Only recently, there have emerged a deluge of talks and writings about the crisis that predated the Biafra war, and of the war itself. These recent events remind us of how the darkness of that era fell across our landscape, and questioning, nonetheless, if there is any redemption in remembrance, and if there is any atonement whatsoever, left in us.
Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Okey Anueyiagu, Professor of Political Economy, public policy analyst and author of the book ‘Biafra, The Horrors of War, The Story of A Child Soldier’, is a contributor to USAfrica.
Ibrahim Bagangida, a former President of our country, and an active participant
in most of the events, gave us a brave book that lit the fires of inquisition, and if you may, of inquiry on the mysteries of our past. Then came the television interview of Yakubu Gowon, the presiding commander of some parts of the crisis, and of the war totally. Many writings and opinions began to emerge on the subject, all turning our attention to the symbols that dominated both the inextricable terror and the hope that ruled and ruined our lives under very violent tribulations.
It is evident that these recent activities have not prescribed any help for us to deal with our country’s sordid pasts or our present malaise of rage, anger, violence, hate, and amnesia. However, they have conditioned and forced us to acknowledge, if for anything, the horrors of the past and to even begin to see and perceive more clearly the mutant forms of our tribal and religious divides. I am, indeed afraid that we are not attuned to working our way toward truth-telling, forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration.
I have for many years been an advocate on the subject of the Biafra war. My duty has been that of trying to utilize my personal experiences of the crisis and of the war to illustrate as best as I can, the cruel violence that Biafrans experienced on a colossal scale then, and that which they continue to face on a continual basis. No matter what any pundit writes or says, there is no way to deny the agony that these people faced and are still enduring today. I think Imay have tried to achieve his goal in my book; Biafra, The Horrors of War, The Story of A Child Soldier. This book is an important reminder that the quest for a post-war society must pass through parts of our inconvenient history that some may have tried callously to bury or retell.
I will dare to challenge us Nigerians, and indeed the entire human race to join some of us in our necessary relentless battle to extract from our people that required truth, penitence, repentance and forgiveness. We must all show sorrow and regret for having done wrong as a means of moving deep into the broken heart of our long and disturbing brutal history. We must pause for a while, take deep breaths, and confront head-on, the reality of our lives and history, and importantly, as a paradoxical move seek to find redemptive transformation for a wounded and deformed country.
Even as my writings present disturbing imageries about our past and present, they are meant to bring hopeful meditation upon the ugliest and most barbaric practices in our country’s tortured history. I seek to tell the truth hoping that my courage in doing so will bring peace and solidarity to our people.
Now, I have a problem with those who have taken bold and dishonorable steps to revise the history of our country, especially those of the 1966 killings and of the war in Biafra that claimed the lives of well over 3 million innocent civilians.
The tone of these voices has been needlessly confident, and almost dismissive of the known history of what transpired. Emboldened by the false narratives they have created, they strive to protect and present their views as the truths.
They have challenged us and history to prove the open assertions of what happened in Biafra, claiming that there were no pogroms and no genocide. With their voices gaining strength and not loosing the indignities in their lies, they have blatantly refused to stick to pure historical facts and verifiable evidence, instead choosing romantic sentiments and falsehood.
Obessed with their lies, these history revisionists feed us with their narrative of Igbo-victimhood and genocide denialism. The tragedy is not that the Igbo near annihilation did not happen, but that these people have spent decades, if not more, perfecting and trying to actively ignore, destroy and erase the history of the Biafra war. To call their action “ignorance” is perhaps mild, because their ignorance is not accidental. It is the result of a deliberate effort to obliterate the Biafra story and its tragedies, and pander to the glorification of the victors and to their conquest mentality, and their bountiful harvest of the spoils of the war.
The fact that these history revisionists know the truths but choose to deny, ignore or retell them as a loaded pile of lies is disturbing. In doing damage to our history, they perpetrate and perpetuate ignorance, deceit and prejudice as they embrace lies and distortions in their narration of our history. As we strive to expose this shameful blindspot in the telling of our stories either as oral or written history, we must not seek apologies, but must seek truth from these purveyors of falsehood and hateful lies about our past.
Growing up as a child before we gained our independence and experiencing firsthand the rigors of decolonilization right from the living rooms of my home to our streets where we lined up eagerly waving the flag of independence, conveyed on me that spirit of pure nationalism; of a euphoria of the oneness of a people. Little did I know then as a child that my pride was anchored in a country that never saw certain members of the unit as deserving to dwell safely beneath that flag that I proudly waved as a child on Independence Day. That flag ceased to be a symbol to be proudly saluted once it became a fabric stitched in lies and drenched with the innocent blood of the Easterners who were in the forefront of the making of that same flag.
It has become very disturbing to now observe the efforts of some prominent people engaging in the distortion of our history to suit their personal interests.
They have conveniently conceived their lies by concealing the Nigerian system that consistently baptized the Easterners and particularly the Igbo with undeserved suffering and called it a deserved God’s will.
For these revisionists of our history, there is nothing new in their antics. The moment they began to put our sacred rule of history which is truth tellingunder attack, the insidious fear to speak or write the truth begin to filter into our ears and into our private thoughts corrupting our minds and sensibilities.
These people without any doubt possess the power to rewrite our history with grotesque false narratives and lies. They have the devilish power that can change the definition of the words we use to define truth and reality, and for these reasons, we must be very careful of their actions.
It is obvious as I point out in my aforementioned book that the enemy’s plan is to stifle our story by firstly banning the study of history in our schools, and then turn around and present their false narratives as the alternative history and forcing them, frantically down our throats. I must remind them that history is not only about our past. That it is about the present, and that we must all carry our history with us. That as our history is being rewritten and rebranded, it is our sacred duty to make accountable metaphors of our history by telling and writing it exactly how it happened without being afraid. We must all possess and have the courage and lucidity to challenge our country’s past and present, and the injustice that we have suffered.
From Yakubu Gowon to the many other minions both the hired and the misled who have made various dubious comments on the Biafra story, and by extension the Igbo question, the cynicism imbedded in their comments both oral and written has grossly exposed the lies and utter embellishment of the half-truths in such an embarrassing and reprehensive manner. Intentionally, I will refrain from joining issues personally with these revisionists and the plethora of lies that they have advanced, but will caution them to be mindful and considerate in their habitual obligation to see honesty and truth as impossibilities and antithesis of the game of uprightness in our lives. I am glad that many scholars have risen and dissected mercilessly the fatuous lies being propagated by the revisionists. Their willful adjudication of lies and untruths has been met with stiff resistance and with more accurate history of those events.
It seems that the history and the lessons of our past have been consigned in very narrow prisms, and left in the hands of people with devious and soiledmemories. Our history, it appears has been confiscated by the villainous fissiparous forces of division, hatred and false story-tellers whose lips and hands are dripping with very deadly lies and distortions.
To understand the gripping and memorable history of Nigeria, and so many vitriolic parts that have been denied its people, and told upside down by the revisionists, we must seek and stick to historical facts given by people who are the real participants in the events. We must seek and read books and the accounts of reliable people whose stakes were nothing personal – people like General Alexander Madiebo, Frederick Forsyth, General Philip Effiong, Major Adewale Ademoyega, Col. Ben Gbulie, Col. Patrick Anwuna, Col. Emmanuel Nwora Nwobosi, and many other dependable historical accounts of the coups, the pogrom and the genocide that are out there for discerning minds.
For those who have invoked the name of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in the revisionists quest to distort our history, I will take an extra step to put their lies to rest by reproducing some parts of Azikiwe’s 1949 speech which was as relevant then ait is important today: “Follow me in a kaleidoscopic study of the Ibo. Four million strong in manpower! Our agricultural resources include economic and food crops which are the bases of modern civilization — not to mention fruits and vegetables which flourish in the tropics! Our mineral resources include coal, lignite, lead, antimony, iron, diatomite, clay, oil, tin! Our forest products include timber of economic value, including iroko and mahogany! Our fauna and flora are marvels of the world! Our land is blessed by waterways of world renown, including the River Niger, Imo River, Cross River! Our ports are among the best known in the continent of Africa. Yet in spite of these natural advantages, which illustrate without doubt the potential wealth of the Ibo, we are among the least developed in Nigeria economically and we are so ostracized socially that we have become extraneous in the political institutions of Nigeria.
I have not come here today in order to catalogue the disabilities which the Ibo suffer in spite of our potential wealth, in spite of our teeming manpower, in spite of our vitality as an indigenous African people. Suffice it to say that it would enable you to appreciate the manifest destiny of the Ibo if I enumerated some of the acts of discrimination against us as
a people. Socially, the British Press has not been sparing in describing us as ‘the most hated in Nigeria.’Politically, you have seen, with your own eyes, how 4 million people were disenfranchised by the British for decades because of our alleged backwardness. We have never been represented on the Executive Council, and not one Ibo town has had the franchise despite the fact that our native political institutions are essentially democratic — in fact, more democratic than any other nation in Africa in spite of our extreme individualism.
Economically, we have laboured under onerous taxation measures without receiving sufficient social amenities to justify them. We have been taxed without representation, and our contributions in taxes have been used to develop other areas out of proportion to the incidence of taxation in those areas. It would seem that we are becoming a victim of economic annihilation through a gradual but studied process. What are my reasons for cataloguing these disabilities and interpreting them as calculated to emasculate us and so render us impotent to assert our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
The keynote in this address is self-determination for the Ibo. Let us establish an Ibo State based on linguistic and ethnic factors, enabling us to take our place side by side with the other linguistic and ethnic groups which make up Nigeria and the Cameroons. With the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Yoruba, Ibibio (Iboku), Angus (Bi-Rom), Tiv, Ijaw, Edo, Urhobo, ltsekiri, Nupe, Igalla, Ogaja, Gwari, Duala, Bali and other nationalities asserting their rightto self-determination — each as separate as the fingers but united with others as a part of the same hand, we can reclaim Nigeria and the Cameroons from this degradation which it has pleased the forces of European imperialism to impose upon us. Therefore, our meeting today is of momentous importance in the history of the Ibo in that opportunity has been presented to us to heed the call of a despoiled race, to answer the summons to redeem a ravished continent, to rally forces to the defence of a humiliated country and to arouse national consciousness in a demoralized but dynamic nation.”
Also of equal importance is General Emeka Ojukwu’s speech from the Ivory Coast, portions of which I will reproduce here: “In 1966 it became clear that the central authority was unable and unwilling to fulfill the terms for which it was established. Right under her nose the people of Eastern Nigeria, now Biafrans, were subjected to such acts of barbarism, such atrocities that gave clear indication of a genocide that was to come.
The people of Biafra, in full consultation and believing that the only guarantee for security lay in the resumption of the sovereignty, mandated me to proclaim their territory the sovereign and independent Republic of Biafra, and to take up arms if need be to protect the lives and property of our people and the independence was thus proclaimed.On July 6, 1967, the Federal forces crossed the boundaries of Biafra and attacked her defenseless populace.
We had relied on the conscience of the world to respect the rights of our people to self-determination and security. We have been frustrated by an international conspiracy against the interest of the African. Yet, believing in the justice of our cause and the ultimate triumph of truth over falsehood, outnumbered and outgunned, we have grimly held back the unrelenting enemy for three grueling years with our bare hands. We have taken steps to alert the world to the real fears of genocide at the hands of the Nigerians.
Nigeria’s continuing efforts have always been directed at domesticating the conflict in order to apply the final solution to the Biafran problem away from the glare of an inquisitive world. The sole motive behind Nigeria’s determination to draw an iron curtain over Biafra and exclude international observers, relief agencies, journalists whom they have not carefully picked themselves, is to make sure that the atrocities they will certainly carry out in Biafra is unseen and unreported in the world press.
Genocide, I repeat, is not an internal affair of Nigeria, and it is the clear duty of those powers who have armed and helped Nigeria to gain victory over Biafra to step in and persuade Gowon to allow international agencies and observers to enter Biafra to feed the hungry, to heal the sick and to save a whole people from complete annihilation.
As a people we have endured as only giants endure. We have fought as heroes fight. We have dared as only gods dare. We are disillusioned by the world’s insensitivity to the plight of our people. Yet because our cause is just we believe we have not lost the war, only that the battlefield has changed. We are convinced that Biafra will survive. Biafra was born out of the blood of innocents slaughtered in Nigeria during the pogroms of 1966. Biafra will ever live, not as a dream but as the crystallization of the cherished hopes of a people who see in the establishment of this territory a last hope for peace and security.”These historical accounts present but a fraction of the Igbo story and of the correct history of Biafra which when boldly told will be a metaphor for Nigeria’s crucifixion of the Igbo people. No amount of lies will alter the window that best reveals the atrocities and the genocide of that era. The vast majority of the Igbo who perished and of those who survived, had no choice in their death and suffering. Yet, they took the pain and agony with equanimity and transformed them into triumphant courage in endurance and perseverance with which to confront the grave sin and the continuing deliberate obliteration of their story.
Just as the Germans must never forget the Holocaust, Nigerians must never forget the Pogrom and Genocide. The danger of forgetting our ugly violent past may be tolerated, but the action of those who remember it, but are consumed by hate and spite, and are bent on rewriting it with lies, is intolerable. We must never allow these revisionists to distort our history and separate themselves from the sins of their past, but must compel them to confront that history that exposes the sins of Nigeria against Biafra, and the continuing persecution of the Igbo by their fellow citizens.
For the millions who suffered the grim fate in Biafra, and for the survivors, I must presume that they would have asked: “What is the meaning of this unspeakable Igbo suffering – suffering so agonizing, so painful, so deep and enduring that words cannot even begin to describe” At the same instance, both the wretchedness and the transcendent spirit of endurance that kept the people from being destroyed and obliterated is today evident as they still struggle against odds that the revisionists and humanity are denying.
The Biafra Genocide is Nigeria’s Original Sin. From the beginning, Nigeria has struggled and battled to reconcile the values of equality, equity and freedom as espoused and enshrined in its many constitutions and founding documents. But the Biafra genocide has been a deep wound and a manifest flaw that marred these constitutional assumptions. No matter what anyone thinks, the genocide has warped the prospects of ever viewing this country as reconcilable with the realities of proportionate coexistence and peace and prosperity.Despite efforts by some patriotic members of Nigeria’s leadership to bring about some semblance of equality in the system, it has proved to be one of the most difficult problems of Nigeria as the persistence of tribalism, nepotism, corruption, cronyism, nativism, greed, authoritarianism, and wickedness is unabetting. In the wake of all these malaise, healing and justice can never be achieved when our history revisionists and distortionists are on the prowl with piercing intensity.
To a remarkable extent, the revisionists intensified onslaught on our history, has lit the fire of resistance to their lies and misinformation, galvanizing vocalized truth-telling in response to the callousness of their perfidious deeds.
If these lies were intended to instill silence and passivity, they have provided opposite effect by inspiring true Igbo blood and other well-meaning people to rise in defiance, and cast off these well-planned, properly orchestrated and choreographed fierce attack on our story and history.
Denying us the correct history of our past, is cruel and injurious, as it constitutes a shameful obliteration of our civil, constitutional and moral principles and rights. It is an ultimate destruction of our goals and aspiration to the triumph of equity, fairness, empathy, justice and truthfulness. To do so, is to deny us our right to freedom, peace of mind and emancipation which are embedded in the knowledge of truth, and not in the rush to rubbish and distort our history. People who laboriously and with mythical myopism weave concocted stories about our country’s history are our true enemies that are responsible for our continuing failure at national reconciliation, forgiveness, cohesion, healing and growth.
