Many towns and cities in South Eastern Nigeria were shut down last Tuesday in apparent response to the call by two pro-secessionist groups. In the major towns of Onitsha, Enugu, Awka, Aba, Umuahia and Owerri the streets were virtually deserted while schools, shops and businesses were shut. The shutdown was only partially successful in Abakaliki and beyond the South East, it was barely noticeable.
Two pro-secessionist groups, Indigenous Peoples of Biafra [IPOB] and a faction of the Movement for Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra [MASSOB] had declared May 30 as a “sit-at-home” day in order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of May 30, 1967, the day Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declared the secessionist Republic of Biafra. The two groups said the action was also to remember the over a million people who died in the Nigeria Civil War that lasted for 30 months until January 1970.
A sit-at-home protest was at least a tactical improvement over what happened last year, when attempts by the same groups to stage demonstrations ended in violence and dozens of people were allegedly killed when police and other security agencies tried to stop the demonstrations. While many of the people who stayed at home this time around apparently supported the groups’ agitation, a large number stayed at home for fear of violence. At the centre of this renewed agitation is Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader who is standing trial for treasonable felony. Among many other alleged crimes against Nigeria, he went around Europe and North America organising events at which he threatened to mobilise Igbo scientists all over the world to produce weapons that will kill everybody in Nigeria “unless they give us Biafra.”
Already, the patriotic South East Peoples Assembly [SEPA] has called on the Chief Judge of the Federal High to revoke the bail granted to Kanu within seven working days. SEPA’s letter to Justice Ibrahim Auta dated May 31, 2017 and co-signed by its president Prince Chukwuemeka Okorie described as “shocking that Kanu has continued to conduct himself in a manner we consider totally at variance with the terms and conditions of the bail so granted which, amongst others, include that Kanu must not hold rallies, grant interviews or be in a crowd of more than 10 people.” If court bail conditions are not to become objects of mockery, Kanu should be thrown back in jail immediately for his contemptuous violation of his bail conditions.
Even though the agitation for “Biafra” as championed by MASSOB and IPOB has been on for years, some observers say that it gained traction with the arrest of Kanu in late 2015 and his on-going trial for treason. May be they are right but no state authority worth its name will allow a champion of secession which is at variance with the 1999 Constitution, who threatened to unleash violence on his countrymen, who operated an illegal foreign-based radio station that spews messages of hatred, and who sneaked into the country through illegal entry points in order to pursue treasonable aims, to go scot free in order not to inflame passion among his misguided supporters.
The choice of May 30 as a day of “celebration” as well as the whole “Biafra” agitation are built on false premises. It is much more worthwhile to celebrate January 13, 1970 when the misery and violence of the Nigeria Civil War ended on a note of reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation. If the letter or spirit or both of the 3Rs were not fully realised in any specific ways, they can be brought up, argued and settled at such fora. But to instead seek to revive the spirit of a secessionist “Republic” that collapsed in chaos at the cost of a million lives is to do injustice to the dead and to the aspiration of future generations.
Holding “Biafra” up as an African utopia to which Igbo youths should aspire to match back to is also patently false historical revisionism because “Biafra” was an amalgam of disorder, injustice, pervasion, want, starvation, leadership deceit and megalomania. This much is contained in the accounts of many of its former leaders such as Eddie Iroh, Bernard Udogwu, Nelson Ottah, Cyprian Ekwensi and Chukwuemeka Ike in various books and novels they wrote after the war. Kanu and his ilk that were not born at the time should read the literature and see for themselves what their dream republic was like in reality.
Nor is their envisioned secessionist “republic” a viable proposition. A “republic” carved out of the five South Eastern states will be land-locked, overcrowded, bereft of natural resources, with hostile neighbours, and probably overflowing with refugees from the rest of Nigeria. To make up for this debilitating shortcoming, IPOB has put forward a pipe-dream “map of Biafra” that incorporates Niger Delta, some western Yoruba folks as well as Igala and Idoma lands in northern Nigeria. It is ignorance of basic history on a grand scale for anyone to think that the Niger Delta ethnic groups will forget their bitter experience in “Biafra” and agree to be part of the renewed misadventure. “Biafra” is not in the strategic interest of the Igbo either. All Igbo leaders know that but they are not speaking out, probably for fear of attack by the zealots.
In one respect however we sympathise with them. The attitude of the Buhari Administration towards the South East and South South has not helped matters. Prominent Igbo leaders will be able to speak out and correct the hotheads only if the Federal Government encourages them through a policy of national inclusion and a transparently fair distribution of national goodies, appointments, projects and programs. Such a policy will isolate criminals and strengthen moderate voices in the continued search for national unity.
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