Killing Biafra: A Battle That will End in Futility
I confess: the title of my essay
today is not original. It was first penned by the now late Agwu Okpanku,
Classicist and journalist trained at Ibadan and Cambridge, in his
column, “The Third Eye,” published in the now defunct, Enugu-based
newspaper of the 1970s, Renaissance. Agwu Okpanku was a fierce critic of
the post war attempts by the Federal Military Government of Nigeria,
under the leadership of Yakubu Gowon, to erase all evidence of Biafra
from national memory.
When Agwu Okpanku wrote “Killing Biafra,” he was simply reminding the
triumphalist power of that moment, about the indelicacy as well as the
futility, in decreeing oblivion. Biafra was an independent republic. For
three years it fought for its sovereignty.
Biafra
It had symbols; it had documents, and it had a material presence
which the Federal Military Government’s policy was working rather too
hard to erase, in uninformed attempts to force “one Nigeria” down the
throat of former Biafrans.
So, for instance, the Uli Airport, which could have been preserved
for its historical significance and value was bulldozed; the Bight of
Biafra suddenly became “Bight of Bonny;” material evidence that had any
hint of Biafra were seized and systematically destroyed, or kept sealed –
until Babangida established the National War Museum in Umuahia. It
would have been tolerable if the former Biafrans felt a welcoming sense
of justice and acceptance to “one Nigeria.”
But, no. A lingering sense of alienation remains from Nigeria’s
mishandling of the policy of the “The Rs” announced at the end of
conflicts. In actual fact, at the end of the war in 1970, Sam Ogbemudia
as military governor of the Midwest had quickly made contact with the
now late T.E.A Salubi and Dr. Nwariaku, one of the great Biafran
scientists, and a key figure of the Biafran Research and Production
(RAP) department whose innovations in war production gave insight into
the capacity of the black mind, and quickly made a case at the Council
of States for the Gowon administration to urgently gather these
scientists, rehabilitate them, and use RAP as the basis for Nigeria’s
industrial revolution.
Ogbemudia was strenuously opposed by his colleagues in the council:
nothing of such should be done with “the rebels,” he was told. Post war
federal policy, not surprisingly, was at odds with reason, and it was
soon clear to those who had fought for Biafra that the Federal Military
Government’s policy of “reconciliation and rehabilitation” was no more
than a hollow pact calculated to disarm the Biafrans. Since 1970, the
mindless and tragic exploitation, and the strategic policy of neglect
has left areas of the former Eastern region bitter, frustrated, and
alienated.
The Federal government, using its divisive politics and narrative of
sectionality have tried to emphasize regional differences between what
it has often falsely described as the “Niger Delta” and the South East.
The fact that much of Igbo land falls into what is geographically the
Niger Delta has been obscured by the convenient geo-political narrative
of difference that has long been promoted by the self-interested powers,
who have used the ploy to exploit and contain any upsurge of defiance
from the East in the last forty years.
But a new generation, many born in the war and after it have seen
through it all: how come, many of them now ask, that the areas from
which much of Nigeria’s oil wealth was exploited have benefited very
little from the exploitation of the resources in their region? The
direct benefits of what should have been an oil economy went in the
enrichment of people outside the region. Not even many Nigerians have
benefited from this product, oil, now in its dying phase as an economic
factor.
One of the significant aspects of the old East is its contiguity.
What happens in any part of the region is quickly telegraphed to the
other. Gas flare in Izombe is felt in Port Harcourt. Oil spill in Eleme
is quickly felt in Asa and Aba. If an explosion happens in Eket, you
will quickly feel its reverberations in Owerrinta, or Ohambele or Bori.
It is fifteen minutes from Aba to Ikot-Ekpene on a good road, and to
Uyo, less than 45 minutes.
Only a bridge separates Itigidi from Afikpo. Asaba and Onitsha are
just like St. Louis and East St. Louis, as with the other, linked by the
Eads Bridge across the Mississippi, one in Missouri, and the other in
Illinois, yet inexorably linked. From Yenegoa, Degema, through Elele to
Owerri is as much distance as from Owerri to Enugu, and it is such
contiguity that makes the Eastern areas of Nigeria a powerfully
attractive economic belt as well as a disaster waiting to happen. The
interconnections and linkages is most probably the factor that is
driving the new Biafra and the Niger delta movement into a single
defiance movement.
The growth of this single movement quite frankly poses a security
threat to this nation that no president should, or can ignore. It
requires a strategic and comprehensive response; that much is true.
Whatever response to this movement however must begin from the framework
that the new Biafra movement is the result of both political and
economic frustration and alienation. It did not begin with this
administration, but it is growing exponentially, and is compounded by
what seems to be the President’s tunnel vision; his unwillingness to
address this question like a statesman not much rather like a
belligerent soldier.
Thus far, the president’s response to the Biafran agitations, which
is currently at its peaceful stage, is ego-driven, and frankly immature,
and does not lend itself to the kind of thoughtfulness and diplomacy
required of a president whose duty above all else is to secure peace by
all means necessary in a fragile multi-ethnic nation such as Nigeria, in
order to achieve common prosperity. The growing Biafra question is
looking most certainly to define the Buhari presidency. The president
looks all set to entangle Nigeria in a long and unwinnable conflict that
threatens to snowball into another civil war if improperly handled.
Last week, the president lost a great opportunity to address it and
scale it down. He was confronted with this question in an Al-Jazeera
interview, about Biafra and the administration’s authorization of the
killing of unarmed Biafrans by soldiers. The president refused to see
recorded evidence available to Al-Jazeera of the killing of unarmed,
peaceful protesters asking for a “Biafran referendum” in Aba.
He snapped at the interviewer who asked if it is not better to meet
with them than shoot them. “Why Should I meet them?” the president
asked, bristling. This president puts himself in an actionable position
in justifying the use of maximum force and the killing of an unarmed
civilian population protesting peacefully within their rights. The
president’s claim that their agitation for Biafra is intolerable, is
itself intolerable under democratic rule. What the president is doing is
deliberately pushing a currently unarmed movement towards an inevitable
armed conflict, and a widening of the field. The images of the shooting
of civilians is a great recruitment tool for the Biafrans, as more and
more people once indifferent to it are quietly joining from deep anger
at these images.
This president, we use this column again to plead with, should not
push Nigeria into another civil war, by his actions or inactions,
because there is no greater threat to the security of a nation than a
deep sense of injustice and alienation felt by a great number of people.
President Buhari fought in the last war and must certainly realize that
there is no such thing as a “cake-walk” in war. It is important that
president Buhari’s advisers tell him that it is still early and possible
to contain this Biafran movement peacefully, and prevent its next
inevitable phase, the armed phase, which will happen if the young
leaders of this movement begin to feel that no one is listening to them;
and that they have no other option than to defend themselves militarily
against the government’s use of force. We must never arrive at this
moment, Mr. President.
Therefore, it is important that all parties, from the federal
authorities to the new Biafrans, show good faith and meet and listen to
each other. President Buhari ought to take the initiative to meet
because he is the president – the adult in the room. Otherwise, he might
just have a great, complex situation unfolding in startling ways before
him. It is not possible to “kill Biafra” with threats. We have said
this before. It needs repeating. (Vanguard