IGBOZURUOKE FORUM

Madu (MASSOB)

Nnamdi Kanu (IPOB)

Chief Ralph Uwazuruike (BIM)

Barrister Benjamin Onwuka (BZM)

By Ogu Bundu Nwadike,

It really feels good to be back to work! Jokes aside, it feels good to go on a vacation after a relatively long time of work. It’s quite necessary to take a leave from work to ease off the effects on long time of work.

Since relocating from Lagos, the Centre of Excellence, and opening a shop in Imo, the Land of Hope (I know also about the Eastern Heartland), about thirty six months ago, I had not had the opportunity of taking a break and enjoying a well-deserved leave; no thanks to the very limited and limiting economic activities in the state for professional service sector, necessitating the prevalent tacit mentality of “No leave” that pervade the state.

When, at the turn of last month, an opportunity availed itself, I seized it and promptly embarked on what a good associate of mine described as “AWOL”! Indeed, mine was a well-deserved “Away without Leave”!

Since my return over last weekend, I have had a lot of catch-up to do on current affairs, as I practically chose to shut myself away from the apparently bewitched and maddening rigmarole in the obvious maze called Nigeria. I nearly wrote “the zoo called Nigeria”! I recall, however, that the description of Nigeria as a “zoo” happens to be one of the undoing of Prince Nnamdi Kanu, the Biafra independence crusader, who is currently on a prolonged detention by the Nigerian government in care of President Muhammadu Buhari since October 2015.

And talking , nay thinking, about Biafra vis-à-vis what I underscored in my observation of the agitation for Biafra during my vacation, I feel that with the Biafran struggle for self-government cruising at the momentum it is on, at this material point in time across the globe, indeed there is a country!

At my first retort in my pan-Nigerian treatise entitled, “Nigeria: Worthy Dying For!”, that there was no country; some fundamentalist Achebeists demanded my big head on a platter of paper. I must have taken those obviously unnecessarily infuriated Achebe loyalists more than one reading to transcend the surface structure level to the deep structure level to comprehend that what I actually meant by “there was no country” was that indeed there is a country named Biafra. With due respect to my greatest literature teacher and writing mentor, Prof. Albert Chinualumogu Achebe of blessed memory, I feel he adopted a stylistic diction in the captioning of what turned out to be his very last published work in his glorious life time “There Was A Country”, (his personal perspective to the history of Biafra), which depicted a retrogressive reasoning. But my idea of “there is a country” leaves a sense of the introspective and the existential.

By intoning that “There Was A Country”, I feel Achebe sounded and actually posited that Biafra was a closed chapter, whereas with my “there is a country” I insist that Biafra is a living but gradually and steadily evolving nation state that is awaiting formal admission by the United Nations into the comity of sovereign, independent countries of the world. The globally acclaimed erudite professor of literary arts presented a Biafra that came, saw and was conquered, while for me, the reverse is the case.

For me, Biafra came, saw and has continually conquered till date. Hence, today more than ever before, the body, soul and spirit of Biafra is felt and touches the wider world in very many ways. Achebe’s Biafra was defeated but the Biafra this my generation sees has remained victorious in real terms since its declaration on May 30, 1967. Achebe was at that time but today we are! It can never be the same.

I stand to be contradicted that it is probably only in Nigeria that Nigerians, especially the Nigerian government, for obvious reasons pretend that there was a country. Conversely, in most of the countries of the world, the understanding is that there is a country that is budding out of another country called Nigeria. In those many countries of the world Biafrans in their large numbers with their foreign based families, comprising foreign wives and their extended families, continually hold peaceful rallies and organize harmless protest marches that are forbidden in Nigeria.

Out there in the Diaspora, Biafrans are protesting the overt gross oppression and suppression of Biafrans in Nigeria by successive Nigerian government at all times. They agitate for international empathy, sympathy and support for the granting of unconditional independence for Biafra. Just as the watertight clampdown on pro-Biafra agitation by the Nigerian government is understandable, though ill advised, the increasing empathy, sympathy and support from the international community for the emergence of Biafra is equally unmistakable.

However, because of extant experiences that make the agitation for Biafra not an abominable precedence, the odds are against the continued forced entrapment and enslavement of Biafrans in Nigeria, but it favours the imminent release of Biafra from Nigeria at an appointed time soon. The West is reputed to know the metamorphosis of Nigeria more and better than Nigerians. There is no controversy about that. No thanks to the wash-wash leaders that Nigeria has had so far in her 57 years as a nation. The West knows quite well the pains that Biafrans suffer in subjugation in Nigeria. They are reputed to be the ultimate determiners of the agitations for self-determination that are mature and due for approval as a sovereign state and an independent nation. The West knows very well that the agitation for Biafra has attained its golden jubilee this year of the Lord’s, 2017. The West will have no better choice than giving their much desired nod to the creation of Biafra any time soon.

While sorting out issues pertaining to Biafra with some fellow pundits during my aforementioned offshore vacation last month, I remember situating in a country like Nigeria, the number of villages, autonomous communities, local government areas, and states have continued to increase since independence in 1960. I reminded my audience that at independence in 1960, Nigeria comprised of three regions – North, East and West – with the fourth region, Midwest being created after independence in 1964. Those four regions were in 1967 further split into twelve states, which later increased to19, and then to twenty seven in 1987, with another increased to 19, that brought the total number of the federating state in Nigeria to thirty six.

It is instructive that the number of countries of the world today has tremendously increased from what it was at the end of the Second World War.  How did that happen? How did the number of the countries of the world increased exponentially since the past fifty to seventy years? Has the world closed shop in the business of granting sovereignty and independence to proven oppressed and suppressed peoples seeking self-determination from their host countries? Is Biafra the first nation or will it be the last nation in the world to demand for independence? How did Nigeria secure independence from Great Britain? Suffice to say that the dispassionate answers to those questions and other related and relevant questions will incontrovertibly point Biafra to the gate of departure from Nigeria into freedom and independence. And as they say, the sooner, the better!

Since the deliberate fracturing of the Eastern leg of the tripod stand of North, East and West of Nigeria, that country has continually struggled to no avail to stand. But in what realm or clime of life does a tripod stand on two legs? Instructively, instead of sincerely fixing the Eastern leg of the tripod that they broke, successive Nigerian governments opt for useless palliatives, playing the parabolic ostrich, and allowing pride and prejudice to goad them and the country to an avoidable slow but inevitable death. Anybody that read this piece to this level should know what I mean by the deliberate, concerted marginalization, oppression and suppression of the people of Biafra in Nigeria by the Nigerian government and people. Thanks for being a part of it.

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