“I still believe that the one thing that will bring peace, absolute peace, to this country, the type of peace we want attached to development, is to liberate Ndi Igbo and there is no better act of liberation than accepting that they have equal right in Nigeria.”



“There is absolutely no way you can look at the Nigerian federation, the way it was conceived, and say it is a good federation. One of the federating units is bigger than the other units. The other thing is that everything that has worked in Nigeria, or appears to have worked, seems very much to have been an imposition. The idea that sovereignty belongs to the Nigerian people is all fiction as far as Nigeria is concerned.”



“Let us not make the mistake of thinking that this world is a prison. You are what you are for as long as it is comfortable for you. That is how I see it. I have continued to say that in Nigeria what we require is a nation that we can build together.”



“You will understand where I am coming from better if you understand that I was brought up in the Pan-Africanist tradition. I believe that, not only would it be better for the Blackman anywhere if we in Africa find a way of joining hands, all of us.”



“During the war, there were saboteurs. I understand that historically. Our people didn’t fully understand the enterprise of saying no to Nigeria. A lot thought, in fact, that it would end much quicker.”



“There is no way Igbos would all speak with one voice. But let one be more slightly strident than the others. That is what I look for.”



“It is said that the 1966 coup that failed was strictly an Igbo coup, but then the irony of history is that it was the late General Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo who single-handedly dismantled the coup in Lagos, while my humble self, another Igbo-man rendered it immobile in the north.”



“It is only those who have not been involved in a war, that will always push war as the first solution to any problem. War does not solve, it cowers but the problem remains.”



“All over Nigeria there is Biafra but that Biafra today is ‘the Biafra of the Nigerians and not the Biafra of the Igbos’; the Biafra of the mind not Biafra of the fields.”



“The civil war was a stage. Some might say an unnecessary stage and some might say an inevitable stage in our march to nationhood. Whichever way, it was a stage and a mile-post in our agglomerate development. We cannot wish it away. We must for ever take it into consideration whenever the subject is Nigeria.”



“I regret the disabilities of the war. It was a choice: it was either to become a slave of the Hausas in that time, or to do what we did. And up till tomorrow, whenever I’m given the opportunity to choose, I’ll reject slavery.”



“He (Awolowo) was loved, he was feared, but above all, he belonged to the people he professed to lead. At his death, I had the singular honour of proposing for him this epitaph that has endured — ‘He was the best President that Nigeria never had’.”

http://www.punchng.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=5896:ojukwu-on-the-marble&Itemid=542

Alloy/Emeka: Good posting. Can you do a comparison and contrast posting on the comments and statements Ojukwu made pre-civil and post-civil Biafra on several issues - Hausa-Fulani, black race, future of Nigeria, Nigeria's economic development etc - and how those pre-warnings have all come to pass.

Great Ikemba Nnewi