HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Mar. 9, 2007 Before dabbling into this essay permit me to confess that I never witnessed the 1967-70 Nigeria-Biafra civil war. I was born much after the federal govt-organized pogrom against the Igbos that saw over three million lives lost. My mother had told us how she was running around in the bushes taking cover whenever an enemy aircraft heralded it's approach in the horizon with my elder brother who came into this world unfortunately in the height of the three-year brutal war in her hand or strapped at her back. She narrated how the Biafrans were audacious and innovative in the face of the armada that was the federal might bombing houses and civillian locations in order to inflict maximum casualty on the 'rebels' to force a surrender. The one-storey building constructed before hostilities set in by my late father's late brother was bombed twice despite the fact that the roof of the building was covered with palm leaves. The years the war lasted were wasted socio-economic years according to my mon who insisted that people were afraid to venture out; scared to go to the market or the farm for fear of being killed. In my family we lost three able-bodied brothers who were conscripted forcefully into the Biafran Army and never came back. The horrors of the war has been chronicled in books and films because it's only history and eye witness accounts that can explain better in details what really transpired in those mad days when death and mass immolation starred Ndigbo in the face. My mother told us about how lack of food nearly forced people to eat fellow human beings when "kwashiokor" and other hunger-induced diseases became unbearable for many people. She said lizards, rats, frogs and rabbits became substitutes for meat and cassava saved many families from dying from starvation. It was a difficult long-drawn war with psychological and ego consequencies. The Ikemba Nnewi Dim Emeka Ojukwu who was the major protagonist of the war with his principal opponent General Yakubu Gowon were pushed to war by both youthful exuberance and military stubborness. The Aburi accord signed between the two parties in Ghana was not respected leading to open declaration of war when General Ironsi was killed in Ibadan with his host Fajuyi on official state visit to the old western region against Ojukwu's advice. Biafra may be dead on paper but it exists still in the consciousness of majority of Igbos who suffered enormously and still suffer today from the injustices of that gory ugly episode in our national history. Today the Igbos are still marginalised in the Nigerian scheme of things even when "no victor no vanquished" was officially declared by the central authority at the end of the war. If not for the capitalism and never-say-die spirit of Ndigbo total recovery would have been a mirage given monumental infrastructural damage done and lives wasted in prosecuting the war. Today the Igbos have single-handedly erased the trauma of the war moving forward and using brains and brawns to survive and aspire for greater heights in life across the world. Even though Gowon and his handlers declared triple "R", reconstruction, re-integration and re-insertion, as the basis for the accommodation of the Igbos discrimination and marginalisation became the portion of the Igbos soon after the instrument of surrender was received by the federal representative. Scoudrels like Umaru Dikko, Second Republic President Shagari's infamous minister of transport and rice importation who was fortunate enough not to have been 'crated' back to Nigeria from his London hideout to face multiple charges of corruption and abuse of office when General Buhari was calling the shots at Dodan Barracks still see the Igbos as 'defeated people' and he told Dim Ojukwu that in his face provoking the lion in the warlord who pounced on him and manhandled the little Dikko leading to him being sent abroad for some medical attention. It is worthy recalling for purposes of emphasis that this same Umaru Dikko during their democratic debauchery of early 80's (Uba Ahmed and Akintola et al) declared that Nigerians were not yet eating from the dustbin so the 'noise' about mass poverty was misplaced! Biafra may not have been a mistake after all given happenings in Nigeria today especially politically. What Ojukwu saw decades ago (which the likes of Awolowo, Ken Saro-Wiwa and others) did not see then have manifested openly today; Awo was cheated by the system in the 1979 presidential polls and he died bemoaning his fate while Saro-Wiwa was hanged while campaigning peacefully for the rights of his abused people and their polluted lands. Ojukwu could be labelled here a prophet because what he foresaw forty odd years ago is today an open sore which only justice and just federal system of government could heal. Nigeria today is still a nation of disparate nations; with each nationality crying foul over crass injustice in the system and political deception at the highest level. I believe in one Nigeria but that belief must go with complete true federalism with less-powerful center acting within the ambit of the law and well-defined principles of true federalism. Anything less is not acceptable or welcome. The revolutionary idea behind Biafra will never die because the amalgamation of 1914 is a colonial lie told arbitrarily by Lord Lugard and his northern loyalists. MASSOB is trying to re-kindle hope in Biafra taking it's case to the UN and other international organs. Late last year in a London Nigeria-organized international event a white Briton was videoed globally demonstrating his unflinching support for Biafra it's flag in hand! Though MASSOB's national leader is still in detention the movement's followers have continued underground to exercise their seperatist moves sometimes going to the extreme of kidnapping highly-placed people in the south-east whose support is questionable to draw attention to their cause. Biafra has a 'national' flag already designed flying high on the website. Biafra is an idea whose end cannot be deemed unrealistic because certain inter-play of political forces may still bring about a veritable change in the fundamental complexities of the country with the frustrations all over the land. With Niger Delta and Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) Abuja has a lot to contend with. Eight members charged with treason were recently released by Federal High Court in Enugu after being detained without trial for upwards of six months. And two weeks earlier the same court had granted bail and released about 16 other MASSOB activists. The MASSOB leader Uwazuruike is still in Obasanjo's gulag spending years there for standing up for the self-determination and freedom of his Igbo people. While Asari Dokubo is still under detention in Abuja's underground SSS cell his boys and girls in the Niger Delta are still very much active launching attacks against oil explorers and their interests and kidnapping some to send home serious messages of fierce resistance. Dokubo blamed his Ijaw people especialy the elders for discouraging him when he was poised to take Obasanjo on in a sustained armed struggle. And regrets how Obasanjo deceived him into disarming and dropping of his sophisticated weapons for their fee which never came to pass. Former Senate President, Iyorchia Ayu, and two others were recently charged with terrorism in the Niger Delta at the Federal High Court, Abuja. Though Justice Binta Murtala Nyako granted them bail it would seem the Obasanjo administration has learnt the hard way to follow the rules by charging citizens accused of any offence to a competent court for adjudication. That's what democracy demands and that's how it should be at all times. Those who elected to lord it over Nigeria while sitting comfortably in air-conditioned Aso Rock has come to realise how much Nigeria has changed from the immediate past when things of this nature recongnised by our constitution were criminalised in order to force maintenance of the status quo in a culture of lies and silence. More and more compatriots are now ready to take their destinies (no matter the danger or intimidation) in their own hands. Dim Ojukwu showed uncommon courage and determination in leading the Biafran war but circumstances created by powerful enemies (including some Judases) within and without became his undoing. Afterall the Biafrans were manufacturing their weapons of war including the local tank called "Ogbunigwe". The ingenuity of the Igbos were in display as they battled a ruthless formidable federal might dominated by the Hausa-Fulani elements out to decimate and accomplish the task of keeping Nigeria one. Ojukwu having shed the toga of a warlord is a hero held in high esteem by not a few across the world but whether he regrets some of the actions or inactions he took while leading Biafra is left only to imagination. The APGA presidential candidate in the April polls has fully re-integrated but politically he's a spent force. ------------ About the author: Sunny Chris Okenwa is a new U-K contributor based in Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire. Email: soco_abj_2006_rci@hotmail.fr Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
