They were Nigerian youths and members of the Indigenous People Of Biafra, IPOB. Stampede into disillusionment by the spectra of institutional injustice by the Nigerian State against their nation, they organised and started agitating for self determination.
Their rank and file have been brutally and serially decimated and repressed by a violent, murderous and insensitive Nigerian state. Scores are dead already by controlled live bullets from the guns of state agents. Their leaders are illegally locked away in a lonely cell somewhere in a dingy jail. They can hardly , in all honesty be said to constitute security risk to the Nigerian state.
Yesterday, they came out to peacefully rally in support of the new president of the United States of America. Rightly or wrongly, they believe the fate of their agitation and wrestling with the Nigerian state lies with President Donald Trump.
They wrote the police and state secret service , seeking approval and protection during the peaceful rally. Their letters were received. They were not advised not to rally. Their letters though received, were not acknowledged. The Nigerian State had another sinister agenda for them.
They came out on the D day. Peaceful, organised and not violent. Unknown to them, the Nigerian State had determined that the blood of an Igbo man is not worth any value. They laid in wait for them. Their war time issued assault weapons drawn. These innocent Igbo youths drew near, singing and oblivious of the looming death around the corner. When it came , it was too late.
They were brutally mauled down and hacked to death by Nigerian police and soldiers. Their only sin ; they were Igbos, an "inferior " federating nationality, doomed to a forced coexistence within a nation that has a serial loathing for their types and tribe.
Killing is not so easy as the innocent believe. If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? That shows that the genocide against Ndigbo is systematic and deliberate.
Our history as a nation is crammed with instances of death, murder and destructions where innocents Igbos were incinerated, stabbed, hanged, buried alive and shot down in the name of revenge and religion by other sections of the country. Yes other section of the country by default and conspiratorial silence.
We are so use to the mass killing and murder of Igbos that we have relaxed into lethargy and accept every act of genocide against the Igbo nation as a national past time. Today, killing an Igbo man or woman in Nigeria is no longer a form of human debasement. It is the norm. A kind of twisted acceptance of a macabre dance of death in a nation whose soul is turn head down.
I could never have imagined that firing and killing 11 innocent people on national television would actually seem so "easy", especially in the era of the 21st century. Is National entertainment as a nations now the killing of our Igbo brothers and sisters? or is killing our children entertaining to those whom we have elected to lead us ?
The actions of the Nigerian state as far as the Biafra agitation is concerned makes the push and prospect of armed conflict amongst the hot headed and radical segment of the Igbo youths attractive to even the moderates within them.
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed defenceless people.
This is sad but the billions of contracts the same Nigerian state awarded to ex militants in the Niger Delta of Nigeria as compensation for armed agitation makes the case for the logic that at least in Nigeria, all armed agitators have been victorious, and all unarmed agitators have been destroyed.
Was anybody else bothered by the sight of mine-resistant armoured vehicles and guns pointed at unarmed youths in Port Harcourt yesterday? Are we so use to the recurring spectra of genocide against the Igbo nation that "few more deaths" have become a common place event? Is our collective national conscience so dead that the wail and lamentation from the east has become some sort of music to our ears?
Any time state security agents shoot unarmed Biafran agitators, virtually our collective humanity shudders and stops.
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth. The truth here is that killing innocent people is always wrong - and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people; no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth.
No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people. The truth here is that the structure of the Nigerian state is skewed and tilted. It must be restructured, renegotiated and those who want out of the this forced Nigerian Union be allowed to go.
The case of the Biafra peaceful agitator appeals to me and have my sympathy and support. Right to self determination is an inalienable right. No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people. Not even the artificial unity of Nigeria.
For in reality, there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. We must rise up and call a spade a spade.
Kingsley Ughe, General Counsel, Joint Legal Action Aids, (JLAA)