TABLE OF CONTENT
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
A.
INTRODUCTION
I.
Statement
of Problem……………..…….viii
II.
Purpose
of Research……………………………..ix
III.
Scope
of Research…………………….……….x
IV.
Methodology………………………….…….x
B.
EXPLICATIONS
I.
The
Concept of Biafra…………………..……..xii
II.
The
Old Biafra…………………………..xix
III.
The
New Biafra……………………………xx
CHAPTER ONE
BIAFRA AS LED BY CHUKWUEMEKA
ODUMEGWU OJUKWU…...1
1.1 The Remote Causes of the Biafra Declaration……….….1
1.2 The Immediate Causes of the Biafra Declaration…………....…11
1.3 The Resultant War, Its Challenges and Responses………….....19
1.4 The Consequences of the Biafran War…………………...21
CHAPTER TWO
BIAFRA AGITATION AS LED
BY CHIEF RALPH UWAZURIKE…..24
2.1 The Causes of the Agitation………………………………………………24
2.2 Achievements Already Recorded…………………………………………25
2.3 Criticisms both For and Against the Agitation by the
Different People….26
CHAPTER THREE
CRITICAL EVALUATION………………………..………………………29
CHAPTER FOUR
GENERAL CONCLUSION…………………………….63
4.1 Justification if any, and Conclusion…….………..63
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………..……….65
CHAPTER ONE
BIAFRA AS LED BY CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU
1.1 The Remote Causes of the Biafra
Declaration
By
remote causes we mean those errors committed, mistakes made, events, etc. that
in one way or the other contributed to the Nigeria’s political instability,
which are often ignored, but form the bedrock of the immediate crises that led
to the attempted secession. We need to note, and importantly too, that these
remote causes date back to pre-amalgamation era, and equally too, that their
negative consequences still persist as freshly as ever till today.
Before the arrival of the colonial
masters, the different peoples that make up what we now call Nigeria lived as
independent kingdoms, empires, republics, caliphates etc. These peoples had
their different socio-political structures, cultures and (sometimes) religion,
which in most cases differed greatly from one another’s. In the North, it was a
highly centralized socio-political structure, with the caliph at the head
possessing an absolute power both in political, judicial and religions matters.
It was a theocracy with Arab oriented culture and the official religion was
Islam.
In the South the case was different.
Here we see diverse political administrative systems and cultural orientations,
with some little similarities among some groups. In the Yoruba dominated
South-West it was another form of centralized system of government which was
more democratic and largely less totalitarian than the one in the North. Their
orientation was basically African both in religion and culture. The most
prominent among the Yoruba kingdoms was the old Oyo Empire. Moving eastwards
from there you meet Benin kingdom in the Mid-West which had some similarities
with the Yoruba kingdoms but politically independent of them. There are equally
some other smaller independent political entities and kingdoms in places like
Bonny, Kalabari, Lagos etc.
Coming to the Igbo dominated East, the
system of government was mainly republican. The small political units scattered
everywhere independent of one another. The system was totally
decentralized and no one had the power to lord it over the other, yet they had
leaders who just had the mandate to represent their people
the way the people wished. Everybody was involved in the political life of the
community and everything was by consensus; thorough republicanism.
When the colonial masters came, they
signed treaties of protection with
these different peoples and these treaties were most often signed after long
wars of resistance. This means that some of
these peoples never for once accepted the colonial masters’ protection, but
were rather overpowered. What followed immediately was total exploitation of
their resources in the name of protective administration. These different
peoples were summarily administered separately but the major dividing line was
drawn between the North and the South as separate entities. These peoples were
later fused together for the British economic and administrative conveniences
without their consent; they were only talked to and not talked with. This is
how what we now call Nigeria falsely came to be a country, after the 1914
amalgamation.
After the amalgamation, one would expect the colonial masters
to begin to unify the minds of these peoples who had little or nothing in
common and more still who never consented to the amalgamation. This never happened;
instead the reverse was the case. The British did all they could to plant as
much disharmony as possible among these different peoples till they left, that
the effects are ever strongly holding the so-called country to ransom till
today. Yet they tried their best very cleverly to prevent any section from
leaving the fold and granted them independence as a country and still fight for
its corporate existence more than any person till today. At this point a normal
thinking mind will ask, ‘Why this double standard?’. Alexander Madiebo puts the
answer thus:
The federation of
Nigeria as it exists today has never really been one homogenous country, for
its widely differing peoples and tribes are yet to find any basis for true
unity. This unfortunate yet obvious fact notwithstanding, the former colonial
master had to keep the country one, in order to effectively control his vital
economic interest concentrated in the more advanced and “politically
unreliable” South.
Despite all these, there have never
been any serious efforts by either the British themselves or the Nigerian
government afterward to find a basis under which there would be true unity, to
bring these peoples together. The colonial master would not allow that to
happen for such a move would be a great threat to their economic interest for
which the disunity was deliberately created. They would rather go on to
introduce more measures of ‘divide and rule’ policy which would always go
further to widen the gap between the different ethnic nationalities. What this is saying is that contrary to our
belief, Nigeria as a country does not exist. What we rather see is a mere
shadow whose real existence is in the British economic world, in the manner of
Plato’s world of forms. Thus, it is only the peoples identified with this name
that exist.
My conclusions may sound superfluous,
or frivolous, or even sentimental to some ears. To such people I would demand
to see the following with me. What should be the case in a country? Is it not
supposed to be a place where all citizens are equal in everything as the case
may be? A place where all citizens live safely in every part of the territory
without molestation by fellow citizens? A place where every citizen has equal
civil rights and can hold any political office in any place within the
territory? A place where citizens are recruited to government institutions
based on qualification and not on ethnic or religious identity? Is it not
supposed to be a place where all citizens are first class citizens and see the
whole territorial landmass as fatherland? The questions can go on infinitely.
But what has been the case in Nigeria from the time of colonialism to date?
The
case has been extremely opposite in Nigeria. In the first place, there are as
many territories as there are ethnic groups in Nigeria. An Igbo who finds
himself in Hausa land is totally an unsafe stranger who can be attacked and
killed any moment by the citizens of the land. An Hausa who is in Yoruba land
is in turn a stranger, and the case continues on. All these are products of the
British ‘divide and rule’ policy which they carefully and consistently created
and maintained in their successive administrative constitutions. They
emphasized what divide the peoples than what unite them, and rather than
treating them as a people, they projected them as Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba,
Christians, Muslims, etc, among themselves and as enemies. They went further
and polarized the so-called country into Hausa-Fulani dominated North and,
Yoruba and Igbo dominated South, with the North having the seventy five percent
of the total landmass and the purported sixty percent of the total population. Yet some of the Hausa-Fulani dominated
minorities in the North have more affinity with the South than with the North.
The South was further divided into Igbo dominated East and Yoruba dominated
West and the later extraction of the Mid-West. This calculated unbalanced
polarization did not go without protests from the leaders of the two sides of
the South, yet it was imposed on them and meant to be the platform for
political activities from that moment on.
As
one would expect, based on the fact that this unbalanced division into regions
was meant to be the platform for political activities, the federal government
automatically became dominated by the North who had at least fifty percent of
the total seats in the Federal House of Representatives. This became the climax
of events that injected instability into the bloodstream of Nigeria’s polity.
How can a section of Nigeria dominate the rest put together and always dictate
to them what would be done? This single act destroyed every aspect of Nigeria’s
life as a political entity, starting from politics, which is the life wire of a
society, to civil service, economy and so on. Worse still the dictating North
was far behind the South intellectually that it became a case of the blind
leading the sighted. What would one expect from this other than a constant
revolt by the sighted who would always see the leading blind dangerously taking
him to a pit? The situation is even far from being better in the military as
the ethnic quota system of recruitment introduced shortly before the
independence offered a compulsory sixty percent recruitment to the North,
fifteen to West and East each and ten to Mid-West in any recruitment at all in
the Army. The sum total outcome of this would be
nothing short of sacrificing merit, competence, excellence, productivity,
etc, on the alter of ethnic politics.
Yet it is always imposed on me to say that Nigeria is a country. But I know
that in a country every citizen is as important as the other and everything is
therefore done on the basis of the most competent whether or not they all come
from one section or even a family, provided they do it for the general good.
At
this juncture I would like us to think a bit. Do the above events appear
coincidental? Emphatically no! All the above happenings during the foundation
laying stone of the Nigeria’s permanent political structures were done for
certain ends, not for the people called Nigerians, but for the people that
masterminded them. They were permanently laying the foundation for the
inter-ethnic rivalry, conflicts, suspicion and hatred that has always made it
extremely difficulty for Nigeria to be a real country, besides laying the
foundation for today’s Nigeria’s steady movement away from development instead
of the other way round. If one is in doubt I would suggest that one casts one’s
mind through the history and study more closely the developments of events to
date.
Before
the arrival of the British, these different peoples, even though they were of
different political sovereignties, had some friendly and diplomatic relations
among themselves especially through trade. They dwelled side by side more
peacefully than now. Their relationship with one another turned very bad with
the above happenings. They now find it extremely difficult to co-exist and since
then have always held one another to the throat. Yet they were going to be a
country by 1st October 1960, without first being a people. How would
they manage together to get their independence, one may ask? What would follow
afterwards?
The
answers to the questions above are not surprising at all. They never worked in
harmony even close to the independence. At a point the date for the
independence itself became a source of serious political clash between the
poles, which was crowned with the Kano riot of 1953 that left tens of thousands
of Southerners in Kano dead and their properties looted. It further led to the
attempted secession of the North.Even among the Southerners themselves there
was no unity of purpose. Apart from the earlier nationalists like H.O. Davies,
Herbert Macaulay, Ernest Ikoli etc. who were true nationalists, in the West,
the younger generation of Yoruba politicians led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo were
ethnic nationalists who were fundamentally interested in the welfare of their
ethnic group other than the general good.
The same was also the case in the North, were Ahmadu Bello was totally playing
egocentric sectionalism, especially after the independence. The Northerners led
by Ahmadu Bellow once said that the 1914 amalgamation of Nigeria was a
regrettable mistake in the Nigerian history
while Awolowo said that Nigeria is a mere geographical expression.
In
the East, you again find a people of different belief altogether. Led by Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe, they strongly believed and worked for a united Nigerian course,
sometimes to a self-destructive extent. Thus Uwalaka puts it:
The early Igbo
positive disposition in the construction of this Nigerian project contrasted
sharply with the attitude of the leaders of the other two major tribes, the
Hausa and Yoruba… in 1947, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa(later to become the first
Nigerian Prime minister) said “since the Amalgamation of the Southern and Northern
provinces in 1914, Nigeria has existed as one country on paper…”…Ahmadu Bello,
the Sardauna of Sokoto(later to become the first Nigerian Governor of northern
region ) said “Nigeria is so large and the people so varied that no person with
any real intellectual integrity would be so foolish as to pretend that he
speaks for the country as a whole.” We know the famous statement of Obafemi
Awolowo, the post independent Yoruba leader, that “Nigeria is a mere
geographical expression.”
After
everything the summary is that there was no unity of purpose. There has always
been a strong division between North, East and West, but the division has been
stronger between North and South in general. Therefore the people we now parade
as Nigerian nationalists were actually ethnic nationalists, except in some
cases. But after everything, they got their so-called independence as a
country. How come that this could happen? At least from the story so far, there
is no basis for unity. Instead there have been some separatist signs. The
Muslim North had never wanted to associate with the Christian South, and had at
least once made a bold step to secession but which was neutralized by the
British.
Looking
at all these, there are certain things glaringly clear to any thinking mind.
The totality of the Nigerian political structure is a product of the British
mind, imposed on the people, for the former’s future use, despite protests by
the later. They had all this while been putting things in positions for use,
mainly after the so-called independence. Now look at it. The British strongly
wanted to lock these peoples together as a country, not in a real sense, but in
a formal sense, so that they would continually exploit them after the so-called
independence, as they would be at one another’s throats as had been
institutionalized. For this they cleverly neutralized every move towards
disintegration. Because they felt they could always deceive the North than the
South, they put everything in the control of the North, through the regional inbalance
by which the North would always control every political decision in Nigeria
through their population domination, and then they would now make the North
their mouthpiece and hence control Nigeria through them. That was why they
hypocritically played romance with the North to the detriment of other
sections, to deceive them into believing that they were friends, and always
inspired every of their political moves. But the North is only a means to an
end; we are all looked at together as Africans. Therefore Nigeria is not real;
instead it is a mere economic institution of the British. The so-called Independence
Day was the day everybody in Nigeria ‘gloriously’ matched into the tract of the
race to perpetual dependence and slavery, otherwise called neo-colonialism. What
happened after the so-called independence, which I classify in this work as the
immediate causes of the Biafra declaration gives credence to this.
1.2
The Immediate Causes of The Biafra Declaration.
After
the federal fraud called federal election 1959, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sir
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Chief Obafemi Awolowo became the Governor-General,
the Prime Minister and the opposition leader in the Federal House of
legislature respectively. Also, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Chief S.L. Akintola and Dr.
Michael Okpara became Premiers of North, West and East respectively and the
race started.
After
the independence, Nigeria was hailed as Africa’s hope for democracy. This was
because the independence was by peaceful means rather than violent revolution,
and because Nigeria was economically viable with great potentials for future
development, particularly in view of the large market it presented for
industrial goods. All
this big hope came to nothing for the destructive seed of ethnicity,
corruption, inter-ethnic mutual hatred already institutionalized in the system
during the foundation laying by the colonial masters, which had long matured
into a big tree, soon began to disperse poisonous fruits into every sector of
the society’s life. There were socio-political explosive situations originating
from unhealthy inter-ethnic rivalry, nepotism, chauvinistic and egocentric
sectionalism, corruption, power tussle etc.
In
the West it was Action Group party crisis through which Awolowo and his group
were permanently neutralized with the purported treason offence and Akintola
imposed on the people despite their protests. The West turned into ‘Wild-West.’
The East had relative peace except for the census crisis of 1962/63 and federal
election crisis of 1964, none of which was regional crisis in a strict sense,
and perhaps, the case of Isaac Adaka Boro. In the North, the Chief actor was
Ahmadu Bello who ruled the whole federation from Kaduna through the puppet
Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. He was a Muslim fanatic and an
Hausa-Fulani ethnic bigot. He was
openly, and shamelessly too, an ethnic chauvinist to an embarrassing degree.
He was the unrivalled leader of NPC, a party which developed from a Northern
ethnic organization. Because of the regional imbalance, this party would
perpetually have the majority seat in the Federal House of Representatives and
therefore was very powerful. The Sardauna was therefore very powerful and
enjoyed an unrivalled popularity in the North. Because of his unrivalled
popularity among the Northern politicians, coupled with the Northern domination
in the Federal House of Representatives, he held the whole federation to
ransom, and was politically undisciplined. He was actually the Prime Minister
in the body of Sir Tafawa Balewa.
He used federal institutions like the military at will. Thus he used the
military for private matters and mainly for political purposes; with the
federal Army he politically suppressed Tiv minority uprising in the North. He
was equally behind the crisis in the West.
In
his bid to stuff the whole rank and file of the federal military with the
Northerners he suffocated it with Northern chaffs, that every Northerner on
trousers became a military man, just to out-number the Southerners. Because of
his power and influence, military promotions were mainly based on ethnic
identity, which naturally favored the Northerners, while the Southerners who
were ambitious had to openly identify with Northern politicians before
realizing their dreams.
The military thus turned into a place of political maneuvers. The climax of
this maneuver was the competition between Brigadier Ademulegun and General
Aguiyi Ironsi on whom to succeed the last British General Officer Commanding (GOC).
Ademulegun was seriously romancing with Northern politicians by all means while
Aguiyi Ironsi showed little interest, but the latter was however made the GOC
after everything.
The result of all these was that the military became a mockery; where seniority
and competence did not matter again, and they became politically conscious. The
standard was fast running down to zero degree because recruitments and
promotions were based on ethnicity, rather than competence. When all these
things were happening remember, people were daily being killed in the West and
in Tiv land on political basis.
Worse still, there were strong reasons to believe the rumours of an impending
Islamic jihad which was again linked to the Sardauna.
As
usual, the poor masses bore the brunt of the above situation and could
naturally anticipate a military revolution. In the military, the issue of an
impending coup became a common talk. Seeing what was going on in the
federation, some more radical soldiers believed that coup d’etat was the only
way out and consequently struck on January 15, 1966. This coup, generally
accepted as Nzeogwu’s coup (but Ifeajuna’s for Ojukwu), took about a total of
fifteen lives of both soldiers and civilians, including the Surdauna and the
Prime Minister. It
succeeded in the North while failed in the South for the following reasons.
The
soldiers had different views about the coup d’etat. There were those who
believed that the only way to move the federation foreword was through coup
d’etat. They include Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Emma Ifeajuna, Don Okafor,
Chris Anuforo, Wole Ademoyega and their accomplices. Some supported the coup
but would not risk their lives and thus, remained neutral. Some others saw it
as a mutiny, considering their reaction during the coup. There were equally
some others who would not support it if they knew about it. These were mainly
those who dinned with the corrupt politicians; the circumstance favoured
them. And so on.
The
soldiers led by Major Nzeogwu succeeded in the North as Nzeogwu was in total
control of Kaduna. However, it is clear Odumegwu Ojukwu anticipated the coup
and was on the watch out. He could therefore arrest those sent to take over his
unit and maintained peace in Kano.
In the South, the coup was a total mess-up. General Aguiyi Ironsi, the
legitimate commander of the whole federal military, escaped those sent for him
in Lagos and still retained the control of the army especially in Lagos.
Those sent to the East were placed between the devil and the blue sea. They
were placed in dilemma of either endangering the life of an international
guest, Archbishop Makarios, the Cypriot leader who visited the Eastern Premier,
Dr. Michael Okpara, as they went on with the coup or, save his life by waiting
till he left, which means delaying the coup.
After everything, the coup was a caricature. Ironsi, still retaining his power,
having escaped the soldiers and seeing the coup as a mutiny, could successfully
foil it in the South. When some of the soldiers taking part in the coup found
out that Ironsi was still in control of the army in the South, they immediately
switched over to his side in fear while others ran away.
Everything now boiled down to a situation of polarization of power; Ironsi in
control of the South while Nzeogwu in control of the North. Ironsi ordered
Nzeogwu to surrender but Nzeogwu was ready to have it out to a conclusive end
with Ironsi before he was advised by some army officers to surrender to Ironsi,
at least having succeeded in dethroning the corrupt regime.
Nzeogwu eventually surrendered on certain conditions, which included non
execution of those who took part in the coup.
What
remained of the first republic regime formally handed power over to General
Aguiyi Ironsi through Dr. Nwafor Orizu, who was the acting president as Dr.
Azikiwe was outside the country, purportedly on health reasons.
When
Aguiyi Ironsi came to power, he made the greatest mistakes of his life which cost
him both his life and those of other millions of people. He wanted to impress
the Northerners by all means that he was not Igbo-centric but he ended up
worshipping them. He surrounded himself with too many Northerners and his
regime could in fact be called Northern regime, for he hardly took any decision
without their knowledge. To avoid suspicion, he forbade any Igbo person from
speaking Igbo in his office.
Again those he appointed to inquire into the January 1966 coup were mainly
biased Northerners.
Moreover, some Northerners he placed in important positions were close
associates of the corrupt politicians killed in January coup, some of whom
narrowly escaped the executing bullets of the coup.
All
these people, realizing that Ironsi was ready to please them, had and used the
whole time to poison the minds of the Northern populace about the coup, which
initially was very popular among them. They aroused their emotions against the
Easterners and prepared their minds for reprisal attacks, in a well planned
programme of events. Ironsi himself lost his life in one of these attacks.
All
that eventually led to the civil war could have been avoided had Ironsi
listened to his Southern brothers, especially the Igbos. He only listened with
full confidence, to the Northerners around him who were heartlessly bent on
destroying him. The first part of the well organized pogrom which was evidently
of Northern government initiative, started on May 29, 1966, after which
thousands of corpses of Southerners littered the major cities in the North. The
rioters afterwards could not agree on a particular reason. For some, it was
Ironsi’s unitary system of government; some others, it was to avenge their
leaders killed in January coup; but for majority, they wanted secession for they
would not be part of any federation that is not headed by a Northerner.
Seeing
no punitive measure from Ironsi against their first act, with full confidence
they came back the second time. It started between 28th and 29th
May when Ironsi visited the West on his nationwide tour. He was killed along
with Lt. Col. Francis Fajuyi, the Governor of the West. The same fate awaited
soldiers of Southern origin and Easterners in particular, majority of whom were
not lucky enough to escape. After the soldiers, the Eastern civilians became
the primary targets. Already Gowon had taken over power and declared ‘no basis
for unity’.
What
followed afterwards was a momentary but continual massacre of Easterners
outside their region especially in the North, with a horrifying brutality that
took tens of thousands of lives. The killing cut across age, sex, status, and
took several barbaric forms. Some were locked up in houses and were either cut
down with sharp objects or set ablaze with the house. Many women above the age
of ten were raped to death while pregnant ones had their wombs ripped open, and
their foetuses publicly executed. Crying children scattered everywhere as they
were chased about and cut down. Some people’s heads were set on fire and
allowed to die a slow death, and so many other horrifying stories. Those who
successfully returned to the East alive were scarcely seen without serious
damage in their bodies and the East became over crowded as the Easterners
streamed back to the East.
As
Ojukwu was looking for a solution to this problem, Gowon remained heartless and
was officially pursuing Northern agenda aimed at perfecting a total
extermination of the Easterners. His diversionary ad hoc constitutional
conference that took off on 12th September 1966 was more of
dictation than discussion for within few weeks he and his Northern brothers
endorsed one stand after the other till they ironically came back to square
one: They rioted for secession initially. In the conference they now endorsed
confederation. They later shifted to federation, and eventually ended with the
unitary system of government against which they initially rioted, all within
very few weeks, and with a threat to use force on any group that failed to
comply. What a hypocrisy and heartlessness!
The
last hope for peace was squandered when Ojukwu and Gowon interpreted the Aburi
Accord differently despite the fact that it was well documented. Ojukwu had already
seen the unrelenting thirst for the blood of the Easterners, and called the
Eastern Nigerian community leaders on May 26th , 1967, and detailed
them on the situation. The Consultative Assembly mandated him on May 27th,
1967, to declare Eastern Nigeria at the earliest practicable date, a sovereign
and independent state with the Name ‘Republic of Biafra. Gowon’s swift reaction
to this was to abandon the Aburi Accord and create Nigeria into twelve states
on May 27, 1967. Ojukwu declared the republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967 and the
Biafran war started on July 6, 1967.
1.3
The Resultant War, Its Challenges and Responses.
As
secession was the only remaining alternative for self-defence, the Easterners
wrongly believed that the world having seen how greatly they had been treated
unjustly, would not support any attack on them by the Nigerian government. But
this was not to be true for international politics is a game of gain and not of
conscience. Moreover, some of the so-called powers had all these while been
collaborating with the Nigerian government that immediately the war broke out,
they threw their weight behind Gowon. Britain was actively supporting Nigeria
while America, though claimed neutral, did not recognize Biafra. Most of the
jets used by the Nigerian troops were Russian jets. Even though these people
posed as their reasons that secession was illegitimate, it was all for selfish
motives. Muslim African countries like Egypt pitched their tent with the
Nigerian government perhaps, on religious ground. Thus Egyptian pilots were
very active in Nigerian Air Force during the war. The most outstanding European
power on Biafran side was France and Black African countries like Ivory Coast,
Gabon, Zambia and Tanzania recognized Biafra, but their total help was far from
being sufficient. Faced with extreme difficulties, the creative ingenuity of
the Biafrans shone out. Thus they could invent in the areas of Agriculture, armament
etc.
The
nature of the war made Biafrans regard it as genocide, because from every
indication there were serious moves to exterminate every human being on the
Biafran side. The Russian jets were spreading explosives every place indicative
of human lives, like hospitals, market places, schools, houses etc. The total
blockade from foreign contact and the starvation measure which took more lives
than ammunition did, were basically targeted on the civilians. There was
equally an alleged poisoning of food coming into Biafra by the Nigerian
government.
This
war dragged on for thirty months and Biafrans unable to withstand the pressures
any longer, surrendered shortly after Ojukwu had left for Ivory Coast. The
total death estimate is about three million.
1.4 The Consequences of the Biafran War.
After
the Biafran surrender, the Nigerian military head of state, Yakubu Gowon,
declared that there was ‘No Victor No Vanquished’
and declared the move of the federal government towards reconciliation,
rehabilitation and reconstruction concerning the war. In reality, the opposite
became the case for the war continued in a worse form; no longer as two
independent sovereignties but as a conqueror nation and the conquered
territory. Contrary to the expectation of the Easterners, there was a
systematic further blockade of relief materials immediately after the Biafran
surrender by the Nigerian government, causing more civilian deaths even more
than recorded within the last weeks of the war. Many Biafran soldiers were shot
by Nigerian troops after their surrender and those who survived were dismissed
from the forces like army, police etc. Many people’s last drop of hope for
survival of the extremely dehumanizing war-caused conditions were destroyed
when they were allowed only twenty pounds each from all they loaded into
Nigerian banks before the war ended, while those paralyzed by the war have
since then been languishing at Oji uncared for. Again, the reconstruction
propaganda has not been matched with action as the wanton destructions of the
war have remained forgotten by the federal government. To ever increase their
sufferings and equally create disunity among the Easterners, the properties of
the Igbos in some places, especially in Port-Harcourt, were declared abandoned
till today. Besides making life ever more difficult for the Igbos, this was
meant to create disunity between the Igbos and the inhabitants of
Port-Harcourt, who being desperate beyond control would most likely accept the
offer of inheriting the properties of the Igbos in their midst. To facilitate
the destruction of Igbo solidarity and identity, many Igbo communities have
been forced to states dominated by Igbo-hostile communities, which makes these
Igbos deny their Igbo identity in order to escape maltreatment. As these people
were still desperately battling with these blood-sucking and dehumanizing
situations, indigenization policy was introduced to sell the indigenized
foreign companies to the ‘real citizens’ of Nigeria; like the Yorubas who
benefited most and are now the sole controllers of the economic sector of the
federation. This was systematically done in order to permanently nail the
Easterners to poverty and state of total exclusion, while the ‘real citizens’
over-take them and permanently maintain control of every sector of the federal government.
Thus after everything, the Hausas control power, Yorubas control economy, while
the Igbos are labourers.
These
and so many other steps continually being added in order to systematically and
completely shatter the ‘Biafrans’ have continually and increasingly been the
case for more than thirty years after their surrender. This ever worsening
situation of perpetual slavery and dehumanization becoming increasingly
unbearable, and without any hope for a future change, this people remembered
Biafra again and bounced back to it but in a new way; it is now a new Biafra.
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