Biafra, A National Risk: Unless Something Is Done

The group called the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has since staged a long walk protest from all the crannies of South east of Nigeria to celebrate its independence remembrance day in Enugu on the 30 th May 2008. The walk, which started on the 20 th of May, has recorded hiccups as well as success. The success was that the fearless group carried out the protest they have been announcing for a long period of time, without the Nigerian government paying heed to the people’s clarion calls. The Nigerian security agents staged a vibrant attack to destabilize the agonic crusaders. The Nigerian police, in particular, went on the exercise of removing Biafran flags the MASSOB hoisted in the southeast regions and tore them into pieces. But did somebody, an elder statesman, whose name and surname started with A and E, not say, “Let us break Nigeria now” recently?

A friend of mine said that why the police had the power to do what they have just done was as a result of the oath of office the south east governors took before they assumed office: to protect their states and serve Nigeria in all fairness and equity. But we have seen the oath our leaders take in guise of democracy. Democracy is a form of government that breeds kleptomanias and train professional election riggers, and also sets the powerful to humiliate the weak. The United States of America is culpable of this. It has tainted or vilified its moral conscience but still stands erect as an upright democratic nation. From Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, the USA owns the world apology for what it has done in these countries - all in the name of democracy.

Like the USA have done in Iraq and other humiliated countries of the world by the same USA, the Nigerian government is perhaps happy for the kidnappings, vandalism of pipelines and heavily armed militant groups threatening the southern coast of Nigeria, the world's eighth-largest producer of crude oil, because the Nigerian government wants the unity of Nigeria but does not want in earnest the emancipation of that Nigerian region in the activities of things.

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The old south east of Nigeria now polarized as south-south and south-east has not known peace since the creation of the nation we know as Nigeria today, in 1960. The United States having squandered its moral authority. If any remains, it ought to be targeted toward the crisis heating up in the oil-rich Niger Delta, and the Nigerian government might be so happy if that should occur.

The Obasanjo-led government, 1999 to 2007, left bequeaths in the south-south-east zones of the federation. But most indelible was the killings of the people of Odi and the killings of Biafrans in Okigwe and other parts of the country in their peaceful protests. The Odi massacre was condemned by international community and human rights lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi nearly prosecuted Obasanjo for human rights abuses in Odi.

The envy of the government was that the region is Nigeria's cash cow, accounting for more than 75 percent of the country's export earnings? And the government does not want the people of this region to speak out following the billions in oil profits that have gone into the pockets of Nigeria's leaders? But the region that owns the wealth is— indeed, has gone just about everywhere but back to the poverty-stricken condition. Justifiable anger has turned into armed rage – both on the side of the government and on the side of the owners of the resources.

We can recall that the international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières ("Doctors Without Borders") came out of the suffering in Biafra during a crisis in Nigeria – between Nigeria and Biafra. French medical volunteers, in addition to Biafran health workers and hospitals, were subjected to attacks by the Nigerian army, and witnessed civilians being murdered and starved by the blockading forces. The same thing that we have seen Nigeria does to any group that agitates for their right. A French doctor, Bernard Kouchner, also witnessed these events. It was particularly the huge number of starving children in Biafra and when he returned to France, he publicly criticized the Nigerian government of Nigeria and the Red Cross for their seemingly complicit behaviour. With the help of other French doctors, Kouchner put Biafra in the media spotlight and called for an international response to the situation. These doctors were led by Kouchner, concluded that a new aid organization was needed that would ignore political/religious boundaries and prioritize the welfare of victims. We can remember that in their book Smallpox and its Eradication, Fenner and colleagues describe how vaccine supply shortages during the Biafra smallpox campaign led to the development of the focal vaccination technique, later adopted worldwide by the World Health Organization, which led to the early and cost effective interruption of smallpox transmission in west Africa and elsewhere.

As if that was not a enough, we can recall also that on 29 May 2000, the Lagos Guardian newspaper reported that the now ex-president Olusegun Obasanjocommuted to retirement the dismissal of all military persons who fought for the breakaway state of Biafra during Nigeria's 1967-1970 civil war. In a national broadcast, he said the decision was based on the belief that "justice must at all times be tempered with mercy". We are not even talking about the violence between Christians and Muslims (usually Igbo Christians and Hausa or Fulani Muslims), which has been incessant since the end of the civil war in 1970. And today, there is allegation in Nigeria that there was a treaty signed by dictator Ibrahim Babangida to Islamize Nigeria, and no one has crucified any person for that. But crucifications have been meted out to the people of old south eastern region for speaking out for their right. Only God will concluded this, because human beings have been condemning this carnage against southeasterners.

Record had it that in July 2006 the Center for World Indigenous Studies reported that government sanctioned killings were taking place in the southeastern city of Onitsha, because of a shoot-to-kill policy directed toward Biafran loyalists, particularly members of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). People have said that Nigeria is the most-populous country in Africa, and after South Africa, home to sizable Western investments and investors. We owe something to the communities from whom we profit. That's the moral argument.

In the three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years, Biafrans built bombs, built rockets, designed and built their own delivery systems. They guided their rockets, guided them far, and guided them accurately. For three years, blockaded without hope of imports, they maintained engines, machines, and technical equipment. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals’ refined petrol in their back gardens, built and maintained airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment. They spoke to the world through a telecommunications system engineered by local ingenuity. The world heard them and spoke back to them. They built armoured cars and tanks. They modified aircraft from trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In three years of freedom, they had broken the technological barrier. In three years, they became the most civilized; the most technologically advanced black people on earth.

A ccounts had it that the U.S. is Nigeria's No. 2 oil customer, right behind Britain. For those monitoring the barrel price of oil, much the way mortgage interest rates were once followed, the 2 million barrels of oil pumped out daily from the Delta is a critical part of the equation. Seattle and other parts of the Northwest rely on oil from the Delta, sweet crude, desirably absent the sulphur that must be extracted in an expensive, time-consuming process. Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua wants to handle the crisis in-house, calling it a "Nigerian problem" that shouldn't be internationalized.

The Nigerian government's failure to share its oil wealth with its people, and its failure to negotiate cease-fires with militant groups, most notably the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), has pushed the issue onto the world stage. The same thing is applicable to MASSOB.

Furhter, third-party talks are the best bet to reach an accord that is fair and just for the people of the Niger Delta, one that holds oil companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, to the standards of corporate accountability. In the world of international diplomacy, the Niger Delta is low-hanging fruit. Seattle-based filmmaker, Sandy Cioffi, hopes to tell the story President Yar'Adua wants kept secret. For her trouble, she and her camera crew were arrested and held for seven days. Any journalist will tell you, there is nothing more frightening than being arrested in a country where the rule of law has dissipated.

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Cioffi visited The Seattle Times editorial board. Listening to her recount her Kafkaesque experience in a Nigerian prison was hair-raising. Cioffi is a professor in Seattle Central Community College's film and video communications department. Her film, "Sweet Crude," is in postproduction. Cioffi is hobbled by the irreplaceable film confiscated by the Nigerian government, but she is unbowed. Additional footage to complete the film will come; hopefully, the world will see it in any number of film festivals local and abroad. Until then, Cioffi wants us to know that the Niger Delta is being environmentally devastated by the world's thirst for oil. Cleanup of spilled oil polluting lakes and waterways is slow. Flaring natural gas is a common sight because much of the natural gas extracted from oil wells is immediately burned into the air. No one is telling the oil companies to go away. They shouldn't, because they'd be immediately replaced by the Chinese investors so plentiful in Africa these days. It's much smarter for us is to help push Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and the other oil companies into being financially and environmentally accountable to the people in the Delta.

Just like today anybody that discusses Biafra may lose his or her life, the same was applicable in 1969: Nigeria bans Red Cross aid to Biafra. According to accounts,

Millions of people face starvation because Nigeria banned night flights of food aid to Biafra, a breakaway state at war with federal Nigeria. The Nigerian Federal Government took charge of relief operations on both sides of the front line and in doing so stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from co-ordinating aid to starving civilians. General Yakubu Gowon, leader of Federal Nigeria, refuses to recognise Biafra which declared independence in May 1967. His forces managed to shrink the "rebel state" to one-tenth of its original size, cutting it off from seaports and other supply lines. Food aid can only brought in from the air. Nigerian Information Commissioner Chief Anthony Enaharo told representatives of relief organisations in Nigeria's capital, Lagos, that only "authorised relief operators" would be allowed to take in "permissible relief items" for fear of any supplies getting into the hands of Biafran troops. This means all relief supplies will be inspected by armed forces before being allowed on to Biafra and then only between 0800 and 1700 local time. Acting president of the ICRC, Jacques Freymond, said the world must put pressure on Nigeria to allow his organisation to carry out its humanitarian mission. In London, more than 80 backbench MPs signed an all-party motion urging the British Government to take action towards resuming the relief operation and to stop selling arms to Nigeria. The Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, said representatives in Lagos would try to mediate between the ICRC and the Nigerian Government. Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe said he had written to the head of the United Nations, U Thant, asking him to organise a major relief effort with the Red Cross. He said he was making his appeal independently of the British Government whose involvement in the Nigerian civil war was "immoral". He told the Times newspaper: "There are three million people who are going to starve to death in the next few weeks unless something is done." Biafra, under Lieutenant-Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, was made up of the former Eastern Region of Nigeria mainly inhabited by Igbo, or Ibo, people. In September 1966 thousands of the Igbo minority in the Northern Region was massacred by the majority Hausa who resented their relative prosperity. As a result, a million Igbo refugees settled in the Eastern Region. But now, can't the federal government lend ears to what this MASSOB is fighting for than allowing it growl everyday? Are we not tired of this rofo-rofo?

 

By Odimegwu Onwumere

Odimegwu Onwumere , is a poet and author.

Founder, Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA).

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