(This article was from Ken Henshaw not Kate Henshaw)
The thrust of the article on the preponderant feeling of Igbo invasion and walloping of the Niger Delta in the current Igbo-Biafra onslaught is real and palpable.
This is one of the LNC’s main disagreement and disappointment with both the “Biafra-or-Death” Agitation and the rest of the Biafra Agitation Groups.
It is the existence of this negative sentiment that informed the framing of the LNC Self-Determination and Independence Campaign for the Territory, not as “Biafra” Restoration/Actualization pursuit.
Going by the contents of Henshaw’s Caveat and viewing same against the popular sentiment amongst the non-Igbo Niger Delta Nationalities which though implanted by our common enemies from the War years through various Win-The-War false flag operations, propaganda, and sundry divide-and-rule stratagems, in nevertheless the reality that must be tactfully engaged, Ken Henshaw is right in the way he addressed the Biafra Campaign in the article.
This was the very reason the LNC began its intervention designs with identifying and adopting the 1885 Map that clearly set out the Constituent Ethnolinguistic Components of the Lower Niger as the Geographical basis of its Proposals for a Cohesive Regional Self-Determination Initiative that would result in the Proposed Lower Niger Federation (1967 Biafra + Midwest).
The confidence-building mechanisms required to repair the very deeply damaged relationship between the Constituent Component Nationalities in that contiguous neighbourhood, necessitated such a clear definition and delineation.
Next was a deep engagement with the Various Nationalities in the Niger Delta, spending about 6 years in the Nationality by Nationality consultations which included the Traditional Institutions, the Sociocultural Institutions, the Restive Youth Agitation Groups, the Intelligentsia and Diasporan Groups of each Nationality.
We made each Nationality to see their Stake in the prospective Lower Niger Federation in a manner that trounced whatever Nigeria was doing or would do with them.
This was the background against which the LNC was publicly in Warri 2009 when the critical mass of Consensus sufficient to begin a wider Campaign in the Region had been emplaced.
It was clearly understood and stated that we had defer the use of the campaign name “Biafra” until the Niger Delta populace had been sufficiently enlightened to buy into that name, and so the Campaign had to be calibrated in simple Self-Determibation Terms, built on the ascertainable Constitutional Grievances of each Nationality against the Unitarist impositions of the Nigerian State, and bearing in mind that the same Right to Self-Determine, accrues to each Nationality in the Bloc, no matter how small they may be.
There was in place from the onset, a clearly articulated mechanism and milestone-based timing that would deal with the question of the name by which that Prospective Lower Niger Federation would enter its Independence, post-Nigeria.
This mechanism is already actuated by the Charter of Relationships Mandated by the LNC-Convened Solemn Assembly of the Peoples of the Lower Niger in Port Harcourt which would operate as the detailed MOU that would form the basis of the Constitutional Framework for the prospective Lower Niger Federation.
Despite LNC’s best efforts to explain this very delicate Project Necessity to the various “Biafra” Agitation Groups, their attitude was simply one of obduracy, and some went on to even launch a Campaign of calumny against the LNC as opposed to the “Biafra” restoration effort.
Fired by the Radio opium from London, some overzealous footsoldiers of the “Biafra-or-Death” Agitation in Aba and Onitsha even began to launch physical attacks on Units of LNC Field Operations at ground zero which were undertaking the painstakingly slow street-to-street, market-market, town-to-town enlightenment of the masses of our People by way of leafleting, pamphleteering, audiovisuals, Town Halls et cetera.
Most of the materials I post here from time to time were already broken down and put in the hands of the grassroots of Eastern Nigeria via this manual mechanism. Millions of different fliers bearing the Self-determination message of the LNC thus permeated very deep into the populace.
It was therefore a huge setback for the Project when the Radio Broadcasts from London which ought to facilitate this Project dissemination, became the very undoing of the Project, when the proprietors of Radio went completely in the opposite direction from what the delicate understanding was with our Niger Delta neighbours, thus causing an unquantifiable damage to the fragile but fast growing common-ground the LNC already built across the contrived fractures and bifurcations of the Lower Niger Territory,(the so-called “South East and South South).
The zeal to take credit for bringing “Biafra” took the place of the humongous tasks required to extricate an occupied Territory from a very vicious, unrelenting enemy.
A further debilitation of the situation is caused by a large segment of the Igbo Elite/Intelligentsia which, for whatever reasons, and without examining the contents of the various claims, refused and refuses to bring their interrogatory acumen to the debate and so simply lump everything together as “Biafra”, or “Secession”.
Kneejerk and Paranoia is their only known strategy of engagement with the issues amidst the hollow scaremongering of War, and loss of Assets, with no examination of the Package of Intervention that is already coasting to a Referendum.
The worst damage Nigeria has done to the East is in the near-total extirpation of intellectual rigour and so the resultant ignorance breeds the mortifying fear that freeze up initiative.
It is such a great pity.
Ben Omokri’s Article in which he painted a widebrush of the Igbo failings is both indicting and eye opening. The validity of his assertions owe their roots to this failure of intellectual rigour, which kills and blunts initiative.
We must think and act in Self-Redemption.
Respectfully,
Tony Nnadi.
01/06/17
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