Note to the Reader:
The essay below was a 2021 FB post in commemoration of Biafra Memorial Day. I have reproduced it here with some minor revisions for the Alayi audience.
As May 30th and 31st rolls around, I am once again plunged into mourning over family members and acquaintances who perished in Biafra. I remember my dad, Ogele Ukpabi, my siblings, Ikpendu, Anyaele and Obiazonwa, civilians who perished from the ravages of war. I remember my cousins, Dickson Nweke Okenwa and Chukwueke Okenwa, who both volunteered and died as combatants. Cousin Chukwueke’s case was so poignant. He was restless; he wanted to join the fight, but grandma begged him not to because he was the only young male left to hop on palm trees to chop off fruits. We did not even know that he had been killed in the war. It was not until the war ended and both cousins didn’t come home that we realized they were gone. I remember Lt. Ndukauba Okafor, Okom Sam Ogwoo and Captain Robert Okoronkwo [Dr. Nkechi Agwu’s older cousin], combatants who also died.
I remember the horrible massacre of Amapu men who were lined up and shot like rabid dogs by soldiers of the 28th Battalion of the Nigerian Army. We were told that the soldiers had suffered casualties at the war front and instead of facing up the Biafran combatants, the despicable cowards turned tail and ran back to their camp at Mission Amaokwe – elu, walked down to Amapu, picked out several young men, took them to a corner and lined them up and shot them in reprisal. Some of the victims were related to me by way of the Ogbonnaya “Udara” Aka clan of Amaja agbo. It was horrible! I lived then at Amaja agbo and vividly remember the terror on the faces of my uncles because their Amapu cousins had been killed and they feared they could be next.
I remember Captain Okoronkwo’s sister, Obioma “Okom OMCBB” Okoronkwo, who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered, along with her companion at St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Nkpuocha, by soldiers of the 28th Battalion. The gorgeous Obioma and her companion were fleeing from the Nigerian Army that entered Alayi from the Ugwueke/Ezeukwu front. I remember Okom Ochu Anyaele Ochu, of Amaigwu, a civilian, who was executed for no reason by a 28th Battalion soldier on his way to Ezi Alayi. The soldier that murdered Okom Ochu was a Benue/Plateau fellow who had worked for him in Jos before the war and had been prosecuted, convicted, and jailed for larceny of Okom Ochu’s goods. The felon had joined the Nigerian Army and ended up at Alayi of all places in 1969 and as fate would have it, encountered Okom Ochu and decided to settle old scores. He had him shot before his superiors could intervene. Completely senseless violence with no accountability!
I am angry at what Nigeria did to my people. The 28th Battalion that entered Alayi raped, pillaged, sacked, and wantonly killed civilians. I know this for a fact because I saw it happen. Wives were dragged out of okpukpo nku at night and raped within earshots of their families as they screamed for help. Completely deserted villages were set on fire for no reason! I still bear scars on my back from the vicious whipping I got from a 28th Battalion soldier who whipped me mercilessly because I innocently chuckled at his poor English. I was on my way home from Amankalu and encountered the soldier at the Amaokwe elu checkpoint. He had asked me where I was heading, and I told him that I was heading home across the tarred road. He muttered off “no be your house dey after kworonta,” as he struggled to say, “coal tar”, and I chuckled. That was my crime! He got upset and whipped me with bulala! The soldier was Staff Sargent Rara, a Benue/Plateau fellow.
A generation of my people was wiped off the face of the earth by blood thirsty and genocidal Nigeria. The Biafra genocide denied children of those of us who survived Biafra, the companionship and mentorship of grandparents, who traditionally also played the crucial role as conveyors of culture and values. I know this as a fact because much of what I know today as Onye Alayi, also came from my being around a grandparent. Eastern Nigeria at the onset of the war was recording one of the highest economic growth rates in the world. Economic growth would surely have brought about improved lifespan, and my father would probably have been around to see the birth of his grandchildren. But because he perished in Biafra, his grandchildren were robbed of such valuable opportunity to be regaled with stories of times past and the culture and mores of our people. What Nigeria did to my people is incalculable.
My consolation is this: the ethnic and national groups that make up Biafra have historically had a leg up, an advantage that comes simply from their tradition of striving and entrepreneurship. Nigeria, whether she likes it or not, knows that without us, the easterners and westerners and the rest of the Niger Deltans, the Nigerian economy, as we know it today will collapse. In 2018, for example, diaspora Nigerians remitted $11.23 billion to Nigeria; in 2019, the remittance was $17.57 billion.
Mazi Uba Acho of United Kingdom has noted elsewhere that the $17.57 billion in 2019 remittances was about 6.6 trillion Naira and the national budget for 2020 was 10.9 trillion Naira. This means that direct remittances from diaspora Nigerians was more than one half of the 2020 national budget. And who constitutes the bulk of the people remitting monies keeping Nigeria afloat? We, the Biafrans and the rest of our brothers and sisters in Yorubaland and the Niger Delta. Meanwhile, the major beneficiaries of the Nigerian state, as currently structured, are the ones who contribute the least. Talk about “monkey dey work, baboon dey chop.”
Nigeria must appreciate that she has a problem on her hands. When educated and economically comfortable folks along with the down-and-out start feeling disillusioned over the callously lopsided structure of the Nigerian state, then Nigeria’s day of reckoning is at the corner. “We are all Biafrans,” to borrow from Mazi Chido Onumah. As the late Mazi Emeke Chima would say: “When persecution becomes unbearable, the tendency is to rebel”. The spate of crises going on today in Nigeria is the direct result of unbearable persecution. The chicken, as Brother Malcom X used to say, is finally coming home to roost.
Here is my short- and long-term proffer. Nigeria must be restructured to reflect a true federation. The current unitary structure, masquerading as a federation, is a complete farce. Next, the Nigerian state must acknowledge responsibility and apologize for deliberately starving one million Biafran children to death. The callous statements attributed to Nigerian leaders to wit that “all is fair game in war” and “starvation is a legitimate tool of war” should be condemned, denounced, and disavowed by the Nigerian State. Germany recently apologized and offered reparations for the approximately 75,000 Herero and Nama peoples of Namibia massacred by colonial Germany at the turn of the last century. Why can’t Nigeria get off its high horse and acknowledge her sins against my people?
I share the sentiments expressed today in the Vanguard by Chief Femi Fani-Kayode in “The Blood of Biafra” https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/05/the-blood-of-biafra-femi-fani-kayode/ suggesting that evil men such as Yakubu Gowon [who is still alive] and his cohorts who presided over the despicable systematic starvation to death of one million children are simply war criminals who should have been prosecuted and jailed by the International Criminal Court.
Long-term, the nationalities that make up Bight of Biafra, a geographically identifiable region that existed long before Britain’s contraption of Nigeria and which Nigeria has sought to conceal from the world by renaming it “the Bight of Benin,” should concentrate on educating their children. We need our children in the halls of academia, high tech, high finance, and business. We need them on Wall Street, the City of London; in Washington DC, Ottawa, London, Brussels, Bonn, Moscow, Jo’burg, Pretoria and all over. As generations of our children get into these hallowed enclaves of wealth and knowledge and build alliances and connections, they will start educating and exerting pressure on global leaders in both public life and business circles.
We will do it exactly the way the Diaspora Zionists did it to bring about the State of Israel. Yes, history tells us that State of Israel came about through the struggles and pressures of Diaspora Jews who had acquired wealth and power and exerted pressure on leaders of the time. That day will come. It is not likely to happen in my lifetime, but surely as the sun would rise, so shall Biafra Day come.
Ihendu Ogele, Esq.
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