“BIAFRA: 50 YEARS AFTER -
NO RECONCILIATION!

Paper presented at The Conference -
MEMORY AND NATION BUILDING: BIAFRA 50 YEARS AFTER:
A SOBER REFLECTION.

By
 PROF. T. UZODIMA NWALA
 President
Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF)

1. Introduction.
Before I thank the organisers of this Conference and pay my tribute to the Memory of my friend, late Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, in whose Foundation Center this historic event is being organised, let me quickly dismiss certain lingering pernicious fallacies that have dominated all discussion about the coup of January 15, 1966 and the Biafra War.
First, the Chairman of the Occasion, Alhaji Ahmed Joda, has alluded to the January 15, 1966 coup as an Igbo coup that, according to him, was replied by a Northern coup of July 29 1966.

Let it be said loud and clear that that coup, namely January 15, 1966 coup, was not an Igbo coup. It was a coup led by certain Igbo and Yoruba Officers, involving the active participation of soldiers from the North. The aim, as has been stated again and again by the leaders of the coup, was to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was in detention at the time and install him the Prime Minister of Nigeria.

That coup was foiled by Igbo military officers. Igbo political leaders and activists knew nothing about the coup.

Again the Incursion into the Mid-West by the Biafran troops was not a quest for territorial grabbing by the Igbos. Ojukwu sent troops under the Command of Col, Banjo in response to Chief Awolowo’s request for troops to help liberate Yoruba land from the occupation of soldiers from the North. By the time Col Banjo got to Ore, the British had gotten Gowon to offer Chief Awolowo Vice Chairmanship of the Nigerian Government. Awolowo, therefore, asked Banjo not to proceed on his mission.

General Yakubu Gowon knows the truth of all these things. And that is why the Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) had written him and asked him to tell Nigerians and the whole world the truth about the January 15, 1966 coup and the Biafra incursion into the Mid-West to stop all the lies against Ndigbo, which have been the basis of the burden they carry as a nation within the Nigerian Federation.

Secondly, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Head of State and a frontline commander on the Federal side during the war, said that they (the Federal military leaders) conducted the war without any hate or vengeance because it was a quarrel between brothers.

To this one is constrained to ask a few pertinent questions, namely,
i. How did the world come to describe the conduct of the war as POGROM?
ii. What about the policy that hunger was a legitimate weapon of war and so was justified in its application against the Biafrans?
iii. What about bombing of refugee camps, market places, churches, etc?

Again, when Chief Obasanjo said that they, the victorious side, have been more magnanimous than the victors in the American civil war, where, according to him, those who lost the war never had a chance to be President of America until several decades if not a century later, I would ask him WHAT ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA? WHAT ABOUT NELSON MANDELLA?

Such assertions rather than heal the wounds of the war, keep the wounds aglow, rather than reconcile pour raw pepper of unjustified arrogance on the wounded hearts of the Biafrans. How can you genuinely talk about reconciliation with that kind of mind-set. The truth is that for General Obasanjo, the Biafrans are defeated people. Period!

Indeed, before we can talk about reconciliation, we must accept that grave wrongs were done to the Biafrans, Before, During and Since the end of the war. And nobody among the victorious side cares about reconciliation with the Igbos.

2. Tribute to General Yar’Adua.
NOW, Mr Chairman, Ladies and \Gentlemen, let me go on to thank the organisers of this Conference - the Yar’Adua Foundation and the six Nigerian Universities partnering with the Foundation; the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa who have provided support for this Conference - Biafra: 50 Years After.

What is more, I would like to pay tribute to the memory of my late friend, General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. I met him for the first time during the 1994-5 National Constitutional Conference. There we struck a friendship that would have born great fruits but for his untimely death. I personally escaped being arrested along with him.

General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, became a great democrat after the war despite his aristocratic background. He genuinely believed that this wobbly Federation could be given a dependable foundation. Consequently, he set out to recruit gifted compatriots to work with him for that purpose. What a great hunter of talent Shehu was!

I remember two memorable moments in our interaction. One afternoon, after lunch in his house, we sat down on the sofa. I asked him,
“General, why is it that when you are not smoking cigar (cigarette), you are chewing kola nut?

He answered me. I will not tell you his answer today. Wait for my Memoire that should be ready by my next birthday.
At another moment, also after lunch with him and late Prof. Aborisade, we sat down on the sofa. Shehu said to me “Dr Nwala, let me show you why we Northerners are reluctant to relinquish political power”.

He brought out two volumes of strategic studies which he had commissioned some intellectuals to produce in preparation for the Constitutional Conference of 1994-5. I glanced through volume 1 which deals with the indices of power in Nigeria. I read the discussion, looked at the statistics and the graph, and shook my head, and said to myself this guy is a great political actor. I also reserve the details of what I read in that volume as well as our discussion for the sake of my forthcoming Memoire.
I saw those two volumes of strategic studies at the Library of the Yar’Adua Center when I visited there about two week ago.

What is important in this narrative is that General Yar’Adua became a very sincere leader; he always spoke to me and to anyone in his political company from the bottom of his heart. He was sincerely in search of a genuine way forward. He was a man who knew that all is not well with the Nigerian Federation and genuinely sought the correct path to its healing!

The point of the story is to reveal a bit of the life of this great political strategist who, if he had lived after that Conference, he and the powerful circle of comrades he had built at the Conference would have helped to see to a more liberal accommodating political order in Nigeria. Shehu was the darling of a liberal democratic movement that was emerging in Nigeria before he died. He was equally hated by what many of us call the hegemonists who have consistently aborted every opportunity to create a democratic political culture. It is the later who have consistently made it difficult to achieve a genuine reconciliation in Nigeria. It is these forces that have insisted on a Federation founded on the peace of the grave yard.

Yes, General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua along with the compatriots he had worked to put together would have constituted an authentic force for reconciliation and national integration. He died as a victim of the forces of hegemony in the Nigerian Federation.

3. Post –Biafra Reconciliation – What Lessons?
During the mock trial of Adolf Hitler in a drama portraying literary reflections on the Second World War, following the defeat of Germany and her allies by the Allie Forces of America, Great Britain, France and co, we have the following dramatized exchange between Hitler and his interlocutor –
Interlocutor to Hitler: You were responsible for the Second World War?
Hitler: No! The Versailles Treaties was.

I believe this Conference has been provoked by the renewed agitation for Biafra. In that case, a similar question can be posed to those engaged in the current renewed agitation for Biafra as to what is responsible for the present upsurge in the Agitation for Biafra.

I imagine that the Biafra Freedom Agitators would emphatically blame the present upsurge for Self-determination and Biafra and all its fallouts on all those leaders on the victorious side who, rather than pursuing the path of genuine Reconciliation, have continued to pursue the path of punitive retributions against those who lost the war.

Unfortunately, as it was in the case of the defeated Germany that was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened, so do we find in the case of Biafra, that despite all the retributive measures against her people, Biafra and the Biafrans have neither been pacified, nor conciliated, nor have they been permanently weakened.

Unlike the Treaty of Versailles that exerted bloody pound of flesh on the side that lost the First World War, the victorious side in the Second World War padded their retributive actions with the Marshall Plan. And thus, unlike the intended Carthagenian peace of the Versailles Treaty of 28 June 1919, the Marshall Plan brought a relatively permanent peace to Europe that withstood the shock waves of the cold war including the Cuban Missile crises.

In pursuing the lessons of the retributive post-war treatment of the Biafrans, I would ask the leaders on the victorious side the following questions–
When you took all their financial deposits in the banks and paid them only £20 (twenty pounds), what did you expect the result to be – pacification, conciliation or to have them permanently weakened?

When you allowed massacre of unarmed soldiers and leaders even when they had declared their return to Nigeria, what did you expect? I mean when you murdered Prof. Kalu Ezera or when you killed unarmed Col Onwuatuegwu in cold blood, what did you expect?
When you killed and also buried alive thousands of innocent civilians in Asaba, was that a circus show?

I escaped being killed at the end of the war through the mysterious intervention of my college-mate, Mr Nwoguegbe from Asa in Abia State who was a member of the Nigerian battalion that overran my area on that fateful day of January 8, 1970. When they got information that I was sighted that morning, the solders had sent for me and when I arrived at Nkwo Mbaise their base, Nwoguegbe instantly recognised me and shouted Nkume! I responded Nwoguegbe! Despite being introduced to his commander, Captain Jibowu, the later took him to one corner, asking to be convinced why I should not be treated in accordance with the official instructions, namely, to waste any such able-bodied young-man who may have been an actual or potential Biafra soldier. I was lucky. Nwoguegbe saved me, but several of my mates from my community were not as lucky: - Cornellius Oguikpe, Michael Osuagwu, Efriam Chukwunoyerem, Echewodo Onwunali, all were murdered at the end of the war by the Nigerian soldiers.

Yes, post-Biafra was not attended by any genuine efforts to seek reconciliation nor even to find out what led to the war. Rather, what we have witnessed is decades of vengeance, arrogance and conspiracy against Alaigbo and Ndigbo –

Yes these are on record -
• Immediate post-war punitive massacre,
• Dismissal of some officers on the losing side, reduction in rank of others,
• Dismissal of civil servants.
• Secret Execution of some officers (Col. Onwuatuegwu, Prof, Kalu Ezera)
• Seizure of Igbo property in the name of ‘Abandoned property’.
• Punitive boundary adjustments to make Alaigbo landlocked and excise the rich oil and deposits in their land.
• Closure of the Eastern Sea Port and Railway lines.
• Deliberate policy of encirclement of Alaigbo, inciting Igbos outside Igbo heartland to renounce their Igbo identity.
• Deliberate policy of exclusion from the governance and power equation i Nigeria.
• Deliberate policy of destroying Igbo businesses. 
• Continued massacre, lynching of Igbos in many places in the North.
• Insensitivity to the plight of the IDPs of Igbo extraction that were initially the major targets of Boko Harm bombings and killings.
• No serious effort at post-war reconstruction and reconciliation
I strongly recommend to all those who care to understand how the Igbos view their predicament in the Federation to read the Petition of Ohanaeze Ndigbo to the Human Rights Violations Investigating Committee of 1999. It is captioned

The Violations of the Human and Civil Rights of Ndigbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966-1999).

President Obasanjo should speak to the nation now about why and how that initiative of his was aborted. A Truth and Reconciliation was a great idea, but just like all National Conference decisions meant to deal with the resolution of the injustices of the system and heal the wounds of the past. It was arrogantly dismissed and nothing happened.

4. Biafra : A Collective Guilt
• Have we forgotten that Biafra was a collective guilt and that those who created the Nigerian Federation did so to satisfy their own agenda. That they designed a local agenda for the same purpose?
• Have we forgotten the cause of Biafra and the war? Have we ever come together to examine why Biafra?
• Obasanjo’s Truth Commission and the Justice Oputa Commission were arrogantly dismissed and nothing happened.
• Who was the aggressor in that war?

5. Aborted Efforts to Solve the Nigerian Problem,
What about several efforts made to dispassionately examine the fate of the Federation and how to heal the wounds of the past. Several aborted historical opportunities for peace and stability, or a genuine democratic system include -
- Ibadan Conference of Sept/Oct 1966
- Aburi Accord.
- Abiola’s election that wuld have set a precedent.
- 1994-5 Constitutional Conference and the 1995 Draft Constitution, the best Constitutional Draft in the history of Nigeria. Read my book – Nigeria: Path to Unity and Stability (1997) which is a reminiscence of that great historical Conference. Yes, that Conference was convoked by Abacha to get the nation rubber-stamp his agenda to transmute into a Civilian President. Abacha’s frustration over this led to the incarceration of General Yar’Adua. Some of us escaped his gulag by hair’s breath. 
- Conferences organised by Obasanjos regime.
- President Jonathan’s 2014 Conference.
- Current ferocious arrogant opposition to restructuring.

6. Laying the Foundations for Genuine Reconciliation – The Biafra Initiative.
The Birth of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) – A child of the post-war East Central State Youth Volunteer Services Corps (ECSYVSC) whose memo to General Gowon led to the establishment of the NYSC by the Federal Government.

I led the delegation, as Chairman of the ECSYVSC, that delivered the Memoradum to the Federal Government on the eve of the first post-war independence anniversary, precisely on 30th September, 1970.
In response, General Gowon had given Dr Ukpabi Asika’s Government in the East Central State the sum of £75,000 (Seventy-five thousand pounds) in appreciation of that historical initiative of the youth of Alaigbo.
The great objective of that historical initiative as conceived by us, the youth of Alaigbo, was to forge a genuine instrument of national reconciliation and national integration.
What has happened to the NYSC?; any credit to the initiators? Several attempts have been made by the chaps in the NYSC Foundation in Abuja to interview me in order to draw inspiration from the original mind that conceived the NYSC; each time they were discouraged from a follow-up.

It was the same way that a former Governor had advised the Federal Government to create an institution to house the Biafra Scientist and their great inventions. The answer was no!, because doing so would give credit to the Biafrans.
7. The Road to Reconciliation Now!
Not Restructuring but Renegotiation of the basis of the Nigerian Federation.
Nigeria is a multi-national Federation. The task is to agree on the terms for a form of political union among these nations and mini-nations.
Unless this is done, there would never be any stable Federation uniting all these peoples who are culturally, religiously and philosophically separate nations and mini-nations but are inseparable neighbors.

PROF. UZODINMA NWALA
PRESIDENT
ALAIGBO DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION (ADF)
This text has been endorsed by the Council of Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF)

PROF. NATH ANIEKWU
ADF SECRETARY

Abuja Office: Suite B04 Gouba Plaza, Plot 171 Ekukinam Street
Utako District, FCT ABUJA
Enugu Office: No 1 Idemili Street, Ind. Layout Enugu

The long shadow of Biafra lingers over Nigeria

The Biafra War led to the deaths of at least 1-2 million people in just 30 months — many of them children. January 15 marks 50 years since the end of the brutal conflict. The consequences can still be felt today.

https://www.dw.com/en/the-long-shadow-of-biafra-lingers-over-nigeria/a-51988720?fbclid=IwAR30Vj3ca4pVm0H-nMfapJhYdSZDMT0eU7ESrNwpp1U5IVGRd8z8J7ZDlio

1) What is the proposed CONSTITUTION of the upcoming UNITED STATES of BIAFRA. Can we get a draft copy of it in the public domain now that will be necessary before our campaign towards the pending globally accepted BIAFRA REFERENDUM?

Response from MAZI NNAMDI KANU:

Biafra will run a unique political system designed to carter for the needs of our people.
We are going to have NATION STATES. We will have an IGBO NATION WITHIN BIAFRA. We will have an EFIK NATION WITHIN BIAFRA. We will have ANNANG NATION WITHIN BIAFRA, if they so choose. We will also have IJAW NATION WITHIN BIAFRA. We will have ISOKO NATION WITHIN BIAFRA. We will have IDOMA NATION WITHIN BIAFRA. We will have IGALA NATION WITHIN BIAFRA. Listen to this: THEY WILL ALL BE AUTONOMOUS. Each Nation State will control the resources in their own land. The only thing that will bind us together will be a COMMON DEFENSE POLICY, COMMON ECONOMIC POLICY, COMMON POLICY IN HEALTH AND EDUCATION. In the rest, let people develop according to the pace that they wish or they decided amongst themselves to go by.

LAWS WILL BE DONE IN LOCAL LANGUAGES. Igbo Parliament will make their own laws in Igbo language. Ijaw Parliament will make their own laws in Ijaw language. The same thing applies to Ibibio and others. So that when people are lying to us we will know because you know lying is good in English Language. But you can't deceive the people when you are actually speaking in the language that they understand.

What we are going to have in Biafra will be A BRAND NEW NATION WITH NEW IDEAS AND NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS. Our political arrangements will be geared towards addressing our core needs.
Igbo Land will have a Prime Minister. The same thing will happen to Ijaw, to Isoko, to Urhobo, to Itshekiri. Everybody will be Autonomous from one another to develop at the pace that they like. That is the type of Biafra we are seeking to have. And that is the type of Biafra we are going to have.

Professor T U Nwala, is he still a lecturer in UNN?.

REFLECTING ON THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BRITAIN-BIAFRA WAR ARMISTICE.
The problem is not in others, it is in us!

When we reduce the Britain-Biafra War, which started in Haiti in 1793, to the Nigeria-Biafra War phase, 1966-70, of that longer and still ongoing War we make fools of ourselves and expose our people to great danger.
We argue about Nigerian unity as if Britain ever intended that. As if Britain doesn't know the difference in meaning between the two English words AMALGAMATION and UNIFICATION.

As if Britain started the Glover-Hausa SECURITY ARCHITECTURE in Nigeria by mistake. As if Britain privileged the Slave-catcher Fulani by mistake. As if Lugard made a mistake when he who described Igbo as Industrious and Religious, decreed that they never be entrusted with power, etc.
There is no mistake in any of these, except for us who now lack the conceptual framework to understand what is happening to and around us.
From declassified British documents, we now know that the Nigeria-Biafra War was a brushed-up version of a War Britain had planned against Eastern Nigeria, to take place by or before 1958.

Only Eastern Nigerian Governor Pleas, backed by Governor-general Robertson and Army Commander General Englis, stopped Britain from the war.

To really understand what we are up against, even today, we need to understand the three crimes against British interest that led the British planned invasion:

1. Founding of African Continental Bank (decoupling Africans from British financial hegemony)
2. Founding of the University of Nigeria (freeing the Black African mind) and
3. pan-Africanism (instigating the Black Race to fight for freedom).
Until we understand the symbolic meanings of these three Instigators of British imperialist war against Eastern Nigeria, we won't understand what is happening to us.

Comparing the Igbo to any other ethnic group in Africa, in terms of historical standing, is a distraction.
The Greater Igbo Nation is a primary civilization, if one understands what civilization means.

Igbo have best acquitted themselves in the last 500 years of the African Catastrophe... earning the sobriquets of 'Ibo Granmoun'...
Great Igbo Nation and the Igbo Spirit declared 'Gran Ibo' ... Great Igbo...Mother of Nations; and Ibo Lele... 'Behold the Igbo Wonder' made the jubilation song of the GREATEST REVOLUTION, save non, in Human History; the Haitian Revolution.

On days like these... marking the 50 armistice anniversary of the open shooting aspect of the Britain-Biafra War phase of '67-70, I get to YouTube and just play-on versions of Ibo Lele.

And then think of how best the Igbo must get back to the business of freeing himself, the Black Race and civilising HUMANITY.
For at the heart of the conflict with the other is EZI-IGBO...Igbo idea of Truth, and EZI-NDIOZO...other people's idea of Truth.
Gran Ibo and Chukwuokike Abiama, will see us through.

Nigeria is not one and can never be one.

sweetonugbu:
Professor T U Nwala, is he still a lecturer in UNN?.

sorry, unfortunately, i've no information at my disposal to answer your question, thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AQEiKRt0wE

Remembering Nigeria's Biafra war that many prefer to forget

By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Abuja

15 January 2020
read more here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51094093

The deaths of more than a million people in Nigeria as a result of the brutal civil war which ended exactly 50 years ago are a scar on the nation's history.
For most Nigerians, the war over the breakaway state of Biafra is generally regarded as an unfortunate episode best forgotten, but for the Igbo people who fought for secession, it remains a life-defining event.

Timeline

January 1966 - Nigerian government overthrown in what was seen as an "Igbo coup" led by junior army officers
January 1966 - Lt Col Odumegwu-Ojukwu appointed military governor of Eastern Region
July 1966 - Second coup masterminded by Murtala Muhammed, Lt Col Yakubu Gowon becomes head of state
June to October 1966 - Riots in northern Nigeria targeted at Igbos, killing many and forcing up to a million to return to south-eastern Nigeria
May 1967 - Ojukwu declares independence of the Republic of Biafra
July 1967 - War begins
October 1967 - Biafran capital Enugu falls
May 1968 - Nigeria captures oil-rich Port Harcourt
April 1969 - Umuahia, new Biafran capital falls to Nigerian forces
January 1970 - Ojukwu flees Nigeria
January 1970 - Biafra surrenders

It was a tough fight for freedom. We did not succeed but there only but honour in fighting for freedom

He want to sell book why hidden what yaradua told you all these years so that your brothers will learn how to play politics

Biafra War: It Is January 15 Again
http://www.thebiafratimes.co/2020/01/biafra-war-it-is-january-15-again.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR1b7QDgfsnlJ1IAmD9cH1QC6zf7o7fXREr8lO6zc1x7lTJSdg2iXAPFneM

January 15, 2020

By Princeewill Akubumma | For Biafra Writers

January 15 of every year in the history of Nigeria means two different things to Biafrans and to Nigerians. To Nigerians, it is a day to mark the end of the civil war that started on July 16, 1967, and ended on January 15, 1970.

To Biafrans, it is a day to remember the atrocities committed against our people in that genocidal war that saw over five million Biafrans dead. It is a day to remember the ingenuity of our gallant soldiers who against all odds stood their ground to defend our land not just against the Nigerian state, but also against United Kingdom, Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Bulgaria and USA who all assisted Nigeria in the genocide visited upon Biafra.

January 15 of every year leaves us with sober reflections on how we fought a war of survival. It is a day that our gallant soldiers temporarily laid down their arms. They did so with the conviction that, having resisted the Nigerian aggression for three years, the Nigerian state must have learnt enough to attend to the conditions that birthed the war. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Instead, they have continued in the provocative path, unleashing everything evil on the peace-loving people of Biafra.

READ ALSO: I Regret Criticizing Nnamdi Kanu – Comrade Deji Adeyanju

It should be recalled that Gen. Philip Efiong warned the then Nigerian Military government that if what led to the war is repeated and if the Nigerian government continues to treat unfairly the children of those Biafran soldiers who are putting down their arms, then those Biafran children will rise to fight for a separate state of Biafra. You cannot whip a child and expect him not to cry. Obviously, the Nigerian government has failed to learn from their past mistakes.

Worthy of note here is the fact that after the war many international humanitarian organizations approached the federal military government of Nigeria seeking to rebuild Biafra region. Out of sheer hatred for the Biafran, the Nigerian government turned down the offer on the pretext that Nigerian can handle it.

Well, the inhumanity against Biafra has not stopped, and as predicted by General Philip Efiong, the new generation of Biafra has risen up to demand an independent state of Biafra.


The Biafra Times
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Edited By Nelson Ofokar Yagazie
Publisher: Charles Opanwa