The fresh agitation for the elusive Republic of Biafra is on the front burner of stakeholders and political analysts.
Reviewing the genesis of the Biafran story and the continuing agitation for the elusive Republic, political analyst, lawyer and cleric, Barrister Godwin Patrick James of Citadel Chambers in Lagos reaffirms that the that the Biafran course was a rebellion.
“Rebellion is what you do against existing structure; when it succeeds, it becomes a revolution. For a revolution to succeed from rebellion the leader must carry all people concerned along. Nobody can succeed in bringing about a revolution without having the full backing of everyone who has a stake in its outcome.”
Stating categorically that the Biafran project failed because of sabotage within, James explains the intricacy of the plot:
“What triggered off the Ojukwu rebellion was that the Ibos were killed and Ojukwu sympathized with his people directly and they decided to opt out of the existing structure. What he didn’t consider was that the declaration of Biafra was not about Ibos alone; it included the Rivers and the then Cross Rivers but Ibos looked at it as purely an Ibo affair. There wasn’t enough education as to what the Cross Rivers and the Rivers people stand to benefit.”
Though his views may be contrary to Ndigbo as a people being an Aqua Ibomite, Nze Chidi Mbanefo who came to Umudim with an 11 man team from Amechi in Enugu State to mourn Ojukwu during his interment did not disagree with the lawyer.
“I was in that war from the beginning and I know now that the attitude of we Ibos who were actually affected and whom the non Ibos sympathised with did not show that we need these people as partners and there wasn’t any effort to even educate them as to the agenda they (the Ojukwu team) were following.
“There was this tendency that we saw the Biafra cessation as a conquest; like to say ‘we Ibos have been living in the North now let us carve out our own, not only us alone we’ll take the Rivers and the others.’
“Ojukwu was young and his decision was made in response to the grief we Ibos found ourselves in, but in the issue of succeeding he needed to articulate his ideas to the Rivers people and the then Cross River people as to what they stand to benefit and how their individual entity as a people will be protected and preserved.
“But the manifestation of that time showed that the Biafra concept did not consider them as being entitled to that individual entity and rights; the cessation gave every impression that they (River and Cross River people) will be consumed and taken over by what was then looked upon as an all Ibo project.
“I remember that when Biafran soldiers took over their places, their leaders were detained and able bodied men were commandeered and forced into the Biafra armed forces; also, they were commanded they must fight for the Biafran course.
“With that fear in mind, the people in River and Cross River states were determined and looking forward to how they will be saved from this particular position which they saw as something that will put them in perpetual bondage; and it became the opening way through which Nigerian soldiers were invited and they infiltrated into Biafra.
“Remember that they entered from Calabar and the Rivers people were giving them cover and succor while the people inside were giving information outside, so the heavy sabotage based on fear of self preservation and existence, some people from Rivers, and Cross Rivers now weakened the strength of the Biafra course because it was not a battle that was fought by the whole zone that were carved out to be Biafra or the former Eastern region.”
A Nanka based professor who asked for anonymity because of his position in the Ndigbo front agreed that the idea Ojukwu had was not sold to people who were outside the caucus.
“Captain Effiong and Okokondem (both of whom were of the opposing region) would have understood what Ojukwu’s agenda was all about, but time was not on their side to enlighten the greater majority – and the military might both men had was so limited.
“They were also limited in funds and in trained personnel; people who applied were traders who had to be brushed up and sent forth the next day, so the machinery to sell the idea to people was not there. Therefore, the people that were part and parcel of the area that was carved out to be Biafra did not understand what the whole thing was about; all they understood was that Ibos have taken over their territory!”
Another loophole surfaced when Biafra lost international support. Barrister James pinned it to genuine complaints from non-Ibo communities and that caught the sympathy of Britain and the international community.
“In the beginning, Biafra had international support because Ibos were being massacred in the North; the traditional universal acceptability that every group is entitled to their self-determination based on those fundamental things which is part of the universal human right and so on were the factors.
biafra map“But when they started hearing of killings, detention and forcing none Ibo people into the Biafra army; complaints of forced labour coming from people who were not of the pure Ibo stock gave Britain and the international community a rethink.
“Especially also, there was this suspicion that this thing may not be outside the Igbo’s intent to corner all the oil wells that’s in the Rivers that are the potential source of the nation’s wealth: that was why the people that were supporting the Biafran course were no more of the British regime but were of the Cot ‘Devour and the French stock.
“Of course, this brought some coloration because at that time, the killings of Ibos in the North had stopped, so the questions Biafra leaders could not answer was, what do you want to get now that they’re no longer killing your people?”
It would be recalled that In his book, You must set forth at dawn, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka tried to persuade Ojukwu to fine tune the project Biafra to examine the issues and expand it to cover a wider interest because if that is the structure, the Yorubas can also join in the cessation because what was happening to Ibos then could as well happen to the Yorubas or any tribe at all.
“Chief Chukadibia Okafor who raised this point at Igwe Orizu’s palace pointed out that because the Ojukwu’s agenda was not wide enough, it held no appeal to none Ibos in the same old Eastern region and that accounts for why the cessation failed.”
But Okafor saw reasons why Ojukwu needed to be secretive in keeping his agenda close to his heart.
“Ojukwu didn’t know whom to trust; there were enemies all around and he did not have enough time on hand to begin to evaluate Wole Soyinka or the Western Nigeria’s real intention; so he decided to follow that narrow path by keeping his true vision to himself – but it backfired because after a time, they were beclouded with lack of personnel, lack of support and lack of funds compounded with the sheer lack of logistics of even understanding how to cover the wider area outside the real identified true Ibo stock; so all these complications brought in things that caused everybody to say look, let’s bring this thing to an end.”
The sympathy everyone is now attaching to his demise is that people are now beginning to look at the ideas that Ojukwu fought for without looking at the means he wanted to implement it. It was actually the means that wrought a lot of issues and misunderstandings. Of course the idea has always been good; but Nze Patrick Onyekwere who survived the Biafra war has an inner knowledge of why the cessation failed.
“Even we Ibos at home when the war was declared were not fully given to the cessation idea anyway. True we didn’t like the killing of our people and all that but we didn’t have the full reasons of how we will govern ourselves as a Republic.
“Also a lot of our people living outside who were forced to return home were actually coming to the East to stay for the first time; they have lived outside the Ibo land for a very long time with some of them born in their second generation in the North so they themselves are in a way strangers even to the Biafra course.
“To be truthful most of them were not interested in the war; they desired to go back to their normal lives in the place they have been all their lives. They’ve lost contact with people they’re used to; they’ve lost funds, lost their different trades so even before the war made any head way they became war weary so soon and they wanted this thing to change; so the sabotage was not necessarily from the Rivers or Cross Rivers alone but from within our people inside.”
An air force personnel who was at Udi airstrip when the war was called off, Captain Gideon Ikeguonu revealed that the power struggle started even among the Biafrans as to who should be close to Ojukwu and who will be in charge; that’s why there were executions even within the Biafrans.
“Remember that a tribunal was set up and some officers were executed because it was believed that they wanted to sabotage the Biafran dream; so there was internal conflict from the onset.”
0 comments