FORMER GOVERNOR OF AKWA IBOM STATE SENATOR GODSWILL AKPABIO SPEAKS ON BIAFRA AND GOWON WITH THEWILL NEWS
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THEWILL: You have been very vocal lately in dismissing and trashing the then federal military government’s post-civil war efforts at the 3 Rs: Reconstruction, Reconciliation and Rehabilitation. What don’t you agree with?


AKPABIO: As a young man, you definitely will not understand me. But I was a victim of the Civil War. I was one of those who suffered the pains of the war. I was born sometime in 1962; the civil war came really into our area in 1967. So, I was probably five or six years old during the war; and if I had been around nine years, I would probably have been conscripted.

I saw parents throw their children into pit toilets because they did not want their positions to be made known to the enemy. I saw devastation; I saw kwashiorkor; I saw hunger; I saw thousands of people and bodies littered everywhere and smelling while vultures had a field day every day. I saw houses destroyed; I saw families scattered such that till the end of the world, they can never gather themselves together again. There were children who were shipped away to Gabon, and they can never come back to Nigeria again because they were small. How would two-year-olds and three-year-olds ever know where they came from? They are now proud Gabonese and I don’t think Nigerians are even asking questions.

So, during the Silverbird Man of the Year Award, there were pictures that were shown of the Civil War. Somebody, sitting by me, who is from the West, was asking if those things were acted: the Kwashiorkor-ridden children with their swollen tummies, ugly shapes and bony structures because of hunger and starvation.

The then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon attempted to explain that he tried everything to avoid the scenes that were being shown on the screen, that he did not want the war. The other person who could have answered him, unfortunately, that is Emeka Ojukwu, is dead. He said he tried everything to stop the war from breaking out but it’s only Ojukwu who could have answered whether he equally did his part in avoiding the war.

But something struck me: it was said that Gowon should be commended for initiating the three Rs: reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction. And I asked a very simple question, that I came with a written text but I wasn’t going to read it. I thanked Silverbird for the award; and I said I did not want to criticise my leaders because I am also now a leader. But I asked to be allowed to ask a question: how come reconstruction started in the West when the war was actually fought in the East? They started the Third Mainland Bridge, the National Theatre, the international airport, and so on, in the West, while the war was fought in the eastern region. And if we really wanted to ensure total reconciliation, how come every account holder in the eastern region was given only £20? It did not matter whether your father had £10,000,000 or £50,000,000 before the war; you were given just £20. It was a take it or leave it situation. If your family survived and there was an account holder alive, he/she went to the bank, and collected just £20.

Could £20 pounds solve the Kwashiorkor that we were seeing? Could it reconstruct the houses that were burnt? Could it produce food? A lot of other things happened that I did not mention on that occasion. Don’t forget that it was shortly after the war in 1971 that the policy of indigenisation started, where most of the foreign industries and companies were sold to Nigerians, and the war-ravaged eastern regions, which include the entire South-South and the rest of them, could not buy, because no one who did not have money to even feed or clothe himself would have had money to buy any industry. So, I was just wondering, as a young man, if that was true reconciliation, because one would have thought that the government would have gone to any extent to give them more money so that they could truly rehabilitate themselves.

They needed money from reconstruction, and I would have thought that reconstruction would have also started from the East. I just asked because we were lucky to have the personal dramatis of the war right in still alive : General T. Y. Danjuma, General Yakubu Gowon, General Obasanjo, General Buhari and others. It is very rare to see these former heads of state in just one place, so I had to ask.

I said also that it is important, even for the current-day leaders, that we continue to take actions that will unite Nigeria. And we should purge ourselves of actions that tend to cause pains to Nigerians. For me, I believe that because of certain policies of the federal government after the war, the war did not cease in the eastern region until about 30 years after the war.

ALL HAIL BIAFRA THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN!!

BIAFRA On Air again...you people wey talk say dem don banned am...cockroach brain Una get

And he knew all these things at 6?

Ds kwaruption nor b today e start!
It has teyed!

See see see

chai no wonder easterners are bitter about civil war. May God heal our country

Only time will tell

Chai!!!

They really suffered, Sha na Ojukwu cause am. He started a war he knew he couldn't win. The blood is also on him

Trust me..if Ojukwu didn't succeed on Biafra.,No one EVER will. We've had our bad times.,We don't need another war.

Another Igbo thread

Biafra nothing more.

Nice flag and coat of arms. Looks African and not colonial like the "Other" Flag that represents a country bearing their slave masters name even in 2015

emmyrichie:
And he knew all these things at 6?

^^^You'd be surprised at how much you can recall if you were being chased by bullets at the age of 6!

Akpabio seems to be more of hypocrite....truly the eastern region suffered during the war,ojukwu fought the war but can we say that was the best decision as at that time?
He made mention of reconstruction in the west like the bridge,personally I ve known akpabio to be jealous of Lagos and of he was talking of the west then aside the bridge built by IBB then,will he say that it was a wrong decision as at then when Lagos was the capital even before civil war?and on the airport,my father travelled thru MM even before the civil war,and already the Queen visited Nigeria tru that same airport before the war....I will expect him to tell us the reconstruction that was carried out in other western states after the war,maybe then he can be reasonable?most infrastructures in Lagos has been there during colonial rules and few not long after colonial rules,and the ingenuity of Lagos residents that cut across all d country's has also brought tremendous improvement due to the favourable environments in the state, or I will want him to tell us the best industries own by Nigeria govt that miraculously transformed the state from the reconstruction?

interesting

The Suffercated cowards are bigots, myopicals, and hypocrites....., incestuous, ritualistics, and jujustic ...betrayers, backstabbers, and gossipers,...chestbeater , talkatives, and propagandists,...Scratchfaceds, coneheads, and foulmouthers,....amalaeaters, ewadueaters and kolaeaters, ....wellwaterdrinkers, punyyjuicelickers, and bloodsucker....dirty, bad and evil,.... laziests, fearers and weaklings......ugliers, darkiers and winchs....agberos, touts, and bastards....owambes,fuuls and losers, thiefs, criminals and killers......liars,beggars and slaves of Hausa-Fulani one Nigeria

Yorubas are simply winchy winchiers, envious haters, cheaters and parasites ,

Shame on the evil country call. Nigeria killed 30,000 igbos within one month in northern nigeria, that is about 95% of igbos residing in the north at that time.

Easterners have 2 options 1. Keep wailing 2. Move On

Even after reading this Yorubas will tell you...he is SS. Mumu sick people! Most these yorubas have no sense...many of them don't even know that Old Cross River (includes present day Akwa Ibom) fought along side the Igbos against Nigeria, lost as many of their forebears and also received 25 pounds from Awolowo. All these are etched deeply in our memory!

Igbo's have been treated unfairly if we tell ourselves the truth

There is no doubt that Igbos have been treated unfairly some lost their entire family (I have met a man like that)..its not really easy to move on....sometimes wen the shout Biafra we Stand..I don't really blame them..

source?

zendy:
Some people should go an read history well. How did Ojukwu start the war? It is one thing to declare Biafra, it is another to start shooting bullets. Who started shooting first? Did Ojukwu not go to Ghana to sign an agreement with Gowon? Who broke that agreement? Gowon was 100% responsible for the war and he knows it

Ibo tribalism lead 2 d conflict in d first place. Ofcourse Gowon had 2 strike first because he was d one opposing d break out.

Pls do well 2 read abt d 1966 coup and its aftermath

True talks from a real son of the soil! long live Easterners! Long live Biafra!

GOD PLEAS HELP US.GET DATA HERE

delugajackson:
Trust me..if Ojukwu didn't succeed on Biafra.,No one EVER will. We've had our bad times.,We don't need another war.

why? because ojukwu was the best man ever? o boy keep quiet and stop the empty boast. tell that to others but not to abians okay?

Some idi.ots will be shouting biafra!! But their brothers are still all over the country