I returned from Kigali a few days ago. The highlight of my trip was a harrowing visit to a museum commemorating the million or so Rwandese people who were slaughtered during a genocide that shocked the world in 1994. Two hundred and fifty thousand victims of that vicious Tutsi/Hutu conflict are buried on the premises, so it’s a cemetery as well as a place of remembrance and learning.

In my 20s, I toured Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, in appalled silence. Situated on a 45-acre campus and comprising museums, exhibitions, monuments, sculptures and memorial sites, it is an impressive tribute to the six million Jews who were murdered during the Nazi era.

On May 30, 1967, the secessionist Republic of Biafra was declared by Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the then governor of Nigeria’s Eastern region, following deadly tensions between Northerners and members of the Igbo ethnic group.
The Igbos were joined by some minorities from the region that is known as the Niger Delta today.

Examples of senior non-Igbos who supported Biafra as a matter of principle include Ojukwu’s Ibibio Deputy, Major General Philip Asuquo Effiong, and my father Ignatius Suage Kogbara, the Biafran ambassador to the United Kingdom and an Ogoni from Rivers State.

I have very clear memories of the civil war. I was seven years old when it started and 10 when it ended on January l5, 1970.

I will never forget my totally stressed mother, Anne, driving my three siblings and me out of Port Harcourt in the family’s grey Ford Cortina as Federal troops (the enemy!) advanced on the city we called home.

I recall an enraged Biafran army officer shooting, one-by-one, panicking policemen who had hopped onto their bicycles and joined the exodus from Port Harcourt, alongside fleeing women and children, instead of staying behind to help our soldiers and able-bodied male civilians fight the invaders to the finish.

By then, my father was in London, representing the rebel government; and I recall being stuck in a long queue of escaping vehicles, taking refuge a Southeastern village where the natives ate lizards to survive and eventually being airlifted out of Biafra in the dead of night on a cargo plane from an airstrip in a town called Uli.

By 1968, we were safely ensconced in Daddy’s residence in a salubrious part of London; and I still feel guilty about the fact that we got out at the height of a massive humanitarian crisis, leaving so many friends, relatives and strangers to suffer the horrors of a war that wasn’t their fault.

Biafra was the world’s first fully televised war and a very big deal. Between one and three million Biafrans died, mostly from starvation.

Images of hollow-eyed youngsters with distended bellies filled TV screens across the globe. Many of us heard, for the first time, about kwashiokor – a form of malnutrition caused by protein deficiency.

According to the distinguished US-based Igbo writer and academic, Chigozie Obioma: “The Biafran War of Independence was an internecine war the scale of which Africa had never seen when it took place. Most of those who died were non-combatants.

“It was the singular reason for the creation of Doctors Without Borders and it is believed that more small weapons (hand grenades, rifles, etc) were used in it than in World War 2.

So why have the Nigerian authorities never erected a memorial to those who lost their lives and endured unspeakable agonies?

budaatum:
Is there no memorial in Biafra land, or is Kogbara asking the federal government, whom he himself called "the enemy", to remember them?

The Hutu/Tutsi war was stopped by a neutral body, so the memorial is for both sides, which I doubt is what he's asking for. While the German remembrance of their massacre of the Jews, which he hasn't seen nor mentioned, is in remorseful regret, which the Federal Government doesn't have for keeping Nigeria whole.

mrvitalis:

[b]Anyone who don't regret keeping Nigeria one with all the obvious reality is a Fool

People are in your national Assembly chambers debating why a primitive set u share a country with value Cows over your life for heavens sake

Biafra would have never been perfect because Ojukwu contacted the Awolowo socialism virus but surely would have been better than nigeria /b]

budaatum:


Are there no Biafrans in my so called National Assembly, or is it that they too value cow over life and can not present any bills worth discussing?

Sorry, but I don't regret keeping Nigeria one. If Nigeria had split, you'd still be killing each other, unless by splitting you mean Biafra relocates itself far away from the rest of Nigeria, like to Rwanda area if they'd have you.

mrvitalis:

What if I show u proof an Igbo man has done that years ago but was greeted by DSS intimidation... What would u do

gidgiddy:
There are memorials for Biafra, but none by the government

gidgiddy:
In reality, Biafra was a fight for freedom from a Nigeria that Igbos and some other tribes knew would never work

Time has since proved them right

budaatum:


Done what exactly? Proposed a Biafra bill in my National Assembly, or set up remembrance for dead Igbos?

Either way, I wouldn't be surprised. Whatever the Igbo man did would have emphasised the deaths of Igbos, and not what the federal government wants, and Nigeria does not need anything done that forments more tribal hatred than we already have.

budaatum:

Thank you. I don't expect them to forget.


There's no way they knew Nigeria wouldn't work, and I'm more likely to believe some have done everything to make sure Nigeria doesn't work to justify their beliefs.

If I wanted Biafra, everything I do in Nigeria would be to make Nigeria fail, from collecting bribes to look the other way to selling cars with no engines to Nigerians and even not paying my rent to my Lagos landlord. That's how I'd justify my Biafra.

budaatum:

Thank you. I don't expect them to forget.


There's no way they knew Nigeria wouldn't work, and I'm more likely to believe some have done everything to make sure Nigeria doesn't work to justify their beliefs.

If I wanted Biafra, everything I do in Nigeria would be to make Nigeria fail, from collecting bribes to look the other way to selling cars with no engines to Nigerians and even not paying my rent to my Lagos landlord. That's how I'd justify my Biafra.

gidgiddy:


And that is why we should have conducted a referendum a long time ago so that those who believe in Nigeria can continue, and those who do not can exit

At the end of the day, we are just people the British forced into an unholy union. We do not have to be together just because of that

Blazebond:
The biafrans have five states currently and they are free to come together and build a memorial for themselves in one or all of their five states.

budaatum:

Thank you. I don't expect them to forget.


There's no way they knew Nigeria wouldn't work, and I'm more likely to believe some have done everything to make sure Nigeria doesn't work to justify their beliefs.

If I wanted Biafra, everything I do in Nigeria would be to make Nigeria fail, from collecting bribes to look the other way to selling cars with no engines to Nigerians and even not paying my rent to my Lagos landlord. That's how I'd justify my Biafra.

Gbadugbakun:

How many Igbos have ruled nigeria since after the civil war?

Gbadugbakun:
Those ruling us weren't they the same people who prevented the secession of Biafra? So can we say that the north doesn't want Nigeria to work according to your analogy?

budaatum:
None. Nigeria hasn't gotten over the fear of an Igbo president proposing Biafra, unfortunately, despite my Obidience.

But see as we de suffer. One day, an Igbo person might show us they have credible solutions by first developing their Igbo state, and then we Nigerians would be begging that person to please do the same for Nigeria.


Biafra is tribal to the Igbos just as Islam is religious to the North.

Both sides want to destroy the Nigeria we currently have so they can impose their desires on it, is my view. Thankfully, they will both fail.

mrvitalis:

Yes proposed igbos be given referendum to determine if they want to remain in nigeria or not

Gbadugbakun:

So if Igbos haven't held any strategic position since after the war, .

Gbadugbakun:
As for governors, I can tell you that aside Kano and Kaduna no core northern state can match any eastern state.

budaatum:


I am not buying this unless you want to claim a minister is not strategic enough.

President Tinubu nominated 48 candidates for ministerial positions and they have all been screened by the Senate. The five nominees from the South-East include Nkiru Onyejiocha (Abia), Uju Ohaneye (Anambra), Dave Umahi (Ebonyi), Uche Nnaji (Enugu) and Doris Uzoka (Imo).

https://nairametrics.com/2023/08/17/here-are-tinubus-ministers-from-the-south-east-and-their-portfolio/


Like you told me "Igbos haven't held any strategic position since after the war"?

Please don't discredit your argument with dishonesty. It ruins the intelligence in our conversation.

budaatum:


A referendum does not work as you describe, "that those who believe in Nigeria can continue, and those who do not can over The way it works is the idea with a majority dictates what happens and everyone gets to live with it. Referendums are however not the best way to run a nation, and that's why most countries don't have them.

As for British forced you into it, so? Britain itself was forced into being a nation so nothing new there. Point is, since then we've become more integrated such that separation is like on to conjoined twins who share one heart and one kidney. You must kill one for the other to survive, and we are not that stupid (or knowledgeable or selfish) enough to try that yet.

Gbadugbakun:

From 1970 till 1999. How many strategic positions did Igbos hold?

gidgiddy:


Nigeria is nothing but a 1914 British colonial project. The British created a country and lumped us all in there without anyones consent. Even the name "Nigeria" was created in London by a white woman

Scotland has Been part of Britain for over 300 years, but Scotland was given referendum in 2013 for them to decide if they wanted to carry on with Britain, or go their way as an independent country. That is civilisation, not the "one Nigeria by force" mentality some of you have.

It is shameful for us as Africans that the white man will come from Europe to decide for us what our country will be, and give us a colonial name Nigeria, and we still running with this to this day when we should use referendum to decide our countries and names

Truly shameful

No union that is forced will ever be a happy one, and it's one of the reasons Nigeria has never worked . Unity must come from the heart, or it becomes a prison

budaatum:

I am very certain Igbos have held more than one, you'd find if you do your own research.