By: David Fashola
The right to self-determination is a right recognized by natural law and nearly all international conventions and entities. But it is not right for certain groups lay claim to what they’re not in order to exercise this mandate. The ‘Indigenous’ People of Biafra (‘I’POB) is the worst case in this misapplication.
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Some would say being indigenous means being native to a place. But this is being literal, and by this definition, all tribes in Nigeria, anywhere else could lay claim to being indigenous people. The Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB); as the choice of words show has clearly avoided this hole as against Nnamdi Kanu’s ‘I’ndigenous’ People of Biafra (‘I’POB).
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It is very insensitive to the suffering of the indigenous people of the world for the Biafrans (or any Igbo) to use their plights to secure their political ambitions. In fact, it is very wicked and fraudulent The Biafrans are not, and have not been classified under any international conventions or by the indigenous peoples of the world as “indigenous people.”
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The Biafrans therefore, and by extension any Igbo, cannot lay claim to being “indigenous people.” The indigenous people will be such like the Pygmies of central Africa; the Australian Aborigines; the Yanomami and other tribes of the Brazilian Amazon; the Chactows, the Cherokees, Tomahawks, the Mohicans, the Nebraskans, the Idahoans, the Sioux and all other native American Indians. They are mostly subjugated, threatened, and with subsistent, underdeveloped economies.
They usually are protected and cared for by national and international organizations because of their vulnerabilities. In fact, this has to be, because they may face extinction if left to their own resources. It is selfishness and fraudulent for the Igbo, with well-developed economies (at least by Third World standards) to lay claims to this status. It is a mockery and insensitivity of the highest order for the Nigerian Igbo to even aspire to such. The only people in Nigeria that come close to such are the Ogonis, or any other to
