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Author: Chris Onyema
Posted to the web: 11/3/2009 11:30:48 PM

Nigeria , NigerDelta Violence and the Biafra Connection:

                                 A Political Discourse

                                      By Chris Onyema

 

Apart frommandatory nine months I spent in thepeace (I hope) of my mother's womb,I have been a child of war; havingbeen enlisted at zero age into the Biafran side of the Nigeria Civil war(NCW) in 1969 and having been confirmed Nigerian since 1970. Naturally, I cannotsay exactly how 1 feltthen. But as an adult today, I know 1can tell the story of that gory war. There is evidence from theavalanche of literature (fiction andnon-fiction) and memoirs on the war, as well a my parents' and elder sibblings'balancing narratives of the war given first hand.

Perhaps, what makes theexperience, come alive tome are my own realities  and those  of the others around  me:A picture of one of my siblingsI never met still spots the family group picture that hangs boldly in my fatherâ's living room. The picture wastaken before my arrival. I am told he could not survive the crude amputation of his two legs initially violatedby hot shrapnel from the Nigerian shellingmachine. My eldest sibling, now paradesnine fingers instead of ten having lostone to the offensive Nigerian triggers. There is also this hideous scar on my buttocks (thank God) which I amtold is my (fortunate) share of thenumerous thrusts and dives my motherhad to make to save her tender one from offensive Nigerian air raids.  There is also this persistent insinuation: I have grown to believe that myshort height is not genetic but ratherevidences  an otherwise natural growth botched by malnutrition, having narrowlyescaped the ravaging kwashiorkor thatwas the lot of Biafran children, and adultslest 1 forget.

These realities and storiesabout uncles, cousins and relations my community had lost to the war affect me more than the information fromtexts ridden with emotionalism, and sentimentsconditioned remotely by the preferencesof the writers, the positions they occupied, the side on which they hadfought and varying abilities to makereconstructive and creativeuse of the horrendous experiences of the war.

Despitethe various dimensions of theexperiences of the indelible and visceral war, there is, however,consensus in the portrayal ofinjustice, devastation, death, corruption and suffering, all of which was avoidable at that sour historical moment. There was also tacit agreement among the writers and narrators that the civil war erupted because of the pogrom waged against theIgbo dominated southern Nigeriaby the Hausa/Fulani dominated North,the collapse of the political system and the over-riding influence of ethnicityand factional resurgences. Therefusal of the Federal government tohonour the Aburi Accord which grantedsome degree of autonomy to the regionspolarized into East, West, Midwestand North was also fingered as the immediatecause of the loss of faith in the Nigeria project. There wasresultant xenophobia on the part ofthe East and the consequent drive for   succession.

Similarly the varyingtones of condemnation, exculpation or triumph with which the story is told does not maskthe general consensusthat the recourse to war, carnageand bloodshed was futile and does not offer solution to the national problem.

Furthermore, there was thevicious hand of thecolonial experience in the Nigerian civil-war.The tragic fratricidal 30 month pogrom initially mistaken for mere 'Police action' was an aftermath of afragile union of not less than 250 unequal ethnicities forcefully boundtogether by the British government.During the war also, the British governmentwas said to have spoken through bothsides of its month in a selfish game in which the colonial lord acted as both skipper and striker, and shifted the goal post of Briafraas his business spirit moved him to suit the scoring positions of those on the Nigerian side.

Simplytold, the Biafra war was an aftermath of thepolitical crisis in Nigeriawhich manifested immediately after her independence in the late 1960s and the consequentintervention of the military in Nigerianpolitics. In 1962 and 1963, for instance, there was crisis over thenational census which was said to have beenskewed in favour of some ethnic groups, in order to position them to benefitunfairly from the nationalnumber-based sharing, formula. This happened contemporaneously with thebreak-up of the crisis-ridden Action Group Partyand the declaration of a state of emergencyin Western Nigeria. The 1964 Federal and 1965 Western Regional elections, also controversial and flawed gave fillip to multiple national protests and crises which set the stage for the military to intervene in Jan I5, 1966.

The military intervenedbecause there was overt corruption amongpoliticians, because there was ethnicity,because there was injustice, becausethere was marginalization, becausethere was break down of law and order.This bloody, coup executed by such youngofficers as Chukwuma Nzeogwu and Emmanuel lfeajuna was misconstrued as an Igbo coup, especially as Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo, emerged as the Head of State. The tribal interpretation given to the intervention of these young revolutionaries led to a counter-coup against the Ironsi -led Military Administration in which Ironsi himself and many officers of Eastern origin (especially the Igbo, who were the prime target), were killed. In the atmosphere of blatant tribalism, the evil genie of murder and exterminationseemed to have obsessed the Hausa/Fulanidominated battalions. Thus in additionto the death of the then Prime Minister,the Premiers of Northern and WesternNigeria, the Minister of Finance and manyofficers of the Nigerian Army in the firstCoup, ‘the revenge coup’ of July 2, 1966 rated as bloodier than thefirst claimed more Nigerian lives. TheNortherners cried injustice and sawIronsi's much criticized unification decree as an attempt by Easterners to dominate the rest of the country. TheNorth shouted 'Araba', succession,and a systematic pogrom was orchestratedagainst the Easterners in the North and Lagos. The genocide against the Easterners in which over 15,000 Easterners,mainly the Igbo, were killed with another 5,000 wounded, was executed duringthe regime of Yakubu Gowon whose appointmentas Head of State was facilitated by the then British High Commissioner inLagos, Mr. Cunning Bruce. To the chagrin ofother higher ranking officer, Gowonwas said to have been preferred toother fine officers like Murtala Mohammedbecause he was seen as being more malleableand can easily be used by Britainto ensure the unity of the country andto protect her numerous investmentsand assess to oil.

ChukwuemekaOdumegwu Ojukwu, thengovernor of Eastern Nigeria and later leader of the secessionist Biafra,was confronted with the traumaof the Eastern experience. He saw the genocide against the East, the nonprocedural emergence of Gowon as Head of State,the massive killing of army officers of Igbo origin among other vices against theEasterners in the Northand West, as great injustice and crude marginalization/ extermination agenda. The refusal ofGowon to honour the Aburi accord which ceded some autonomy to the regions in a trulyfederal structure seemed to have confirmed the Northern agenda to decimate ordominate the Easterners and set the stage for the Nigerian civil war. Thespirited desire to battlethis injustice and give the Easterners a sense of belonging in the worldhood ofman led to Ojukwu's declaration of the Republic of Biafraon May 30 1967.

 

The secessionist bid wasdoomed right from the on-set: The massacre ofalmost the best of Eastern army officers inthe July ‘revenge’ coup, the effectiveoccupation of the Western Region and Lagosby Northern Army Officers; the location of all military formations (apart from the Enugu 1st Batallion) in the Northern and Western Nigeria, themight–is-right support of the international community for the Federal forces,among other factors, doomed the Biafran Revolution to extinction.

However,Gowon did not match through Biafra. Ojukwu was precipitated to action by theinjustice meted againstthe Easterners and buoyed by the challenges of hunger, courtesy of the Federal  Economic Blockade against the East. With sheerwill to survive andunprecedented ingenuity, Ojukwumatched force with force and held on Biafra for thirty good months. He contained the Federal intimidating amours buoyed further with diplomatic support in propaganda andarms from Super Powerslike Britain and the nowdefunct Soviet Union.

A major highlight of the war was that neither the defunctOrganization of African Unity led by Guinea's Dialo Telli, the Mr. Arnold Smithled British Commonwealth, theBritish Prime Minister, Wilson Haroldnor the belated support of Tanzania. Ivory Coastand Gabon for Biafra could bring 'cease fire' to Nigeriatill Philip Effiong announced thecapitulation   and   surrender   of Biafra. Also, it is important to mention that Nigerian officers and civilians were wasted on bothsides of the divide with the deathtoll in Biafra ranging between one million and three million. Strategic infrastructure and oil installations werealso attacked and destroyed on bothsides in a maddening demonstration ofunity in antagonism.

Similarly, it was strategic  that Gowon played up the now familiar ethnicity card and institutionalized the divide-and-rule  strategy to weaken  the   Biafran   secessionist   bid. He ingenuouslybroke up of the erstwhile four regions  ofNorthern, Western, Mid-western and Eastern Nigeria into 12 states in May 27, 1967, from which the South Eastern and Rivers States emerged out of Eastern Nigeria even as the later were confined into the then East Central State with an economic blockageimposed on it. Thispolitical masterstroke disabledthe institutional hegemony that had bound the ethnicities in the East and ennobled the rights of the minorities.

Though some notable sons of the former Eastern minorities fought on the sideof Biafia, some othersdistanced themselves from what they perceived as a parochial Igbo cause and either started own secessionor fought on the Federalside.

The easement the federal forces got from the agitation of minoritiesfrom the East, whosuspected the Igbo even more than the Igbo suspected the rampaging North, ironically led to the sustenance of the unending interethnic feuds and rights agitationthat rebirths Biafraeverywhere in Nigeria.There was no meaningfuleffort on the side of the Federal Government to address the issues that led to the Biafran secessionist bid asall energy was misguidedtowards breaking what was misinterpretedas the Igbo ethnic and stubborn bone. Because the Nigerian government has consistently failed to address perceived injustice, rape and marginalization ofthe masses from thecolonial to the postcolonial times, there have been       revolutions and rebellions of differentmagnitudes and dimensions. The familiar Biafrawas just one of them. There have been other Biafran agitations all over thecountry by masses of the people who suffer different kinds of injustice anddeprivations, among the Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba and the numerous groups that dotthe map of the “geographical expression” that is Nigeria. That is the logic ofthe Niger Delta violence and its ties to the Igbo or Ojukwu Biafra.

However, before the resurgence of the Ojukwu Biafia, there had been other Biafra's elsewhere that manifested as communal polarization, guided recorded mass protests against injustice, rape, marginalization and deprivation by the state and itsagents. In fact, having been defeatedseverally in the bid to assert some physicalspace, riddled by injustice andmindless state brigandage, Biafra as a concepthas retreated lo the mindscape. Ithas attained redefinition asnon-violent wordless supplication or bottled up aggression often erupting as pockets of violence againstgroup  -perceived  injustice,   exploitation , marginalization, oppression and other forms of statedenial. That is why Odumegwu Ojukwu, IkembaNnewi and Ex-Biafran warlord has said that what prevails now is Biafra of the mind.

Emeka Njoku of Choice Consulting Canada has aptly captured the stasis of these otherBiafras as not necessarily a geographical entity or country, “but aconcept and the human spirit'': unstoppablequest for survival, safety self preservation,self-determination, justice, freedom,peace and progress in the face danger,extinction and injustice. Thus, there were,in fact, other Biafras before the Ojukwu Biafra, and there have been many others after it, the most recent beingthe bouts of violence in the NigerDelta Area of Nigeria.   Biafra as concept also explains any side of the array of identities which the average Nigerian may decide  to   play   up  in   order   to protest marginalization and confront the poise of the competing actors of denial, be it appeals to primordial ethnicity, regional ties, civil ties, religious and ethno religious ties and so on.

 

 In 1954,for instance, Biafra reared its head in the mining town of Jos as the Igbo andHausa migrants clashedover residential and trading opportunities   amidst   general  strike   and shortage of food forwhich the Igbo was held accountable. That was in, an attempt to stop the South from anti colonial campaign as colonial policies seemed to havefavoured the oligarchic North more than the republican South. Biafrahappened when the Southand North clashed as Hausa Northopposed the end of independence for fear ofbeing dominated by the more developed South.The North was the Biafran then. As usual, the Igbo were the primetargets as many lost their lives and manymore were wounded.

Theseconflicts and insurrections caused by tensions of the ethnic divesture policy of the colonial  masters,   also   manifested  in   post colonial   Biafra   with the   lopsided  federal structure and polarization of the ethnicities into East, West and North. This ethno regional federalism, which has been partially addressed bythe division of the country into many states, generated the Western Biafra that led to the declaration of a state of emergency in    1962 and the election crisis of1965. There were also the  census crises  of  1962-63, the  Federal election crisis of1964 and the eventual ethno military coup and revenge coup of 1966caused by fault  lines of ethnic balancing, fear of calculated domination, bribery and corruption,insecurity, injustice and leadership failure. As usual, the Igbo were the victims as thousands of them were massacred in the North.

Thevarious military coups and counter coups during which a section of the country kept exchanging the baton of power amongtheir kinsmen to the exclusion of the Southfor many years was also a Biafranexperience, just  like the ethnomilitary coup of 1975 and the North-Southdispute over the integrity of the 1973. Census. Again, as usual, the Igbo suffered the wars and actuallylost as the fear of domination andmarginalization continued to be played out in the strategic dismemberment of the Igbo from the mainstream political and economic businessesof the Nigeriaproject. For instance no Igbo has becomepresident after Ironsi's ill-fatedtenure. There has also been a systematic denial of the East of valued federal presence and  infrastructural   facilities   by  hyper-centralizing   ethno-military   (and  civilian administrations from 1970 to 1999 and to 2007 and (?). Again, the Igbo and the entire East ratedin the prewar era as one of the most developed regions in Africa in its high density of roads, schools, hospitals  mid   factories,  have  been systematicallyblockaded and forced to mark a stand-still for others to over-take them.That has since been accomplished.

Now, like the sandwichedcentre rank of the Nigerianethnocentric parade, the Igbo have had nothing to do with the open order marchof development since 1970. Thus despite the much taunted ‘no victor novanquished’ the East has consistently been vanquished through state polices,programmes and stances that border on eccentricity and pathologicalinadequacies. State polices and agencies such as quota system, FederalCharacter, Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, catchments area, nomadic education, private- university, openuniversity, indigenization,privatization and  their alliedagencies and establishments are objectivelyimaged but phallically contrived to boost development in some areas and to exploit and dismember some others. For instance, in relation to learning, it is believed that the ideas ofquota   admissions   system given further emasculating fillip by considerations of catchments area is said to have been designed to slow the East and West andenable the North (late arrivals to western education) to catch up with therest.  Similarly, it is only byimplication and extended rhetoric that one can successfully explain thebenefits of nomadic education, in which billions have been sunk, to thenon-cattle rearing Easterners. Just the same the controversy surrounding thesale (sorry, privatization) of the Port Harcourt refinery, Eleme Petrochemicaland other choice common property to Northern and Western oligopolies, as wellas the sale of the Enugu Coal corporation, which now threatens to sack theindigenes from their ancestral land, are sour issues in the North-Southdialogue that swell the Biafra complex.

Indigenization remindsEasterners of the abandoned property syndrome through which properties andmonies of the Easterners were forcefully seized or taken away from them bytheir brother Nigerians in the aftermath of the “no victor no vanquished “war.That is also the kind of crude memory that Economic Empowerment brings to theEasterners who were underdeveloped and financially disabled by the pro rata onepound devaluation formulae in exchange for billions of pounds they left inNigerian banks before the civil war. The Igbo, in particular, see the one-pound saga as the major policy that broke their financial backbone, as theywere reduced to compete very unfavorably with other ethnicities whose prewarbillions were intact and who also usurped what had rightly belonged to the Igboto further shore up their economic and infrastructural base.

The one pound pro ratadisability denied even theingenuous Igbo a strong capital base to join the fraternity of viable businesses that survived the hazy, impetuous and overcentralized governmentpolicies that were the lot of Nigerians during the many years of military rule, with its attendance instability and questionable calculus of intelligencein relation to statemanagement. Most Igbo today indulge in peasant thrift and trading economy as retailers rather than manufacturersin Onitsha Main Market,Ariara Aba, Alaba Lagosand other places in the country where they are at the mercy of governmentpolices on importation of goods,reckless demolition of shopsand frequent ethno-religious crises, which have always made them prime targets. The markets in the East, are eitherclosed down for security related riots,instigated fire disaster or closed down byrampaging government agencies. NAFDACwas said to have closed down the Onitsha drug market formany months at the slightest suspicionthat fake drugs could be found there.NAFDAC, under the abledirectorship of Professor Dora Akunyili, an Igbo, certainly meant welland has always meant well for the country. Butthese traders could not understand why the damaging but flourishing back marketcurrency exchange monopolized by the North has not been adequately sanitized or even addressed. The close down of Ibeto Cement Factory has also been largely interpreted as adeliberate attempt by government to boost the Northern Dangote Business at the expense of an Easternerâ's. While I do not ascribe to the (il) logic of these intrigues and explanations, they are there all the same and manifest the attendant complexities of ethnic polarization and absence of devolution of power and resources in the country.

Most Igbo youths opt for buying and selling. Many have also dropped out of school because of the high cost of education and lack of employment for those who managed to round offtheir educational programmes. Their mates elsewhere are pampered to school byvarious government sponsorships and scholarship programmes Igbo children who are in school watch helplessly as their mates from other states collect government bursaries. Their Igbo state governments are busy trying to tackle the challenges of reconstruction, bursary for students is a luxury they cannot afford, and may never afford. It is this kind of situation that swells the Biafracorpus and seems to suggest that someare actually marginalized anddeprived in the midst of plenty. It isthis kind of situation that portends theforbidden centripetal forces of insecurity and underlines the need for acomprehensive and objective examination of the national question. As a matter of fact, the feeling of economic, social and political insecurity is mutual among Nigerians across North,South and minority divides .Nigerians tell their stories as tribal men and foreground valuations that present them first as Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba,Ijaw, Ogoni and so on, with their status as Nigerians coming as afterthought. This unpatriotic attitude portends ominous signs and fosters crises in the nation.

 National crises that have imaged Biafra in many places in Nigeria in therecent past were ethno religious, inter-ethnic, and intra-ethnic. For instance, the December 1980Maitatsine riots (with the chain of riots it triggered off) in Yola, Bulunkutu jimete and Gombe wasreligious. There were also the October 1982 mob action by the Moslems in Kano against the Christians in which churches andchins of properties belonging toChristians where destroyed;the 1987, and  I999,(intra ethnic) riots between Hausa/Fulani Moslemsand non-Moslems in Kafanchan and Kaduna; the 1992 Zangon-kataf crisis; the. 1999, 1995 and 2000 Tafawa Belewa clashes;   the 2000 Kaduna. -Sharia riot, the 2001, Josriots, the recent 2009 Boko Harem uprising in the North, among others, where thousands of lives were lost. At the intra-ethnic level, there werethe Tiv-Jukun crises in Taraba and Benue States,the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba clashes in Lagos,Ogun, Oyo  and  Kano  states, the recurrent crises between the Hausa-Fulani and Igbo as well asthe Ijaw-ltsekiri and Urhobo crises in Delta State.While these clashes took place in theeighties (apart from those between the Hausa-Fulani and Igbo  which havea  long history), the Hausa-fulani and Yoruba clashes were orchestrated between 1999 and 2000, that is, as analysts have explained, in the wake of, the transition from the Northern dominated Military  Rule   to   a  Yoruba-led   Civilian', Administration.

 

In addition to the foregoing there were also, otherslike the Aguleri-Umuleri crises in Anambra Stateand the Ife-Modakeke crises in Ogun State. While theseinsurgencies fought inside ethnic Igbo and Yoruba respectively wereintra-enthic, the clash between the Quadriya and Tijinniyya Factions of Isam,that between the Izala and the Shiites and the Maitatsine conflict exemplifyintra-religious conflicts in Islam.

Among these many Biafras,the one that has very close resemblance to the 1967 to 1970 Biafrais the Niger Delta Biafra, especially for being triggered off by the rape,exploitation and plunder of a people and for having been rooted in the desirefor secession. Also, the Niger Delta quest for resource control was at the cruxof the Biafra programme such that some peoplestrongly believed that it was the desire to control the oil- rich delta thatinformed Ojukwuâ's secessionist bid. As the delta crises crystallized, one alsorealized that the Niger Delta complaints about infrastructural decay or lack ofit, non-participation in mainline politics because of manipulation by themajority tribes, above all, the need for devolution of power and revisiting ofthe Nigeria project  through a sovereign national conference are major Biafran requests. Abuja for Aburi ! In otherwords, the Niger Delta crises sounds like an urgent call for the implementationof the Aburi Accord reached among the East North, West and South over forthyears ago. So, most Igbo were apt to reply to the Delta crises with “Delta GoodMorning” to underline their very late and rude awakening to the Nigerianphallocetric communion. Perhaps, what the Niger Delta has not suffered is thekind of ethnic cleansing that was meted out on the Igbo in the sixties. Else,they have had their reasonable share of infrastructural decay or lack of it atall. May be, the genuine militants in the Niger Delta are after all Biafransvigorously drawing attention to the pathological inadequacies of resources andpower distribution in the country, knowing that the only thing the oppressed stands to lose is his chains.

But it is entirely wrong to say that the Ogoni,and the Ijaw and other Niger Delta ethnicities are just waking up to theNigerian reality with the recent agitation for resource control, oil bunkering,kidnapping of expatriates, pockets of violence and banal cult mayhem. The Biafra of the Delta is pre-independence, beginning withthe resistance by Delta rulers like Nana of Itsekiri,Jaja of Opobo Ovuranwe andothers to the colonial marginalization, rape, deception and conquest. Minoritygroups in the south also polarized and agitated against the Yoruba Action GroupParty domination in the 1950s. Thus, the Henry Willink commission of 1958 setup less than a decade before the Ojukwu Biafra, to assuage minority agitationand threat of succession, submitted that the Delta Area required specialattention. The recommendation of the commission meant to give constitutionalassurances to the Area and assuage their fears of subjugation; exploitation andextermination were largely ignored. Bouts of agitation in the Delta howevertook the militancy (armed rebel) dimension with the secessionist bid of IsaacAdaka Boro, an Ijaw. The reason for the Boro Biafra re-echoed the reason forOjukwuâ's. Deltans like Biafrans were  “unwilling to be un-free partners in any association of a political andeconomic nature”, especially as they “can no longer be protected in their livesand in (their) property by any Government based outside Eastern Nigeria”.

This gave birth to Boroâ's NigerDelta Republicof 1966 and Ojukwuâ's Republic of Biafra in 1967. Theactivities of Boroâ's Niger Delta volunteer force can be explained as a bounceback from the last wall of the constitutional stage. Boro said about the NigerDelta experience: “year after year, we are clenched in tyrannical chains andled through a dark alley of perpetual political and social deprivation,Strangers in our country” and on the decaying Nigerian institution, oppressionof the minorities and the agitation for an Ijaw country he said.” This is notbecause we are going to bring heaven down, but because we are going todemonstrate to the world what and how we feel about oppression”.

 

Quite like Boro, the later day Ken Saro Wiwa ofthe Ogoni extraction enacted further Biafra inthe Delta. Quite like Boro, he complained about the crude expropriation of oil,the marginalization, impoverishment of the people and the pollution of theirenvironment by Nigeriaand her foreign multinational oil companies collaborators. Then there are theAsari Dokubos of the many Delta Biafra camps, the Delta volunteer force, theMEND, the good, the bad, the ugly, that is.

To be sure, the Biafraconflicts are not North-South conflicts. Apart from the forgoing, it is not allDeltans that fought or supported Boro. It is not all Deltans that supportedSaro Wiwa, not even his Ogoni kinsmen most of whom actually bore the forbiddentestimony that the Abacha Junta and Shell allegedly needed to permanently put aseal on his stubborn voice .This voice has remained persistent and amplified inthe spates of militancy and violence in the Delta and elsewhere.

From Boro to Asari, however, none is willing toswap his Nigerian exploitation with Igbo domination. Even the Ikwere,originally Igbo have restructured their orthography to rid it of any Igbovestige from Oyibo (Obigbo) to Rumuigbo (Umuigbo), from Rumumasi (Umumasi) toRumuokwuta (Umuokwuta) the igbo tinge have been destroyed. What was needed in Port Harcourt, anoriginally Ikwere Igbo town, was the Igbo “abandoned property” not the languageof the hated and defeated owner. They could not have abandoned their tongue,and, so, Rivers did not take it! Generally speaking, it is intriguing tothe Igbo Biafrans that Saro Wiwa who was easily seen as self professed and avidIgbo hater died in the hands of the federal forces on whose side he had foughtin an attempt to denigrate the Igbo. Abacha, his assailant was in fact hisneighbour at the high brow Amadi flats a GRA in Port Harcourt.

 But the Nigerian Government mayalso have preferred Delta Biafra to Igbo Biafra. For instance, it is felt thatBoroâ's 150-men guerilla war against the Ironsi- led Federal Government and hisproclamation of the Niger Delta peoples Republic, with himself as the Head ofState, was in fact rewarded by the Gowon Regime. Gowon not only granted himpardon, but made him the commander of one of the battalions against the IgboBiafra.

The recent release of Asari Dokubo with the kind of attention he receivedfrom the Obasanjo-led Federal Government was interpreted as a familiar replayof Boros.  Then the almighty amnestygranted the niger delta “militants”, as a kind of presidential  award and reward for causing nationalinsurgency, depleting the national revenue, upsetting the Nigerian trade anddiplomatic relations, causing hunger and disaffection, committing multiplemurder and holding the nation to ransom for many years is also intriguing.

The glaring lack of Federal presence, good roads and generalinfrastructure in the Igbo States on the other hand is seen as evidence thatNigerians have not quite forgiven the Igbo. It is recalled that Yakubu Gowon,Murtala Mohammed, Ibrahim Babangida and Olusegun Obasanjo, all major actors inthe Nigeria Civil war have not forgotten the Igbo guts. And, as Heads of Stateat different times, these Nigerian warlords continued the assault on IgboBiafra in other Federal fronts through pathological state programmes andpolicies meant to permanently disable the Igbo.

It is also argued that there has been a consistent attempt to paint Ojukwu toan insignificanthistorical corner by treating the Biafranrevolution as an orphan conflict and focusing  federal   attention   to  pockets of religious and intertribalcrises. As far as the Igbo know, thatwas the parable of the continued detentionof Barr. Raph Uwazuruike, the leader ofthe Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB)long after the Asaris ofthe Delta fame and Fasheuns of the Odua fame had been released. That is alsothe Igbo interpretation for the disbanding of the Eastern   based   Bakassi vigilante organization   which wasrated as a highly efficient securityoutfit that had mocked the police to their face.

 Interestingly still, it is not all the Igbo that are on the side of Biafra. At least, Nnamdi Azikiwe, the foremost Nigerian nationalist of Igbo extraction and firstindigenous President of the country, did not fight on the side of Biafra.  Thatsituation has not changed much today. What most Igbo do today is to curse thememory of the Biafra war and itsprogenitor(s). And in this unenviable memory lane of anguish Ojukwu occurs andrecurs like the tortoise in Igbo folktales. The Igbo portray an assemblage  of individuals that evinces subjective identity formation that is easilyshifted by political opportunities and economic inducement.   Thus, quite unlikethe Delta where   the  Elites   are   said , to be further exploiting  the   masses   of the people into strategic   violence,  the   MASSOB agitation seems to have been abandoned to the Igbo masses,  theartisans, traders and the Inagas who are excited by the real and imaginary possibilities of actualizing the Biafradream.

Unfortunately, it is not this section of the Igbo that can draw the attentionof the Federal Governmentto the need to grant Uwazuruike bail, at least for this only son to go homeand bury the remains of his mother and free her spirit from the freezing morgue.But then, that may be another Igboethnic sensibility that does not reckon with the need for the due process of the law to be followed. Senator Uche Chukwumerije, a respected Nigerian, former Information Minister and former veteran Biafra Mass Mobilizer and Broadcaster was told just that in his motion for the release of Raph Uwuzuruike!

 

I guess he had hoped like most Igbothat the same process that enabled the release of Asari Dokubo of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force and Gianiyu Adams and FredrickFasheun of the OPC couldalso be used to release Raph Uwazuruike of MASSOB. However, the continued detention of Uwazuruike andthe release of Dokubo and otherswas one of those issues that threw up cries of injustice and marginalization andthe confusing signal that only the very violent qualify to be engaged in meaningful Federaldialogue. Youths in the Ohaji Egema Oguta Local GovernmentArea of Imo state were the first to sense this despicable signal when lmowas not enlisted amongthe Delta states to benefit from the projects of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), despite the huge oilreserve in thestate. The Local Government was agog with the slogan 'we dey violent O! We Sabi Fight O!! Ohaji Egbema Oguta isin core Niger Delta!!!.' As if the Federal Government had been waiting for the warning signal, lmo became enlisted as a Niger Delta State, but was not included among the beneficiariesof the Coastal Statesallocation, until Yar'adua intervenedrecently. It is also only recently that Yaradua's administration has returned Abia State oil wells said to have been forcefully and arbitrarily ceded to Rivers State,in a move that seems to have returned some hope to Abians. Obedience to theSupreme Court judgment that returned APGA Governor Obi of Anambra Stateto office has also raised some hope among the Igbo who see APGA and PPA as Igboparties that the Federal Government might target for destruction. Similarly, the EFCC prosecution of former state governors is being watched with keenethnic eyes in East, West, North andSouth, especially as Nigerians havebeen given the impression that almostall the former governors were found as corrupt by the EFFC.

The essence of thisseeming catatonic discourse of power is to draw attention to the fact that these many Biafras in Nigeria as well as their heroes or villains will continueto underdeveloped Nigeriaunless those conditions that generate themare realistically addressed. Not all the Igbo supported Ojukwu and he is ageing. Not all the Niger Deltans support Dokubo, atleast he is not the commandant of MEND. And, the death of Boro in 1968 has stationed him silent and immobile like hisquarantined statue that merely guardsa mass transit park under a flyoverin restive Port Harcourt.Also, not many Moslems or Northerners questioned the controversial death of theleader of the Boko Haram uprising in the hands of security agents.

The many Biafras in Nigeria will continue to be sustained by state exploitation, marginalization, rape and corruption. In other words, the only machinery that can defeat Biafra istransparency, fairness and equity and practiceof true federalism that will make the center less attractive and afford thecoordinate states a chance to developat their true pace. There is need tosustain the approach that will defeatconfusing contentious of communalmobilization through realistic engagement and provision of essential political and economic goods.

 

The spate of Kidnapping in the Niger Delta could be exposed as the true actof crime and banditry,rather than “Delta Militancy” if the effort to address the Niger Delta problem is genuine and sustained. It will be easy toexpose the fake militants with the question; whom are you fighting for now that the problem is being addressed? Thatway we will stem the problem of multiple cult rivalries, the armed robbery and ransom-incensed kidnap spree that forced the Rivers and Bayelsa state Governors to spend their first 100days in the cult andkidnap infested streets and creeks rather than in office. But, in this sustained engagement, the ability to cause violence should not be the criterion.The watch-word should be realistic needs assessment.

While theinstitution of a purely federalstructure can be achieved through constitutional amendment with an eye to assuaging the rights of all Nigerians, minority ormajority, the activities of the oil comp0anies and other multinationals can beguarded by reviewing thevarious enabling agreements and contracts entered with them. It is worrisome that the Europeans andAmericans have notchanged in their dealings with Africans since the era of forced or deceptive trade agreements with the likes of Nana and Ovuramwe allfor rubber and oil. Otherwise, why is theformidable amount of proceeds fromoil not impacting positively on the Niger Delta and every other Nigerian? Theoil companies have remained, in the words of the Biafran Information Minister Chief, Ifegwu Eke, as 'non indigenous collaborators who are more dangerous than mercenaries in the exploitation ofthe people”. Todayone is tempted to add, “in the pollution and impoverishment of the people andtheir environment” to Ekeâ's list. Only a concise government policy can compel these foreigners to do business in Nigeria in line with civilized practiceselsewhere.

At least, it does not seem that themanner of gas flaring andthe refusal to clean polluted waters and creeks of the Delta will be thepractice in othercountries where the Shell Petroleum, Agip or Chevron do business. It is also inorder to draw theattention of their home countries in line with decent diplomatic procedure. Nigeria shouldbe ready to revoke the licenses of the companiesthat refuse to do business in Nigeriain line with standard practices. It isnot only when an expatriate oil workeris kidnapped that Nigerian and foreignvoices would shout hungry Nigeriancitizens dizzy. We expect consistentattention from everybody in tacklingthe poor security situation in the country.The Time Magazine reportof June 13, 1969 carried Ojukwu's reaction at an instance when 18 Europeans were captured, tried fairly and sentenced to deathfor aiding Nigeriansoldiers. Worried by his being unjustly besieged by pleas for clemency for only just 18 men, this Biafran leader who,had lost hundreds ofthousands of men fighting under the European impassionate nose retorted in, subdued eloquence. 'For 18 white men, Europe is aroused, what have they said about themillions?, Eighteen whitemen assisting in the crime of genocide. What do they say about our murdered innocents? How many black dead make one missing'white? Mathematicians,please answer me. Is it infinity?” .We would not want to ask that kindof question today.

The Consistent negligence on the part of some whites doing business in Nigeria, and the tendency to treat conflicts in Africa as orphancrises, only to shout the world hoaxwith some American turkey tuckedaway in Kentucky is however a moot  point   here.  What   is  relevant lo  the   on going discourse  is the  need  to  setup  an adequate  monitoring mechanism  to ensure that  these oil companies lived up totheir  responsibilities to their host communities and to the Federal Government.

Above   all,   government policies   should  be   geared towards   economic empowermentthrough job creation and provision ofmicro credit facilities. The people are hungry; and hunger incensed agitation, is the worst kind of agitation. While we thank the Almighty, Allah forkeeping the country together amidst the numerous Biafras that have been fought, let us continue to make concertedeffort that will reduce hunger and intertribal ethnic polarization.

Thatis the only way to really defeat the        Biafrangenie.