by Osita Ebiem
( November 22, 2016, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) At the end of the Biafran War many experts
came to the conclusion that genocide had been committed against the Igbo by the
Nigerian government. In an effort to suppress the scandal, the Nigerian
government with some help from Great Britain worked frantically to cover up the
news about the atrocities. For almost fifty years that effort paid off. The
crime of Biafran Genocide was carefully hidden away from the public.
However,
today 2016 the agitation for the restoration of the defunct Biafran state is in
the news again. This is coming nearly half a century after the country’s demise
in 1970. After suffering a pogrom in which more than 100,000 of their people
were killed by Nigerian civilians and various security forces of the Nigerian
government, Igbo people with other southeasterners who also were affected in
the killings declared an independent Biafran state in mid-1967. Immediately
following the secession the Nigerian state levied a genocidal war of aggression
that lasted two and half years against Biafra. With the help of Great Britain,
USSR (Russia) and Islamic Arab states; all those countries supplied arms to
Nigeria and the war resulted in the genocide of Igbo people.
The war
was prosecuted with the declared intention of wiping out the Igbo from the face
of the Earth. By the time the war was over a quarter of Igbo population, that
is 3 million of them were further exterminated. About 2 million of the
casualties died from starvation resulting from the Nigerian government official
policy of “hunger as a legitimate weapon of war.” Almost fifty years after that
horrific genocide which tends to have been largely forgotten by much of the
world community, a new generation of Igbo people who are majorly Animists and
Christians are reviving the call to free themselves and territory from the
largely Islamic state of Nigeria.
A close
look at most of the people who are championing the new struggle to separate
Biafra from Nigeria reveals that they either did not witness the Biafran War or
they were mere children during the war. For this reason some people have asked
the question; why are people in this age bracket bent on defiantly reviving
such a horrific episode and experience in their history half a century on. Some
people have argued that it has something to do with the fact that the Nigerian
government barned the teaching of history in Nigerian schools soon after the
Biafran War. People were prohibited from mentioning the name, “Biafra” for many
decades afterwards. The government wanted to hide the genocide permanently from
public consciousness. As a result, subsequent generations which did not witness
the war are unable to appreciate fully the devastating impacts of the war on
their parents’ generation. But since the years following the war even the
generations of Igbo people who did not witness it are being punished and
marginalized by the Nigerian state. And this is part of what is fueling the
independence protests.
Remembering
how horrible the war was, people like the current Muslim President of Nigeria
Muhammadu Buhari who incidentally fought on the Nigerian side to defeat Biafra
have asked the new agitators for a revived independent state of Biafra to
forget it. Of course he did not find it necessary to express any remorse about
the Igbo Genocide which he helped to orchestrate. He instead believes that the
people will just forget just because he asked them to forget the heinous crime
that was committed against them. Insensitively, the president went on to argue
that the agitators are doing this because they did not experience or witness
the war. This has made many observers to interpret Buhari’s highhanded response
by killing the peaceful nonviolent agitators as his way of trying to teach the
“inexperienced” agitators a lesson. In the past one and half years Buhari has
rolled out, on many occasions, the full strength of his country’s military
force to violently suppress the peaceful nonviolent Biafran independence
movement.
The
human rights organization; Amnesty International reports that since the advent
of Buhari administration in 2015 till now – the tail end of 2016, Nigerian
government has killed more than 300 Biafrans and wounded many more while they
held peaceful protests for Biafra’s independence. Amnesty International says
that many of those pro-Biafra protesters were shot and killed in their sleep
and others while they gathered in churches to pray. Many of the protesters were
shot and killed from behind while they tried to escape.
The
fact is that the peaceful protests for the separation of Igbo territory
(Biafra) from Nigeria has been going on since the year 2000. The group known as
Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) had
spearheaded these protests. Various Nigerian administrations before the advent
of the present one in 2015 had used mostly the incarceration of the leaders of
the movement in trying to deal with and suppress it. MASSOB’s former leader
Ralph Uwazurike suffered many jail times in Nigerian prisons. Sometimes the
MASSOB leader was detained for many years at a time. Apart from many of the
agitators who are being killed extra-judicially by government forces there are
some notable individuals who are being held in various Nigerian prisons just
because they are agitating for Biafra’s independence. Some were snatched off
the streets into prisons for merely wearing vests with Biafran insignia or just
being in possession of Biafran flags. There are such people like Benjamin
Onwuka the leader of Biafra Zionist Movement (BZM,) Chidiebere Onwudiwe whose
home was invaded by Nigerian security agents in the middle of the night. He was
taken away from his house at 2 AM and has not been heard from again since the
last one year. Then there is Nnamudi Kanu who runs an online radio called Radio
Biafra London (RBL.) These individuals except for Onwudiwe whose fate is yet to
be known, can be described as almost lucky because Buhari’s government has not
yet executed them and their cases have been celebrated because of the
relatively wide media publicity they have attracted.
But
there are many unsung pro-Biafra agitator-victims who are not as lucky. They
are currently suffering various kinds of persecutions in many detention centers
around the world. Some of these less known victims are being prosecuted in
different courts of law in many places around the world simply because they
demonstrated publicly for the independence of Biafra. These people are being
deprived of their freedom or are being subjected to other forms of hardships
and inhumane treatments because of their involvement in Biafran freedom
activism.
Over
the years many critics have complained that the Nigerian government has used
some unorthodox diplomatic manipulations to influence how some foreign
government agencies carry out their duties in its effort to suppress Biafra’s
independence and hide the Biafran Genocide. Since the time of Biafra War till
now, Nigeria has deployed its diplomatic tentacles across the world to make
sure that those who agitate for Biafra anywhere are suppressed. We will cite
two little known examples of those who are going through persecutions in
so-called civilized societies like European countries of Norway and England.
Lotachukwu
Okorie used to serve as MASSOB’s District Officer in southeast Nigeria before
he emigrated to Norway, fleeing from persecution by Nigerian government
authorities. On getting to Norway, a civilized society, he believed that his
problems were over and his human rights would be protected. Unfortunately, he
discovered that they had only just begun. In what looked like a remotely
influenced operation the Norwegian government detained Okorie and charged him
with illegal immigration crime. He was then detained for one year and six
months without any conclusive decision on his case. According to Norwegian laws
he overstayed in jail the period he was legally supposed to. Just before he was
arrested, Okorie was so frustrated by the various dehumanizing treatments he
was receiving from Norwegian security agents that he was driven to attempt
suicide with a kitchen knife.
Another
case which is fast becoming a source of embarrassment to the British government
is that of Yahgozie Immanu-el victim of political persecution by British
authorities that apparently are trying hard to please Nigerian government which
it is believed are tele-guiding and influencing the current ordeals of
Yahgozie. It appears that the British government is willing to compromise their
country’s very reputable centuries-old national respect for the fundamental
human and civil rights of all people simply to please the Nigerian government.
Yahgozie is an independent journalist as well as a pro-Biafra activist who is
based in London. He got arrested by the British police while he covered the
recent official visit to Britain by the Nigerian President Buhari. He was
subsequently taken to court on frivolous and trumped up charges that he was
trying to attack President Buhari’s motorcade. Some eyewitnesses of the
incident are still unable to understand how the actions of someone who only had
a microphone and was trying to cover the unfolding events could have been
interpreted as an intention to attack President Buhari. Yahgozie’s case comes
up again in the City of London Magistrates Court later in this month of
November. Many people think that the case is actually turning into an
embarrassment to the human rights image of the British government.
http://www.slguardian.org/2016/11/nigeria-biafran-independence-agitation-worldwide/
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