Having listened to Ralph Uwazurike, and observed him at close range, I endeavored to assess him objectively. My assessment of him left me tugged by conflicting opinions of the man and his mission. On the one hand, he has obvious limitations that will naturally impair his leadership of any serious movement. Secondly, his reliance on nonviolent means for actualizing an independent nation of Biafra is too romantic - imaginative - an grotesque perception of reality. Moreover, I am opposed to any attempt at the dissolution of Nigeria. However, I cannot help respecting his courage, intrepidity, and an unwavering commitment to a cause, qualities that have been almost extinct amongst the Igbo for the past 30 years.



I attended the inauguration of the Biafran House in Washington, DC strictly as an observer. It provided me with the first opportunity to listen to Ralph Uwazurike, and to watch him very closely. His speech was as unimpressive as it was disturbing. Early, I had thought that neo-Biafranism, despite all its quixotism, was the work of a sober and reflective crusader on a planned mission, with carefully articulated strategies and objectives. But his speech, and the aura about him revealed an impetus man dabbling recklessly into an issue with potentially momentous consequences.



“Initially, I did not know what I was doing”, he said, but, as democracy allows self expression, “I decided to express myself”. He lacks both charisma and oratorical flourishes. He is neither a scholar nor an intellectual, a philosopher nor a deep thinker, a sophisticate nor a cosmopolitan. He is a homespun boyish looking man, with an air of arrogance, or the self-importance of a parvenu gloating in his new found prominence. Secondly, I am in complete disagreement with both his method and his goal. The thought that the Igbo can secede from Nigeria through nonviolence methods is fantastic absurdity.



Mahatma Ghandi effectively fashioned the principle of nonviolence against the British colonial authorities in India. Martin Luther King Jr adopted it in the Black American quest for racial equality in American. In India, the goal was to cast off the colonial yoke of an imperial power already in decline. It was deployed in defiance of a global system, colonialism, that was made untenable by the geopolitical and ideological fallouts of the second World War. In the United States of America, Martin Luther King’s motif was to appeal to the conscience of a nation founded on the foundations of freedom and justice. He was technically not breaking the law, but urging America to live up to her creed, and uphold the ideals of her constitution. The American creed holds that “it is self-evident that all men are created equal”, and the American constitution guarantees the individual’s unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So, in India, the emergent world order predisposed Ghandi’s success, and in America, Martin Luther King‘s objectives were in conformity with the laws of the land, to sensitize mainstream Americans to the plight of the American minorities, and to get America attempting to rise to her professed belief in equality of opportunity, and social justice.



In Nigeria, secession is an anathema, and the talk about it is heresy. Already, Nigerians have already fought a gruesome war against secession. Her constitution is unequivocal in its stance against the break up of the country. Secession goes against the grain of the Nigerian society, and it violates the visceral convictions of the generality of Nigerians. It stands in transgression of the Nigeria constitution. So, secession will involve the repudiation of the collective will of Nigerians, trampling of the law, and assaulting the battlements of the powers that be; and these cannot be done peacefully. It must involve a war. More than 30 years later, the Igbo are still reeling from the ravages wrought by the earlier war of secession. They are definitely not in the mood for another war. The power structure is even more skewed against the Igbo today than 30 years ago. If, for the Igbo, the previous war was a saga of human misery, today, another war of secession will be an account of suicide.



Undoubtedly, the history of Nigeria is a treatise on Hausa/Fulani hegemony. It is their studied arrogation to themselves the exclusive right to power that is the bane of Nigeria politics. More than any other ethnic group in Nigerian, the Igbo have suffered this scourge of Nigerian politics. They have been victims of disenfranchisement, pogroms, bigotry and dispossession. The Igbo’s desires are simple and most fundamental - peace, social justice, and security - an environment that will enable them to fulfill their enormous potentials, and apply their cultural skills. The question is can the Igbo attain these aspirations while remaining part of a united Nigeria? Yes, because Nigeria, in spite of all her woes, is not a morass of feuding ethnic groups, and conflicting social interests, perilously hurtling towards disintegration. Nigeria is a colossus of unrealized potentials - a somnolent giant in need of awakening, a floundering ship groping for direction, a tottering democracy in search of stability, a downtrodden populace hungering for a good life, and longing for social justice. Essentially, Nigeria is a leaderless country pining for leadership.



The ills of Nigeria, for the most part can be resolved by responsible leadership. It can rightly be argued that there are limits to what a leader can do, that he can only lead within the parameters already defined by the society. However, history has demonstrated that leadership can always make the dramatic difference. Leadership sets the moral tone, defines the national mood, forges the national purpose. In the words of Sir Robert Thompson, “national power equals applied resources plus manpower times will - and a nation draws its will principally from the example of its leaders.” Not surprisingly, leadership has lifted countries from: the pits of hopelessness and despair to the pedestal of hope and renewed optimism, the abyss of weakness and helplessness to new heights of strength and grandeur, the quagmire of corruption and moral decadence to high standards of probity and decency, the throes of anarchy and social injustice to a new dawn of the rule of law and social justice, shackling civic indolence and greed to liberating patriotism and selflessness, etc. The problems of the Nigerian society, including the suffocating circumscription of the Igbo, are problems that can be resolved by good leadership, because responsible leaders will rise to the object of government which is “to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man”.



However, in spite of my problem with the persona of Uwazuruike, his philosophy and stated objectives, I cannot help doffing my hat for his passionate determination. He has refused to be cowed by the threats of punishments, or swayed by the government’s blandishments. He has been threatened, harassed, shot at, arrested and detained, yet, he has not flinched in his dedication to his cause. He is prepared to risk his life for his belief. Thomas Masaryk, the founder of modern Czechoslovakia, once wrote that “great political and social changes begin to be possible as soon as men are not afraid to risk their lives.” The past 30 years must have shown the Igbo that political passivity is futile. It only erodes your political relevance, leaving you in a lurch, where “your friends take you for granted and your enemies despise you.” The Igbo have been sniveling, whimpering and whining over “marginalization”, as though power is ever gotten on a silver platter. Frederick Douglas, rightly stated that “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Therefore, to profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation is to want crops without plowing the ground, ”



So, despite the dilettantism of its leadership and the impracticability of its objectives, MASSOB remains a necessary political force, because the Igbo need agitators. Political activism, even if by a renegade group with extremist demands avails more than a culture of political docility. Secondly, MASSOB embodies some indispensable qualities for a people’s political progress: courage, volunteerism, determination. In addition, MASSOB may do for mainstream Igbo leadership what the student uprisings of the 1970s, and the radicalization of the anti-apartheid movements in South Africa did for the African National Congress (ANC), and what the Palestinian Intifada did for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), that is legitimize it, and make it more relevant. The radical anti- apartheid movements made it evident that apartheid was a grandiose illusion destined for a grand failure, and presented the ANC to the apartheid government as the best partner in the search for peace in South Africa. The Intifada dramatized to the Israeli government the futility of occupation, and that it was inescapable to deal with the PLO, which was then completely ineffective after being dislodged from Beirut, and exiled to Tunisia.



Ojukwu’s presence at the event was a bathos. Clad in a brownish suit and black loafers, he looked more of an avuncular congregant than a separatist activist. A master of claptraps, his speech was devoid of substance. It was a rodomontade laced with epigrams. Uwazuruike’s neo-Biafranism, despite its unrealism, still represents something new among the Igbo: sacrifice, commitment, tenacity. Ojukwu, on the other hand, personifies opportunism, desertion and political blundering. Since his return from exile, he has been a powerful tool for northern hegemony, kowtowing mindlessly to the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Bashir Tofa and Sani Abacha, and strengthening the same evil, that the Igbo fought against at such a colossal cost. So, why his identification with MASSOB, a group espousing Igbo emancipation, that is emancipation from his own northern masters. What was actually his purpose of being there, a sleuth for his northern masters, or angling for any bounty that may accrue to the MASSOB movement?



Then, it was the vitamin’s (Ojukwu had jokingly referred to his wife as the vitamin that keeps him young) turn to speak. His vitamin is dazzlingly beautiful. Attired in a purple lace outfit, she stood poised and dignified. For a one time beauty queen, and a lady with the guts and independent-mindedness to defy tradition, parental authority and societal expectations, to cling to the man of her love, she is surprisingly diaphanous, transparently good natured and humble. Her speech was devoid of frills and embellishments. She spoke with almost child-like innocence and plainness.



Both Uwazuruike and Ojukwu were about four hours late. Tired of waiting, members of the Biafran Foundation (BAF) led by Prof Enekwachi proceeded to cut the tape, and declare the Biafran House open. Speaking after the cutting of the tape, Prof Enekwachi was interrupted by an Arab man who claimed he was born in Nigeria. This man said that he is opposed to the break up of Nigeria, that the different ethnic groups of Nigerian should strive to resolve their differences within a unified country. To my chagrin, he was literally attacked, physically by the group. I was appalled by this glaring act of hypocrisy, a hypocrisy that has been the hallmark of Nigerian society.



The Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba all rail against the evils of tribalism, whereas they are all guilty of tribalism. Gun toting military dictators plot against legitimate governments, and shoot their way into power, and then believe they have the moral authority to execute those who allegedly plotted against their own government for treason. The BAF members are supposedly freedom activists, but will readily brutalize a man who dared to exercise his own liberty. So, as the Biafran flag, a symbol of the freedom of expression, flutters from the Biafran House in Washington DC, the capital of the world’s bastion of freedom and liberty, I have an advise for BAF, practice what you preach.

Do your research people