Why I joined the Biafran Struggle -By J. Ezike

We live in an age where elders are ceasing to exist and the youths are assuming the role of elders. It is the sad truth. Thus, there is a tragedy unfolding in Igbo land, a disturbing one. The tragedy places a question mark on Igbo leadership and it has become especially difficult to pretend that the existing tragedy is fictional, non-existent.

I said at the beginning of one of my essays on about the integrity of the Igbo socio-cultural group with the titular name – Ohaneze Ndi Igbo – that the face of the aforementioned group is a descendant of the Judas’s clan of traitors. Unfortunately, my statement was memorable for its polemic rather than its substance. Some “confused” Biafran agitators fumed in silence, doubting the veracity of the proposition; others embraced the belief of being “wiser” in dismissing the obvious truth as an “ignorant deduction” peppered with hate and arrogance.

Thankfully, Nwodo’s public declaration of himself as a “proud saboteur” an “unrepentant villain” against the interest of Biafra, and the campaign for an independence referendum, has brought to the surface of our consciousness the tragedy that animates Igbo leadership. The likes of Okorocha and the gang are not excluded either.

In a nutshell, Igbo leadership seems to be heading for extinction. And this has triggered the age of Igbo-Youth awakening built on the concept of “revolutionary change”, or, if you like to put it that way, on Maxis theory of power struggle.

As a writer, what is required of me is that I represent truth and tell events the way they are. In order words, absolute sincerity is paramount. When one mentions Biafra one thinks immediately of genocide, of starving babies and their mothers, of kid soldiers and their fathers, of a land heaved with human bones and corpses, of a people, a tribe, a nation betrayed by the world and abandoned to the crushing cruelty that left an indelible scar on the psyche and spirit of the surviving generations. The existing evidence of this history still haunts Nigeria, Britain and their genocidal alliance of 1967.

It is a taboo, a sacrilege for an Igbo to mock the legacy of Biafra, which many may tag as an experiment that failed to yield result. And until they transcend their level of consciousness they will continue to wallow in their pitiful ignorance.

Between Nigeria and Biafra, the former is an experiment, a failed one, indeed. Biafra on the other hand was and still is the “final resort” in saving a race from extinction, persecution, and total annihilation. The present Biafran ordeals: the episodic war of attrition by the Hausa-Fulani Muslims against Igbo Christians, the eternal xenophobic violence in the North, the political terror franchise (Maitatsine, Yatatsine and Boko Haram, quota system, imposition of Capital Flight and economic sabotage on the eastern region, infrastructural deprivation, military intimidation, disenfranchisement) flows through the umbilical cord of the evil of 1967, to put it in simple terms – the Nigeria-Biafra war never ended.

Nwodo and his gang have failed to view this underlying truth through the prism of honesty devoid of politics. And the most characteristic attribute of this “political reasoning” is cursing truth to hell. This is the chief reason why I said that the elders of Igbo land are slowly losing their “gray crown” to mediocrity and personal interests.

It is easy to pay lip-service to the pursuit of Justice which is exactly what Biafra represents but “walking the talk” can only be produced when a man believes in the truth of what he is proclaiming. And that I believe Nnamdi Kanu have demonstrated over the years. But I was not always a supporter of the gospel of freedom. In fact, I am abashed to admit that in 2015, I once published a provocative article against Biafra. It was a short essay titled: “Why Biafra may be a bad idea” by J. Ezike. I had written this article at a time when just like millions of others, I resonated with the Caliphate-imposed ideology of “One Nigeria”. At that time, I couldn’t make sense of Kanu’s “autonomous individuality”, his “radical sagacity”, his “revolutionary movement” and “ruthless honesty” on about the resuscitation of Biafra and the need to burn the “ZOO”.

At first, I thought of his peculiar doctrines as highly divisive, provocative and viable enough to ignite a second civil war. But little did I know that it was the perfect invocation in awakening the sleeping society, the perfect approach in changing the status-quo, the perfect formula in breaking the backs of the colonial forces and their puppets, the perfect means for a revolution. And it was the peculiarity of his doctrine that lent millions of us a strong voice, awakened mind, awareness and the courage to speak truth to power!

The aforesaid article, in all honesty, functioned as an “obsequious appeal” to remind our memories on the tragedies of those three hellish years of survival and also to instruct our minds on the need to diligently avoid a repetition of it. It was within this context that I had opposed Kanu’s request for weapons (guns and ammunitions) and equated it as a call for war – which in technical sense was a call for self-defense through “aggressive diplomacy”.

I had written and published extensively on the need to preserve the “Lugard’s experiment” from 2013 -2015 but was forced to reverse my “One Nigeria” sermons overnight, and join the Biafran struggle precisely in 2016, when it finally registered in my consciousness that this union of attrition can never ever work and the amalgamation clause upon which this union was formed had expired, and the present union called Nigeria is a fraud, and after the launching of the first Python Dance that gulped hundreds of human lives in the east, the senseless butchering of unarmed Biafran agitators by the murderous Nigerian army to keep the union indivisible, the homicidal pattern of the Nigerian government against the civil rights pursuit for Justice, for self-determination of the regions that constitutes the union, the perpetuation of the atrocities against Ndi-igbo, their tribal neighbors and their generations yet unborn, the unjust incarceration/detention of Biafran activists such as: Benjamin Madubugwu, Nnamdi Kanu, David Nwawuisi and many others, the massacre of innocent civilians in Enugu, Benue and other strategic areas in the South-East by Boko Haram disguising as Fulani herdsmen, the hypocritical rhythm of Britain in opposing the ideology of freedom for Biafra but deemed it righteous to preach “freedom” for “Britain” by “exiting” the European Union to serve their interest, the conspiratorial silence from the international community in the face of this barbaric evil, and by divine visitation.

I do not belong to any revolutionary group but I strongly share in the collective demand for an independence referendum as the democratic means to decide the future of Nigeria. And I will simply say in conclusion that if there are any elders left in Igbo land then, it is time they lead the youths on this march to referendum for they have a central part to play in the resuscitation of Biafra. For without the elders in the pursuit of Justice, in the struggle for Biafra, the proverbial impulse is lacking.