Heston and his publishers must address the terrible errors of misinformation on Nigeria is his autobiography In The Arena published by Simon & Schuster in 1995.

It is unfortunate that he is not alive to make the corrections and really baffling that his editors could not correct them before the book was published. The mistakes were his erroneous name of President "Aziwiki" of Nigeria instead of President Nnamdi Azikiwe and if that was not bad enough, he also misinformed readers by saying President "Aziwiki" was assassinated by rival tribesmen from the north. But it was not the fact. It was not President Azikiwe that was assassinated, but the Prime Minister Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, KBE (December 1912 – January 15, 1966) who was murdered in the infamous Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, (1937–1967) military coup and his commandos of primarily junior officers of Igbo extraction on January 15, 1966.

Please, the above terrible mistakes on page 356 of In The Arena must be corrected before further damages are done by the misinformation of historical facts on the political history of Nigeria and Africa.