Neo-Biafra: The absurdity of neo-Biafranism

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The absurdity of neo-Biafranism

Neo-Biafrans and the Nigerian state

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The absurdity of neo-Biafranism

By Tochukwu Ezukanma - Lagos Nigeria (The SUN).

With the ravages the first attempt by the Igbo and other peoples of Eastern Nigeria to declare their region an independent country of Biafra wrought on Eastern Nigeria, especially, Igbo land, it is perplexing that some Igbo are still agitating for Biafra. The previous attempt at secession dealt the Igbo a bludgeon blow: it decimated the youth, the flower and promise, of Igbo land, starved more than one million to death, left a horde of sorrowing widows and grief-stricken mothers, etc. And worst of all, it left deep and raw psychological scars on the Igbo. It left a talented, proud and progressive people paranoid and wallowing in self-pity and feeling of victimhood.

The earlier Igbo leaders realized that one Nigeria is most beneficial to the Igbo, the better. Our boundless resourcefulness, barging industriousness and effervescent entrepreneurial spirit were to spill beyond the confines of our regional borders, and take us to the ends of Nigeria. When we wholehearted pursued this one Nigeria strategy, we excelled in every facet of Nigerian social life. We, even, became giddy with success that, in our triumphalism, we boasted of dominating not only Nigeria but the whole of Africa. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu rejected the one Nigeria policy and opted for secession.

Secession was a colossal waste of human efforts and lives; unavoidably, it ended in unmitigated disaster. Following those nightmare days, when the Igbo, defeated, battered and tattered, surrendered unconditionally and Igbo land laid completely prostrate, the Igbo made a phoenix-like resurgence. They again fanned out across the length and breadth of Nigeria and, once again, distinguished themselves across the entire spectrum of Nigerian life and gained the respect, confidence and admiration of other Nigerians. Neo-Biafran activism is distracting the Igbo and undermining our credibility. It portrays us as subversive elements and implacable, irredeemable rebels.

I am baffled by the father of neo-Biafranism, Ralph Uwazurike, of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) who said that, "When I started talking about Biafra, I did not know what I was doing. But, as democracy allowed me the right to express myself, I started talking about it, and as, people started listening, I continued".

That is, by his own admission, he started talking aimlessly because democracy guarantees his freedom of expression.

Nnamdi Kanu of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) does not sound like a man that does not know what he is doing. But when it comes to his reasons for secession, he makes no sense; the absurdity that is the hallmark of neo-Biafranism becomes evident. As to why the Igbo should secede from Nigeria, Kanu said, "all the Igbo are getting in Nigeria is punishment, death and disaster". This is tendentious rubbish. Life is generally hard for the average Nigerian (not just the Igbo). The average Nigerian is buffeted by poverty, ignorance and misery. He is a victim of police brutality, official corruption, anti-people policies of the government, etc. To insinuate that only the Igbo are victims of the horrible realities of life in Nigeria is falsehood. All Nigerians, irrespective of ethnicity, are victims. Secondly, the Boko Haram terrorism that has visited much death and disaster on Nigerians is not an anti-Igbo crusade; it has not targeted the Igbo exclusively.

He said: "In Igbo land, you will see misery upon misery. Igbo land is decaying. We are not (just) marginalized, we are enslaved". Yes, like in many other parts of Nigeria, there is heartrending decay in parts of Igbo land. But the state governments, more than any other level of government, are responsible for the decays in these states.

The rot and squalor that pervade the city of Aba are ineffable; impossible to describe with any degree of accuracy. The rot in Aba and other parts of Igbo land is a testament to the failure of Igbo governors. Like most Nigerian governors, Igbo governors are not so much committed to the welfare of their people. To blame the failure of Igbo governors on the federal government is cheap propaganda. The Igbo are not enslaved.

The leaders of MASSOB and IPOB have a false sense of messianism, they think they are the looked-for liberators of the Igbo. They invented enemies and demonize them, and are inciting the deepest hatred, amongst their followers, against them. They are preaching hate and inflaming the passion of Igbo youths against non-Igbo and Igbo opposed to secession. This is extremely dangerous as youthful idealism and exuberance can be fashioned by rabble-rousers into veritable tools of overwhelming hate, violence and destruction. In their intolerance, they castigate every Igbo opposed to secession, calling them vagabonds and saboteurs.

Nnamdi Kanu reportedly instructed his followers to "begin massive destruction of everything around you, if you do not hear my voice on the radio for up to four days." So, he believes that his demise must spell doom for all, as it should ignite massive destruction of everything around?

MASSOB and IPOB pose serious threat to the peace of the country and the wellbeing of the Igbo. They need to be rejected by the Igbo. The former attempt to create Biafra was a saga of human misery, the next will be a tale of collective suicide.

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Neo-Biafrans and the Nigerian state

Written by Ayo Olukotun - Punch.

Ayo Olukotun

For much of its history, the Nigerian state has been administrated, rather than governed. Task forces, reshuffles, and the edicts of rulers all implemented with immediate effect have been the familiar languages of Nigeria’s successive administrative rulers.

In short supply is the strategic mindset which sets direction, creates the framework for renewing the federal bargain in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Related to this is the mantra approach to national unity built on the war-time slogan, “To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done” or “The unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable.” It is this mental framework which explains why our leaders believe that by detaining Nnamdi Kanu, the director of Radio Biafra, which evokes the pirate “Radio Kudirat” of the 1990s, the rising Neo-Biafran groundswell will simply vanish. As is becoming increasingly obvious, strong arm tactics, or even judicial murder, as in the case of Ken Saro-Wiwa, merely postpone the day of reckoning for a nation that refuses to confront its true identity.

A recent book on comparative federalism, edited by influential American political scientists, states in its introductory section that “Nigeria is the only federation discussed in this book whose future is uncertain.” That was not revealing an obscure reality, but pinpoints the vulnerability of a nation state, where the wide play of centrifugal forces is the norm, rather than the exception. Professor Richard Joseph, it was, who not so long ago referred to a statement made by a Northern politician to the effect that several of today’s rulers appear to lack an instinctual understanding of how Nigeria works. That same insight was articulated by a former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the late Ishaya Audu, who remarked jokingly that Nigeria can be likened to the flowing Hausa dress “babanriga”. When you adjust it on the left, the right side of the dress threatens to come unstuck, and begins to flap in the winds.

To be sure, Biafra today is little more than nostalgia for a republic that in reality was far from the ideal which it professed. The youths agitating for it, with a touch of Nollywood eccentricity, contacted Biafra through a garbled version of history mixed with a huge dose of myth, since history is no longer taken seriously in our schools. Biafra, to clarify, was an autocratic state suffused with internal contradiction such as, for instance, the repression of non-Igbo minorities who were forcibly conscripted into its bastion. It aspired to an alluring socialism in the shape of the “Ahiara Declaration”, but backslid, in the end, to a military oligarchy. Founded on ethnic self-determination, it became little more than a showpiece of the ravages of warlordism.

Its contradictions notwithstanding, it represented the aspiration of self-determination, ethnic justice and true federalism in the larger context of a Nigeria which almost routinely denied these rights.

Calling Nigeria a Zoo as one of the Neo-Biafran leaders did may appear unpolished, but it does underline the arbitrariness of successive leaders, the syndrome of rotating power through the whim of autocrats, rather than civilised and agreed procedures. It also underlines the exploitation of techniques of blackmail employed by disaffected ethnic groups in order to force their demands of power rotation on a system lacking firm procedures. In this perspective, the Yoruba, it is said, invoked the June 12 movement and the National Democratic Coalition, to procure a Yoruba presidency, the Niger Delta used the Ogoni struggle and the militancy of their militias to achieve a South-South presidency, the Hausa allegedly employed Boko Haram in its early incarnation to force upon the nation the need to restitute northern marginalisation. In the same vein, or so the argument runs, the Igbo political class are nurturing their own terror instruments to draw global attention to the historic neglect of the Igbo, and to win the coveted price of an Igbo presidency.

In other words, if Nigeria is indeed a zoo, it suggests that the rule of combat is the brandishing of physical strength and threat to employ the Samson option, which is to bring the roof crashing down on everyone, if grievances are not heeded. But Nigeria need not be a showpiece of dysfunction in which disaffection can only be rectified by the invention of terror. Only a political class hooked on short term remedies can afford to live in the kind of squalor in which nothing can be taken for granted. For there is the possibility, that the wild dogs trained for the purpose of raising the social thermometer and compelling attention to grievances, may be impossible to silence, even when the initial objective of resolving a few grievances has been achieved.

Evidently, the cry of Igbo marginalisation and a return to Biafra have been with us for some time. Even the Ikemba of Nnewi, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, in partial recognition of the activities of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, called for “a Biafra of the mind.” Presumably, he meant by this that there was a need to tackle the structural inequities that resulted in the creation of Biafra. Talking about structure, Nigeria would have been a much better and greater country had the Aburi Accord which in effect prescribed a confederal state or at least, a weaker centre with powers devolved to subnational authorities, been implemented. Recall for example, that the competitive regionalism of the First Republic in which the centre was coequal to the regions produced accelerated development and is today seen as the golden age of Nigerian federalism. It is a rebuke of successive leaders that they have failed to engineer consensus around a more federal union, than the country had ever enjoyed.

The exception to this appears to the National Constitution Conference of 2014, which took far-reaching decisions in the direction of a more equitable federalism. It is not a perfect document, as it contains some glaring contradictions, such as the recommendation to create more states. But it remains an important starting point for reinventing and making more equitable, Nigerian federalism. For example, if the centre is weakened, the recurrent agitations by ethnic groups to control the Presidency will go down, while the federating units will become the locus and agency of development. Until this happens, we can expect unending wails about internal colonialism on the part of disadvantaged ethnic groups.

Important too, is the need for leaders, especially the President to reinforce the symbols of nationhood, through gestures, appointments, and policies. There is a link between some of the early appointments made by President Muhammadu Buhari, believed to have disfavoured the Igbo who did not vote for him, and the resurgence of the pro-Biafran movement. The point to take home is the need for our leaders to be conscious of the national history of interethnic strife, and a costly civil war. They should also bear in mind that perceptions once formed are difficult to erase.

Finally, the authorities should display a more sense of humour and tolerance in handling dissent, in a democratic setting. Imagine how easily pressure can go down if Buhari were to invite Kanu, for a chat in the Presidential Villa as opposed to the current official belligerence.