have no way of having immediate access to the sea than from Nigeria. If there is no Nigeria, we have to go to Libya, and there are no enough roads to achieve that.
Two, we need the current oil revenue. In Nigeria, only six states can survive with the oil revenue they are getting. There are four oil bearing states that cannot survive with the quantity of oil located in their areas. These states are Abia, Imo, Ondo and Edo, they have oil, but it is not as much as they could rely on for survival. But Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa-Ibom and one other state can survive with the oil located in their respective areas. So, during the first Biafran agitation Ojukwu entered agreement with France whereby he gave concession for the entire oil and gas resources in the Biafran region. If Biafra succeeded, there was no way the Niger Delta people could claim ownership of oil and gas located in their areas.
Three, the North also needs education. Today, in most of our universities the lecturers are mostly from the South – even the students. We need education and we cannot get it without teachers, so we need Nigeria to get teachers from southern part of the country to come and teach us.
Four, we need the technical know-how the South has. So we need them for that.
Five, we also need the South for investment. The only northerners that have huge investments are three – Aliko Dangote, T. Y Danjuma and Alhaji Abdulsamad Isyaka Rabi’u. But if you go to the South you will get thousands of them with huge capital.
So, the three major ethnic groups need Nigeria because everybody is benefiting from Nigeria. For the Igbo, if there is no Nigeria, there will be no market for them to do their businesses. At least if you take the North, you are talking of 55 per cent of the population of Nigeria, which is about 100 million out of the 180 million of Nigerian population. The Yoruba also need market because their industries cannot sell the goods to themselves. By nature, the Yoruba man likes the Hausa man more than the Igbo man and the Igbo man likes the Hausa man more than the Yoruba man, yet the Yoruba are now trying to convince the Igbo to forget aganist the Hausa.
The Igbo, unfortunately, are lacking in diplomacy. This is the weakness of the Igbo and that is what the Yoruba are capitalising on to manipulate their way of thinking. During the first declaration of Biafra, it was a public knowledge that when Gowon sent Awolowo to persuade Ojukwu not to embark on secession, they met on the River Niger bridge and discussed. Later on, the media said that according to unofficial report, Awolowo assured Ojukwu that if they seceded, the West would also secede. When he came out, he declared publicly that if by any act of commission or omission the East was allowed to go, the West would follow. This is the public announcement he made and the record is there, which means the West would also secede from the rest of Nigeria. The Igbo believed in him and Ojukwu told all the Igbo to go back to their respective areas. At that time, the Igbo were holding various positions in government, but they all left. When they came back after the civil war, they found that the Yoruba had occupied their positions, and till today, they have not regained such positions, and they will never regain them.
