MyWeku

The death of Biafra leader and stalwart Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu in November 2011 seems to have galvanised some Nigerians into re-considering splitting the country into more naturally fitting ethnic and cultural states. As Nigeria’s Boko Haram wreaks havoc in cities across Nigeria and the Nigerian government seems more and more helpless in dealing with the spate of bombings the voices for a split based on religion also become louder.

As the bombings continue unabated and the President tells Nigerians “to live with that burden” could this social, religious and political process be leading to an irreversal call for Nigeria to break up into more natural “states”? Afterall this is a union forced upon us and to continue to call ourselves a nation of ONE people is mere fallacy. What is the existence of a “nation” if it cannot cater for the preservation and protection of all its members. Today we have Christians guarding their own churches whilst Muslims do the same to their places of worship.  How can Nigeria set commom goals and more importantly deliver on these goals if its constituent parts are pulling in different directions? A society or a nation can only work if the members of that nation feel an affiliation strong enough to that society to live by its laws and ways of doing things. The Nigeria of today could not be further away from that type of nation.

Even though I believe in “together we stand strong” there are times when this maxim only leads to disaster. It is with that in mind that I read the press release below with much more interest and thought than I would otherwise. Maybe, just maybe Ojukwu and the Biafrans were and probably still are on to something that is only beginning to make sense to us – so called Nigerians.

 

Government In Exile
(BGIE)
Phone (202) 521 9831
Fax (202) 521 9831
Email: BGIE@biafraland.com
Government of the Federation of Biafra
Biafra Provisional Government: Biafra Government in Exile; Biafra Shadow Government

On the inhumane matter of Christmas 2011 Bombings in Nigeria:

A Statement from the Biafra Government in Exile (BGIE)

December 28, 2011
It is not sufficient for the world nations, the UN and the Vatican to merely issue “condemnations,” no matter how strongly worded, for what must be the umpteenth time, against the incessant calculated bombing of Christian Churches, the killing of Christians, the targeting of Igbo in Northern Nigeria where Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, is also located, by Boko Haram or jihadist Muslim Northern Nigerians any time it pleases them flying any “banner of the month”.

It is equally useless for the Nigerian government and President Jonathan’s administration to continue to issue statement after statement, whether of condolence or of the promise of improved security, or arrest and trial of the perpetrators, mere cruelly empty rhetoric which continues to mock the usual victims.

Nor is it sufficient for Nigerian civilians to declare in their wishful-thinking, idle dreams and uselessly self-righteous preachment to live together in peace and harmony as one country when they all know that such is not possible, that such has never been practicable ever since the British-engineered inception of Nigeria.

It is no longer acceptable for the Igbo to continue their loud and public cry for sympathy as grieving victims after each of these bloody events targeting them, since they have unilaterally chosen to return to unwelcoming, hostile Northern Nigeria, the same scene of the bloody and ferocious ethnic cleansing exercise directed against them in 1966, an operation that has never really stopped, only now taking the shape and form of these one-sided contemporary attacks by Boko Haram, with the same hideous results. All the while, the Igbo delude themselves by pretending that they really belong to the same country, Nigeria, as the Northerners; and that such claimed citizenship would offer them protection, if not by the respect of citizenship by fellow-citizenry, then as the duty of the State of Nigeria.

Government of the Federation of Biafra
Biafra Provisional Government: Biafra Government in Exile; Biafra Shadow Government

What is clear is that there is no basis of / for unity for Nigeria, even as General Gowon stated clearly and publicly in 1966 before he then went ahead to declare and prosecute a genocidal war against Biafra purportedly to force on the same unity on the same Nigeria. What is certain is that the different ethnic groups in Nigeria cannot live together as one country, in one country. Even a truly federal arrangement had failed to work, as real power invariably percolated to centralization, quickly moving Nigeria to the dysfunctional state which resulted in the first military coup in Nigeria in January 1966. With the consequent bloody events still troubling and grating on Nigeria, the leaders of Nigeria agreed in Aburi in January of 1967 to decentralization and regionalization with only token power to the center, as suggested by the recently late Odumegwu Ojukwu. Yakubu Gowon, leading Nigeria then, reneged on this agreement, plunging Nigeria irretrievably into this current path of perdition.

There are clearly relationships that do not work evident in every aspect and sphere of human experience, whether on the individual or collective level. This is common experience and common sense, from which we also learn that only misery, disaster and utter destruction can follow if such unworkable relationships are forced on and insisted upon. It would only amount to pretense and or psychological denial to take the stand that Nigeria, one such relationship, should be upheld, to the utter detriment of the peoples.

We believe that it is unconscionable for any Body, institution, government, or principality, to continue to insist that the different peoples suffering under the yoke of one-Nigeria today continue to “work and pray towards unity of Nigeria”, only to issue “condemnations” when the level of carnage becomes uncomfortable for these formations. We believe that it is morally irresponsible and criminal to insist on a phantom unity for Nigeria. We consider it complicit that any stakeholder should advocate or insist on Nigeria remaining one while people are needlessly losing life, limb, property and hope forced to maintain such incompatibility. Nigeria does not, has not, and will never, work.

Therefore, we call on all men of goodwill, we call on all nations, we call on all peoples, to support the restructuring of Nigeria so that individual nations will take the initiative, based on Self Determination, to regain and affirm each its sovereignty and political independence, to take control each of its own national destiny, and to enter into consenting and mutually acceptable and beneficial relations, one nation with another, as they see fit.

Rather than all the effete and meaningless “condemnation statements,” it will be in the soundest humanistic judgment and constitute the most effective moral act to encourage and promote the separation of the ethnic nations currently dying because of being forced together as one country called Nigeria, into different Independent nations. The world and its institutions and leaders should be prepared to offer to Nigeria Self Determination-based restructuring; the world leaders and their institutions should insist on Self Determination for the different peoples of Nigeria.

Government of the Federation of Biafra
Biafra Provisional Government: Biafra Government in Exile; Biafra Shadow Government

Anything else is sham, hypocrisy and complicity, while human beings die because no one is bold enough or honest enough to do the right thing; because, African life somehow is cheap and expendable.

Let us do this right, let us do this now. Let us stop the gratuitous carnage—now. Implement Self Determination in Nigeria.

Signed on behalf of BGIE by
Emmanuel Enekwechi, PhD Prime Minister, BGIE 28 Dec 2011 bgie@biafraland.com eenekwechi@aol.com

submitted by JE Alade (UK)