BIAFRA: Ojukwu Didn't Attack Nigeria, He Only Fought for Survival of His People

Biafra Agitation Is Not About Nigerian Presidency, Biafra Didn’t Cause The War, and “One Nigeria” Means Conquest And Not Unity

 December 26, 2016.

By Chima Chibueze
For Family Writers

There are misconceptions: lies some Nigerians seem to feel good telling themselves; that some not-well-informed persons hold against Biafra and the agitation for the restoration of Biafra. In this post, I will talk about two of them. They are:

1. Nnamdi Kanu began agitating for Biafra because ex-president Goodluck Ebere Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential election.

2.  Secession or creation of Biafra was the cause of the Biafran-Nigerian war.

As a matter of fact, Biafra agitation didn't begin after the 2015 presidential election or because Goodluck Ebere Jonathan lost that election. Since the end of the genocidal Biafra-Nigeria war in 1970, the desire to restore our nation has always been in our hearts.

Since that war, Nigeria had been a military dictatorship until 1999. Sometime around the year 2000, that's some months after Nigeria moved from military dictatorship to “democracy”, a movement for the restoration of Biafra began and was led, then, by Ralph Uwazurike with the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).

The movement gradually lost its vigour when Ralph dabbled into Nigerian politics, and other Pro-Biafra groups sprung up with time eventually. By the year 2012, a brilliant and charismatic Biafran Nnamdi Kanu had started a re-energized campaign for Biafra restoration through the Radio Biafra London platform; and IPOB (Indigenous People Of Biafra) is a unified front and identity for all Biafrans. 

The then President Of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, ignored Nnamdi Kanu and many Biafrans knew little about him and the Radio Biafra London. Just before the 2015 Presidential election, Nnamdi Kanu, via the Radio Biafra London, advised all Biafrans to boycott all the elections and that all Nigerian politicians, no matter their ethnicity, were untrustworthy. So, Nnamdi Kanu was never sympathetic to Goodluck Jonathan.

Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as the president of Nigeria on 29th May 2015. By July 14th 2015, barely two months after he became the President, Buhari made the National Broadcasting Commission to jam the radio signals of Radio Biafra London but wasn't successful as the radio station continued to broadcast on both radio and the internet. So began the unwitting popularization of Biafra by Buhari's tyranny. By August 30th 2015, Nigerian security forces, on the orders of president Buhari, began killing and abducting Biafran activists. Instead of being scared away, more Biafrans joined in the agitation.

The 1967-1970 genocide didn't stop Biafra and the tyranny of a dim-witted, tinnitus-inflicted murder-in-chief cannot stop it.

Any suggestion by any so-called commentator that Nnamdi Kanu should have waited until recently to prey on Biafrans' emotions on current Fulani-herdsmen attacks and other state-sponsored killings is obviously dubious and lacks empathy.

When a Nigerian says "one Nigeria", they don't mean “unity” or “love”. They mean the conquest of Biafraland. The Nigerian federal military government used it in its wartime propaganda and its soldiers knew their rewards were oil exploration blocks in a conquered Biafra land.

To the Fulani oligarchs, “one Nigeria” means the expansion and sustenance of the Fulani empire.This was really the cause of Biafran war. Not "secession". It started as ethnic cleansing of the people of Biafra living in other parts of Nigeria, outside Biafraland, and turned into a genocidal war when Biafrans resisted it by deciding to stay away as an independent nation from Nigeria.

Ojukwu didn't attack Nigeria. All he wanted was a place his people will be safe; and our homeland was that safe place. Biafrans were forced into that war to defend themselves from extermination when Northern Nigerian soldiers invaded this homeland.

This was how it began. In 1966, Biafrans were massacred all over Nigeria (except Eastern Region) and they were driven out of those places. There are records that the ethnic cleansing started in 1945 in Northern Nigeria, long before Nigeria even gained independence, but the 1966 pogrom was the climax.

Returning to Biafra, just as we keep on telling our people living in dangerous terror-based regions, and restoring our nation's sovereignty became a life-saving necessity and duty.

Before the war itself broke out, there was an agreement between Biafra and Nigeria (i.e Ojukwu and Gowon in attendance) called the Aburi Accord. That agreement resembles something like the result of a sovereign national conference. 

It was more than a peace deal. It was meant to return Nigeria to a true federation and not the Central Government the country had then and still operates now falsely called "Federal government". All Gowon had to do was to resolve that central government into a true federal government allowing the federating nations—Arewa, Biafra and Oduduwa some autonomy within Nigeria. 

That was the agreement and Gowon (Nigeria) agreed. But when he (Gowon) returned from the peace meeting, he changed his mind, abandoned that agreement—a behavior that has become typical of Nigerian government since then—and invaded Biafra in a military operation he nicknamed “Police Action”. You don't learn this history in a Nigerian school because Nigeria is still afraid of the truth about that genocidal war. You read them up from the works of people who saw that war and were part of the old struggle for survival.

The fear of the truth about Biafra agitation is why you hear things like masked witnesses and a secret trial in a Nigerian court. Some people have even described Nnamdi Kanu's case in a Nigerian court as that of an American soldier in an Iranian or Afghan Sharia court.

Like he said, he will destroy Nigeria with evidence—the Truth.