pogroms of 1966, more than the war casualties, than the terror bombings, it was the experience of watching helplessly their children waste away and die that gave birth to, a deep and unrelenting loathing. It is a feeling that will one day reap bitter harvest unless”- (Frederick Forsyth, British Writer, January 21st 1969).
“The Nazis had resurrected just here as Nigerian forces”- (Washington Post, editorial, July 2, 1969).
“The loss of life from starvation continues at more than 10,000 persons per day over 1,000,000 lives in recent months. Without emergency measures now, the number will climb to 25,000 per day, within a month and 2,000,000 deaths by the end of the year. The new year will only bring greater disaster to people caught in the passion of fratricidal war, we cant allow this to continue or those responsible to go free”- (Senator Ted Kennedy appeals to Americans Sunday November 17, 1968).
“Myself and the same UNICEF representatives went on to convey something of what lay behind this intransigence: Among the large majority hailing from that tribe who are the most vocal in inciting the complete extermination of the Igbos. I often heard remarks that all Nigeria’s ills will be cured once the Igbos have been exterminated from the human map.”- (Dr Conor Cruise O’Bien, 21 December, 1967, New York Review”. (CONCLUDED).
As harrowing as these words are they accurately and graphically capture the mood and horrific essence of the civil war.
They also reveal an inconvenient truth which is as follows: that the Nigerian people and General Yakubu Gowon owe the people of the east a sincere and unwavering apology for the barbaric and criminal manner in which they conducted the civil war.
We also have an obligation to make restitution to them, offer them compensation for all they have lost and to bring to justice all those that were directly or indirectly involved in the commission of the barbaric and hideous atocities and crimes against humanity that were visited upon the Igbo civilian population and defenceless Igbo women and children.
I refuse to describe the killer of children and the murderer of women and defenceless civilians as war heroes. My conscience does not permit it.
If the German people could find it in their hearts to ask the Jews to forgive them for what they did to them in the Second World War, the Nigerian people should be big-hearted enough and strong enough to ask the same of the Igbo.
Such a course of action does not diminish or weaken us: it makes us more humane.
And neither do I believe that offering them “more cake” as President Olusegun Obasanjo has suggested can make up for all that we have subjected them to over the last 51 years.
The last person that suggested the offering of cake to the irate masses and victims of injustice as a way of calming them down and getting them to stop their agitation for emancipation was Queen Marie Antoinnete of France. That was in 1789.
Unfortunately it did not go down too well and a few weeks later the French revolution took place and both the Marie Antoinette and her husband King Louis XV1, together with much of the French royal family, courtiers, nobles and landed gentry were arrested by the Jacobins, publicly humiliated, tried in the people’s courts of law and had their heads chopped off with a guillotine.
That signified the end of the monarchy in France, the demise of the long rulership of the proud and distinguished royal Bourbon lineage and family and the beginning of the great French Republic which changed the face of Europe, the history of world and which endures till today.
So much for the offering of cake as a panacea or solution to the unjust and barbarous treatment of the oppressed and the deprived.
I do not believe that the dream of Biafra can be shattered and obliterated by promises of cake and a few crumbs from the masters table.
And neither do I believe that they can be wished away or destroyed by reckless and dangerous attempts to break their will and dampen their spirits by killing them in the streets or
