It’s been nearly four decades since the Nigeria/Biafra Civil war ended and since then, there has been a growing interest in that dark chapter of the chequered history of Nigeria, manifested mainly in the burgeoning literary (re)presentations of that tragic event. But in spite of the numerous novels, plays and poems inspired by and devoted to the civil war, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Igbo-born Nigerian novelist, born seven years after the war, has, in the words of Chinua Achebe, “taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria’s civil war.” The question is, what could have made a young girl feel sufficiently obligated to add her voice to the deafening cacophony about Nigeria’s dark past? Is it not that the past like an implacable, vengeful and invidious ghost is always standing in Nigeria’s way to progress and fulfillment? So far, the nature and the circumstances of the country’s genesis as well as a number of factors, largely divisive, have continued to thwart the search for true and genuine nationhood. Half of a Yellow Sun poignantly reconstructs and re-enacts the horrendous events of the 60s, focusing mainly on the human tragedy which shows man at his most depraved and bestial. Yet, contemporary experience in Nigeria shows how desperate and urgent the need to lay the ghost of the tragic past is. Since the democratization of the country can only be achieved through an honest re-engagement with ‘matters arising’ from the post-civil war era, we shall in this paper use Half of a Yellow Sun as template to examine the fault-lines of history and also consider Nigeria’s chances of attaining genuine constitutional and participatory democracy.