BIAFRA: A HALF SUN LOOKING FOR ITS OTHER HALF

  A photograph making its rounds on the social media has left me completely perturbed and revived unsavoury memories of the inglorious and dishonorable part of our modern history as Nigerians.

  I have always maintained that our problem as a nation is often caused by our swiftness at forgeting our problems; we have this unhealthy and very awkward way of sweeping our problems under the carpet without first proffering solutions to them. As a student, the darkest page in our history book was intentionally torn off by the policy makers, because we have a weird mentality of thinking that by not talking about it, it would be forgotten and people will learn with time to move on with their lives, yes, move on they did, but getting along is where the problem is revisiting us daily.

  How can a war where over a million civilians were killed be ripped off our history books just like that, are we trying to pretend that nobody died? And if they did, why? Have we stopped for once to ask ourselves why in the first place that shameful and gruesome event occurred? What was done immediately after the war to ameliorate the impact of the war on both sides of the divide? – nothing, we just handled the issue as we are wont to handle several serious issues in our country, sweep them under the carpet and pretend all is well.

The federal government troop assuming victory, charted a condescending agenda where the presumed losers of that war, the Igbos, became a maginalized group who were better out of the corridors of power than within it. Nigeria has produced about 10 leaders after the civil war and coincidentally, none of them have been of Igbo extraction.

  Rather than initiate a reconciliation policy and see to it that we do not only move on chaotically, without any national driving nuance we have damned the consequence of that war for far too long and its unhealed wounds are coming back to revisit us today. Human lives have become worthless before the different sections/regions of our people, from the south-south through the east and the west up into the north stopping by in the middle-belt, killing of innocent persons have become a diversion.

  Nobody has yet told us who armed the Niger-Delta militants, who is arming and sponsoring the Boko Haram terrorists in the north and now this, a group of nigerians from the eastern region of the country inaugurating a Biafran embassy inside Cataluña, a region of Spain that is also fighting to secede from Spain and form a country of its own. The internationalization of our internal issues is what bothers me, because by so doing, mercenaries will begin to get involved and foreign countries will begin to look for ways of maximizing their selfish interests in our country, as I am sure they are already in the case of the Boko Haram terrorist group.

  My position is that more need to be done in the area of uniting us as a people than mere wistful utterances on the part of our stake holders, let no one be deceived, right now more than ever before, Nigeria is according to what the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo said many years ago, “a mere geographical expression” And a very delicate and dangerous one at that.  Let us not sweep our problem of disunity under the carpet as is custom in us and if for any reason we become convinced some day that things have fallen so apart beyond what the center can continue to hold, let us agree on a peaceful dissolution as we agreed before the British authority in 1960 on a peaceful union.