(1) Looking at the lot and reality of the Igbo in Nigeria since 1966, the First and Most important decision to be taken is that the Igbo and the wider Eastern Nigeria has no future in Nigeria.
Unfortunately, for various reasons ranging from unreasoned sentiments, greed, extreme selfishness, ignorance and outright folly, this all-important Decision has not been taken by the Igbo Leadership Collective, despite overwhelming evidence as to the inevitability of that self-preservation imperative which the masses being tormented by Nigeria seem to have been more acutely aware of, for years running, even as the Elite grope heedlessly from one shallow and totally meaningless pursuit to another.
If it is not creation of one more Igbo State, it will be the Igbo Presidency or the vacuous and escapist “Restructuring” chorus, not backed by any STRATEGY whatsoever that can compel any better behavior by the same Caliphate enemy that blocked the outcome of Aburi in 1967 and which resorted to the mass violence that annihilated over 3.5million of our kith and kin in the 1967-1970 War of Genocide.
All efforts made by those who clearly saw these approaching calamities and who drew up Strategic Designs to arrest same upfront, were met with a combination derision, sabotage, arrogant dismissiveness and hypnosis-level aloofness from the Elite.
The vacuum created by this Elite Abdication of Responsibility in the face an urgent need to provide answers for a distressed populace, left room for the emergence of all manners of sugar-candy mountain schemes that found fuel in the desperate desire of the ill-informed segment of the Igbo Society to regain the lost paradise called “Biafra”.
The Schemes were generally framed as “Biafra Actualization” and its latter day mutation called “Biafra Restoration”, operated mostly as some kind of a lucrative Franchise by mostly Rogue elements irrevocably committed to exploiting the ignorance and desperation of a People in search of Liberation from a choking bondage.
The barbed and crude methods adopted by the Chief Merchants in this unconscionably nefarious trade in the misery of the people, entailed deliberate wasting of innocent lives and destruction of livelihoods.
These same methods steeped in commotion, propaganda and razzmatazz, actually detract from, debilitate and outrightly damage the delicate key ingredients (especially the Intra/Inter Regional and International Alliances) required to drive the Strategic Self-Determination Campaign dictated by the overall situation.
For inexplicable reasons, the segment of the elite that reluctantly came into the fray chose narrow apertures that targeted the leveraging of the vacuous noises and razzmatazz for one kind of immediate political or short-term gain or the other, refusing to engage the Clearly Thought-Out, Rigorous, Grueling, Painstaking and STRATEGIC Self-Determination Campaign.
The LNC had in the last 12–15 years engaged eyeball-to-eyeball with the apex Leaderships of a total of 42 “Biafra” Agitation Groups home and abroad. As a part of the Legal Team (Pro-Bono though), my name features also on the two Federal High Court Orders that Resolved the 2007 Uwazuruike/Asari’s Treason Trials and the 2015 Nnamdi Kanu’s Treason Trial and so I am not reporting this matter from the sidelines. (I also had cause to address the Court in South Africa 2013 in another Capacity (Project-Related) during the Treason/Terror Trial of Henry Okah)
(2) If we have finally arrived at the point where the inevitable decision on the Self-Determination Imperative is being taken, the next Question that must be engaged is that of HOW to go to about it.
Guided by the Lessons of 1967–1970 Biafra, that Question of HOW must of necessity provide clear answers for:
(i) The Map Delineating the Exact Territorial Space for which the Self-Determination is Sought. Specifically speaking, is it Igbo of present-day “South-East” going it alone? Or the Igbo that Includes Asaba, Agbor, Igbanke, Port Harcourt etc going it alone? If not, then who else in terms of the Non-Igbo Nationalities is/are included in the Territorial Space Delineated in the Proposed Map? (For the avoidance of doubt, the 1885 Ethnolinguistic Map of the Lower Niger was Adopted by the LNC for the Self-Determination Campaign it is waging. That Map consolidates the combined Pre-1967 Eastern and Midwestern Regions of Nigeria, delineated as Contiguous Ethnic Nationality Spaces that are coming together by a Carefully Negotiated Written Agreement we call the “CHARTER OF RELATIONSHIPS” as Mandated by the April 27, 2015 Solemn Assembly of the Peoples of the Lower Niger, in Port Harcourt which Ratified the Adoption the said 1885 Map).
(ii) Workable Consensus and Cohesion within that Territorial Space to seek Self-Determination TOGETHER.
(iii) The Strategy for taking down the prevailing Constitution (1999)by which the Suzerainty of Caliphate-Nigeria is erected and maintained in the Territory so Delineated.
(iv) The Strategy for Dismantling or Containing the 1967 Caliphate-led Alliance (which included the Middle Belt and the Yoruba) that came against Eastern Nigeria.
(v) The Strategy for shutting off the possibility of large-scale violence as the Self-Determination push is being made, precisely in a manner that will in an orderly Process, Precipitate an Enforceable REFERENDUM (UN Security Council-Backed) which may yield Independent Units of Sovereign Successor-States to the Defunct Federation of Nigeria or the ABURI MODEL Confederation, depending entirely on the wishes of the People as expressed in REFERENDUMS.
(vi) What will be the Interface between the Self-Determination Campaign and the existing Constitutional and Governance Order. In other words, an orderly TRANSITIONING from the rejected Unitary Order/ Union.
(vii) What is the Strategy for the International Imperatives in terms of Process, Economic, Self-Defense, Regional Stability Concerns etc.
(viii) Since the name “Biafra” invariably connotes and presupposes the inclusion of the Non-Igbo Territories of the Pre-1967 Eastern Region, the Desirability or Otherwise of waging the Straightforward Lower Niger Self-Determination Campaign as “Biafra Restoration Agitation” considering the intractably dangerous question of exact boundaries that immediately arises with the use of the name “Biafra”, quite apart from the extreme and uncontrollably inflammable emotions, positive and negative, conjured by the name, “Biafra” both amongst our People, our immediate neighbors, the Caliphate Enemy Camp and amongst Stakeholders in the International Circuit.
The LNC/MNN Grand Script Provide specific answers that are already being worked in practical physical terms, to each of these 8 Key Questions that define the HOW for seeking the Inevitable Self-Determination Route out of our current miseries as a People.
More importantly, while the Lower Niger Paradigm Frames the Potent Strategy for the previously elusive Regional Internal Cohesion in the Greater Eastern Nigeria (ie the Lower Niger), the MNN Outreach effectively paralyzed, dismantled and replaced the 1967 Caliphate Alliance of the Rest of Nigeria against the East.
It is this MNN Alliance that leads the Joint South/Middle Belt charge to take down and terminate the operation of the Caliphate-Imposed 1999 Constitution along with the Unitary Nigeria it foists.
The Obdurately Recalcitrant Feudalist Caliphate which Simultaneously Imposed Sharia in 12-Contiguous States since Year 2000 and which also hangs tenaciously to the Unitary Constitution 1999 it unilaterally imposed between 1967 and 1979 to enslave the rest of Nigeria is thus isolated by the rest of Nigeria that have not only repudiated the Rogue 1999 Constitution but are, as three cohesive Cooperating Blocs (Lower Niger, Yoruba and Middle Belt) advancing their unstoppable march to Self-Determination and Fresh Post-Nigeria Protocols that would exclude or the least limit in their spaces. the murderous and debilitating influence a Civilization that owes it a Duty of Faith to Kill Others whom they call “Infidels” (Sharia) which also Believes that All Men are Not Born Equal (Feudalist Born-To-Rule).
The interpretation given by the MNN Alliance to the act of simultaneously imposing Sharia in 12-Contiguous States of the Far North is that the Constituents of Sharia Territory have SECEDED from the SECULAR Union that the rest of Nigeria committed to in becoming one Political Union with that Sharia Territory at Independence in 1960.
These are the two Strategic compartments of tasks being driven by the LNC in a 5-Phased 20-Year Plan that already has the buy-in of critical Regional and International Stakes.
These 8 Key Objective Issues of Strategy and Methodology were in the course of the last 12-15 years, tabled before the EACH of the Leaderships of the various “Biafra Agitation Groups” including Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB in a 2013 Meeting between himself and myself in my Lagos Office that lasted 4 hours where he rejected every single one of the LNC Propositions for these 8 Key Objective Issues of Strategy and Method, preferring instead the commotion he tagged “Biafra-Or-Death” which has since been dispensing generous doses of death and destruction upon the largely ill-informed, gullible but zealous youth of Eastern Nigeria, with incalculable negative consequence for the rest of the Populace in the East.
It is important to note that while the “Biafra Restoration Agitation” presents a precarious Secession Paradigm, the Strategy-Based, Process-led Lower Niger Self-Determination Campaign (along with it’s MNN Alliance Outreach Strategy), presents an entirely different Paradigm that takes on the entirety of the Defunct Federation of Nigeria for a complete Reconfiguration that begins with the wholesale consensual decommissioning of the Rogue 1999 Constitution, along with the Unitary Union it foists and which proceeds by REFERENDUMS to determine Fresh Post-Nigeria Protocols.
This completely reverses the Isolation that defeated the Biafra of 1967-1970.
We are no longer alone. We now have the company of the Middle Belt and the Yoruba, compelled by the murderous onslaught of the Fulani Caliphate in their Southward Ethnic Cleansing Campaign led by the Rogue “Federal Government” that emerged since the Counter-Coup of July 29, 1966, now completely hijacked by the Fulani.
It will not be out place to add here that whilst the “BIAFRA AGITATION” could be said to be the sustained vigorous and sometimes angry expression of a Self-Determination Desire by a People, the LNC (and it’s MNN Alliance Outreach) is a Strategy and Vehicle for attaining that Desire. It is up to the rest of our People who are caught in the shipwreck called “One-Nigeria” and who are now realizing the futility of pinning their hopes for the future in that sinking Unitarist ship, to find the best way of moving very quickly into the solid Self-Determination Vessel sailing in a convoy.
It is gratifying to note that after almost 20 years of heart-wrenching debates and occasional angry altercations with the LNC, many of us are arriving at the Conclusions that informed the LNC Intervention Script and are now coming to terms with the reality of the Igbo situation in Nigeria as well as the centrality of the Victory Charter called “the 1999 Constitution” imposed by the Victorious Alliance in the 1967-1970 War with Biafran, to the Igbo enslavement, enshacklement and misery in Nigeria.
The Ohanaeze PG, Chief Nnia Nwodo, captured it most eloquently when in an August 2019 Interview on Arise-TV he expressly Identified the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria as a CONTAINMENT mechanism against the Igbo, deployed by the Nigerian State following the 1967-1970 War with Biafra (Eastern Nigeria).
With the lamentations and alarm flowing the War being thrust upon us by an implacable enemy, the budding Frankenstein that the “Biafra Agitation” has morphed into and with the growing convergence of thoughts about the true nature of the Monster confronting us a People (and therefore WHAT WE MUST DO IN SELF-PRESERVATION,) we may have finally arrived at that moment of truth when all pretenses, narrow selfish pursuits and hollow grandstanding and are put aside for an honest comprehensive engagement with our grim reality.
Tony Nnadi
LNC
August 21, 2019
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 