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Of Biafra, Warmongers And The Rest Of Us By Francis Kizito Obeya
The last Easter Sunday was a very lonely day for me. Six time zones and two oceans away from my family is enough to make lonesomeness a major problem for those of us in the diasporas. When one is not working, one is forced to think of home and when you think of a home so far away you long for it and its inaccessibility only breeds loneliness. I was determined to be of good cheer that day and so I hopped on the web looking for chat rooms where lonely souls like us hang out, meeting strangers and having conversations with them, opening our secrets to them secure in the knowledge that we may never meet or get to know each other personally.
I was in the soccer chat room jubilating the victory of our Eagles over Gabon, lamenting the trouncing my adopted country was getting from Mexico and having a mudslinging match with a bunch of British hooligans who dared to say that our Eagles sucked. All the Africans in the room rounded on them and the amount of cyber lingual firepower they received made them slither back to wherever they came from. I had never been as proud of Africa as I was that day. The unity, the boldness, the intrepidity the guys displayed that day was just awesome. A generation earlier was taught to say “apes obey” and “yessir massa” It is always a joy to have a generation that fights back.
Then a message appeared on my window.” hello.” It read. I replied in kind. He wanted to know my asl (age sex and location) which I also gave him. I then asked him where he came from and he replied,”Biafra.”
I have met a lot of Ibos in my life. I grew up among them; attended school with them and at every stage of my life, there has always been an Ibo man or woman who was instrumental to my well being . I have also partaken in Biafran discussions but I have never heard anyone bluntly declare to come from the recovered breakaway region as this gentleman so openly confessed. I was determined to hear more of this. I told him that I have never heard of that country before and wondered what part of Africa it was located and he told me that it was situated in a region just south of Nigeria. He then referred me to a website where I can receive more information if I had any reason to doubt him. I thanked him, exchanged a few pleasantries and then we said our goodbyes. After dismissing the man, I went to the website and received the biggest shock of my life.
This site was just pregnant with all sorts of propaganda material that any experienced eye would declare as raw materials for whipping up sentiments for war. They claim that their mission is to realize the sovereign state of Biafra through peaceful means but the language used was by no means peaceful. Headquartered in the United States, the managers of this site support all the activities of the Movement of the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and they seemed very careful about revealing their identities since no names were mentioned except the names of those already known in public circle. Prominent among such names were Chief Emeka Ojukwu and Dr Ralph Uwazuruike. The site was a minefield of information, maps, flags of old Biafra, the Biafran anthem and even a distorted account of the Nigerian civil war as well as the area of land that is actually Biafra( the Benue, Ibo speaking areas, and some parts of Oyo and osun) Going by what was been asserted on that site, all regions south of the Benue River belonged to Biafra.
Although they appear under the aegis of peace, the words, the posture, the inferences are all by no means peaceful. People who laud all forms of civil disobedience (violent or non-violent) and encourage radical thoughts aimed at disintegrating Nigeria instead of finding ways to improve the country cannot convince anyone that theirs is a peaceful cause. By official count, over a million people died in the Nigerian civil war. We have lived in peace since then barring religious riots and political /student’s demonstrations in which lives have been lost and property damaged. The solution to these unfortunate incidents cannot be found in another war nor in secession but in the improvement of the security apparatus to quell riots and also the change of hearts among brothers (whether we like it or not we are all one). We need reeducation in learning to tolerate each other despite our religious and tri bal differences. I fail to see how secession from Nigeria can stop religious riots or tribal conflicts.
The life of the average Nigerian is already hard enough as it is. The same hardship afflicts the Hausa, the Yoruba, the Ibo and the same multitude of other tribes. Is it unemployment? Unemployment has spared no tribe. We all graduated university and can find no jobs. Is it lack of healthcare? The situation is the same since every village in Nigeria cannot boast of adequate primary healthcare. Is it corruption? Do we not all have thieves from every tribe looting blind the treasury? Can the Ibos claim that there men were marginalized in the jamboree of mismanagement of public funds that is Nigeria? Please let’s get real. Personally, I feel that if there was a Biafra today, it would only be a Nigerian twin where corruption is business as usual and t he rich gets richer while the poor gets poorer.
How much of biafraland .com does the Federal government know about? If she does, has the United States Government been informed of these persons of interest who are waiting in the wings to cause further destabilization in West Africa? A Nigerian war will be a war that the world cannot afford and so this site should be investigated and its mangers brought to book before it is too late. A black hen must be caught before nightfall. When people talk and romanticize war, it is because they have not experienced one before but war is not a theater where you take your friends to have a nice time. It is foolhardy to imagine that Biafra will be won by a peaceful means and to think of Biafra is to think of war. Personally, I believe that people who are comfortable in foreign countries should not instigate the average Nigerian who is just struggling to live from day to day into worsening his situation and losing the little he has acquired by hinting at war. If a war broke out today, I wonder how many “concerned Biafrans” will leave the comfort that is obodo oyibo to come and fight in it. Live and let live.
Conclusively, I would like to declare that I have had dealings with Hausas, Ibos, Yoruba, Edos, Ijaws, Urhobos, Efiks, Tangales, and hundreds of people from all parts of Nigeria. I have discovered them to have so much in common. They feel the same pains; when they are happy they laugh, when they are sad they cry, when their children die, the cry; when a child is born they are happy. Their young men and women are all over the big cities looking for a means to a better life. We feel the same pains we feel the same fears so who is one tribe to claim superiority over another. Who is one man to call his neighbor “anofia” or “nyammiri” or ‘ajaokuta mam’omi”. You may call me a dreamer and you may say that there can never be peace in Nigeria until we fall apart and disintegrat e but I tell you that the solution will never be found in that. The solution lies in a radical change in our way of thinking, a resolve to fight against corruption, to foster unity among people of different religious beliefs and the acceptance of all people in the big one Nigeria regardless of wherever they may come from.
Pennsylvania, USA
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