John Danfulani,Ph.D
On Sunday the 23rd of July 2017 I paid a courtesy call to the supreme leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB) Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in Umahia, Abia state. The thick mushroom cloud that my visitation engineered is still permeating the political skies of Northern Nigeria. The empire dogs are jeering while lovers of freedom and liberty are cheering. It’s hard to predict when the rumbling cheers and jeers of my solidarity visit to one of the most courageous and foresighted Nigerian and leader of IPOB will cease.
The ultra-conservative elements and oligarchic beneficiaries of a skewed cum dysfunctional unitary system baptized and labeled a federal system are hysterically yet unsuccessfully trying to throw the kitchen on me and divert attention to most mundane issues. Their bait is too pedestrian for me to swallow like brainless turkeys happy for Christmas.
IPOB’s takes are:Nigeria is an unhappy matrimonial home full of ruckus;colonial masters that engineered the political wedlock called amalgamation in 1914 did so for economic and political reasons; and that, Ndigbos be allowed to conduct a United Nation Monitored referendum to decide whether to stay in the marriage or divorce.
IPOB’s mission, strategy and tactics has local,regional,and global protocols and laws backing them under the broad “principle of self-determination”.In post Cold War era,many climes withdrew from the bank of this collective rights without hindrance from the state. It was the spirit of this principle that nationalists in the colonial world(including Nigeria) triggered in sinking colonial rule. Through the magnanimity and global acceptability of this philosophy Nigeria lowered the Union Jack on 1st October 1960.
The political geography called Nigeria was created for heinous reasons by the colonial masters. It is an established realism that economic and administrative reasons guided their decision to amalgamate extreme strange bedfellows in 1914. And refused to demolish the political babel they mischievously constructed before their departure in 1960 despite the knowledge that the amalgams never solicited for it nor showed any interest of staying together. The country’s many constitutional conferences in Nigeria and in United Kingdom, and threats of secession by regional leaders before 1960,was a clear indication of Nigerians unwillingness to glue as an indivisible and indissoluble entity.
In 1967 South East region declared a Biafra Republic.It sparked a 30 months civil war. Fifty years down the lane,we are still getting colliding versions of the quantum of human and material lost. Because history is written by victors, war crimes and other inhuman treatment of the Biafrans have been refused a ventilating space in the narrations of the war.
The 1967-1970 war only suppressed the Biafra mission- a fact the federalists are blatantly refusing to accept for a very protracted moment. The rise of IPOB and its complete acceptance by day-to-day Biafrans is a pointer to that. Solomonic wisdom and
