54 Years: Biafra and The Unending Agitation

 The first civil war in Nigeria had started with the attempt of the Nigerian state to quickly nip the new Biafran nation with a force that was largely military and fully brutal. It was a critical plan that had the mandate to quell the secession in the shortest possible time; within three months specifically. The combined Nigerian armed forces, in achieving the mission, had taken the subversion to the doorsteps of the seceding nation and so fired the first shot that was to ignite the eventual Biafra/Nigeria Civil war.

This war was prompted by the desire of the people of the old Eastern region (dominated by the Igbos) for self-determination, a desire to stay on their own and pursue their economic and political excellence in a manner peculiar to them and made possible by their distinct, unadulterated ingenuity- and a legitimate right recognized by the United Nations Charter for Human Rights. The war motive essentially was to prevent the fear of a state in losing its ingenious entity through the express suppression of their right to react in a manner that guarantee them safety and freedom from their predators.

The pogrom of 1966, which was itself a form of selective ethnic cleansing, has had as justification the action of some select Igbo military bureaucrats, who in trying to achieve their career ambition, had slaughtered those they felt had stood against their ride to desired governmental power and influence. The action of this few Igbo coup-plotters was soon to be reflected as the unanimous design of all and anyone who identifies as Igbo, circumscribing even those who had no leaning at all to the military bureaucratic interest. Thus, the murder of some northern political elites became the ignition of the all-round killing of any and every Igbo person.

The indiscriminate attempt to murder any person of Igbo extraction, regardless, had immediately resumed the pogrom. That was the situation reported that, in just a single moment, a huge number of the Igbo people, numbering between 8,000-30,000, were massacred. Indeed, if at any instance the murder of the Igbo military personnel in the counter-coup of July, 1960 was an admitted reaction to the 1960 January coup, the pogrom that suddenly became was going just too far.

So mass killings of people who just lived their normal lives, who were not politically exposed in any form and who knew nothing about the coup, but just being Igbos, suddenly becoming a justified recompense for the murder of a handful of the ruling northern elites was not at all admissible. That identified glaring execution of hatred as seen from the pogrom was not admissible even to observers and definitely not to the very people involved. The brawling dissatisfaction and the seething anger soon exploded.

The declaration of a separate state of Biafra was understood to be the counter-response by endangered people to a government that, far from protecting them, was perceived to be the critical antagonist, serving as an instrument and giving force to the execration of the avengers. Whether or not the methodology towards this right to safety was widely approved, it's generally agreed that a people who feel preyed upon fundamentally have the right to self-defense.

Although the situations that precipitated the ultimate resort to self-determination would not be said to not be enough for the explosion of seething anger of a people, who obviously were brutally dealt with and highly traumatised just for a seeming distortions of a few of their overzealots, the eventual reaction taken by the Nigerian government wouldn't be equally said to be appropriate. Nigeria's approach towards this agitation for self-determination was a far cry from the required and which if done rather curiously would have prevented the avoidable national calamity it brewed.

The response of the Nigerian state, if at all necessary in it ambitious desire to sustain a willy-nilly unity, was distastefully crude, roundly brutal and deeply insensitive. This is so because, as against treating the supposed derailment of the Igbos as an offence committed by a part of it and which obviously should be corrected with a spank, the Nigerian state dished out galling vexation and crimsoned anger as though the separatist Biafra people were some outside alien invaders who needed to be crushed.

Its action stoke up the smoke of violence that was ordinarily to infuriate a disconcerted people and further aggravate the avoidable destruction and deaths. The war had been brought to their doorsteps, and in the most natural circumstance, the people of the new nation had to fight for their lives, they had to defend themselves and had their very identity threatened by extinction to preserve, however possible.

The continuous response of the Nigerian government while the face-off lasted was to prove that theirs was not to subvert an internal insurrection but to fight a full-scale war. The policy of starvation so as not to feed an enemy, that of total economic blockade and inflamed missile bombardments were all proves that the Nigerian state saw the dissidents Biafrans as some foes.

The responses it took opened up the font for the worst form of genocide by a government against its very own people. It was said that over 3million children lost their lives in the war from starvation, from diseases and from open firearms. More and more people died, very many houses, homes and businesses destroyed as the Nigerian government locked up a hapless people from the eyes of the world and continuously hounded them with the most sophisticated of weapons and military arsenals.

Though it was curious how the operation to nip couldn't just end as quickly as was planned, the war that lasted for over 3 years saw the world's most mischievous silence brought to bear as people, weak and disheveled, were brutally murdered in the first worst genocide ever to get to the worldview through the screens of televisions. Just recently the Israeli bombardment of Gaza was rightly condemned for the casualties. Also, the humanitarian situations caused by the Libyan, Syrian and the Afghan crisis are still condemned. But the truth of the matter is that the enormity of destruction of each of the aforementioned could not be quantified with the gruesome evil perpetrated against the Biafrans and which the world was heavily silent on!

54years after and the war seems not to have ended- at least in psychical appreciation. The people of the defunct Biafra still feel alienated from the realities of the country they found themselves and the psychology, obviously orchestrated by sociopolitical inequalities and economic incongruity, have fed them of how they're still in economic and political blockades. The persistent vestigial feeling has continued to spur the agitation for further self-determination and this agitation has exploded to a proliferation.

The effort of the Nigerian state currently in the face of the growing wider calls for secession has still been the same approach of forceful subversion, an approach which at best never worked in reassuring a dissident people of how they're truly part of a united country. The truth of the matter is that until the Nigerian government realizes that the fiery approach it has always resorted to does not work and would not guarantee a genuine giving in of a dissatisfied people to the project of a united Nigeria, the wave of disgruntlement, as against ceasing, shall multiply until the needful is practically done.

The calls for secession seem to grow louder and bolder, regardless of the forces deployed, obviously because the Nigerian state has seemingly failed to understand what the underlying problems are and has refused to follow them up using the best approaches possible. The call for restructuring, for inexplicable reasons, have been ignored with the government just scratching the surface in the never-ending and cost spending processes of constitutional reviews. But these are deceptive approaches that would not work, simply because they're merely romanticizing the very faulty foundations that continue to give rise to dissatisfaction and disaffection, which continue to breed the crave to just leave the contraption.

What's currently happening in the Southeast, where military deployment has raised tension is most unfortunate. The failure of the state to assure the people of security and the nuance to believe that they are part of the nation created a lacuna that non-state actors fell in to fill, and subconsciously this response to an obvious necessity piqued the state against the non-state actors. Suddenly the deployment of security forces became so needful, not to close on the existed vacuum but to dismiss the emerged fill-in and show them how it isn't their responsibility to undertake the central responsibility of government.

Even as this has bred an atmosphere of security inebriation, where ordinary, harmless citizens have become the suffering victims, it must be stated that the attempt to traumatise the citizens is undemocratic. For the worst aspect of the genocide is the continuous attempt of the Nigerian state to gag the remnants of the memories of the bloody civil war. But such is a game-plan that shall not stand. The genocide committed by the Nigerian state against the people of Biafra is a worldwide reality that shall not be strangulated until justice for the over 3million innocent victims is served.