What Are Other Solutions Other Than Biafra’s Secession From Nigeria?

Just like the way Karl Marx wrote in the communist manifesto that the spectre from the nether world is haunting Europe, I also want to start this article by pointing out thatthe imp is peeping at Nigeria. This knat is in the spirit of the people of eastern Nigeria who are again in the full grip of an upsurge of sub-rationality toform a new state of Biafra out of Nigeria.To secede eastern Nigeria from the mainland Nigeria.

Persons leading this move are the middle class from the Igbo community calling themselves the Ndigboelites. Themasses are only being catapulted into this social and political turmoil being having the elites wringing an emotional note in their hearts through perpetration of the Igbo tribal chauvinism.

The idea of forming the Biafra state is not a new one, it was there in 1960, but the colonialists rejected it, again it came back like a paroxysm in 1967 leading to the Biafran war that had more than two million people to be killed. It is now back again, with a full back up of the Igbo community.

The 1967 Biafra war was strong because it was supported by the then divide in the Cosmopolitics as communism versuscapitalism. The communist countries wanted the formation of the Biafra state to an extend that Julius Nyerere made a statement that he recognized the Biafra state. But, now the current call for formation of the Biafra state is only based on the tribal chauvinism and cheap intellectualism. This makes it hard for the idea of Biafra state to be feasible as there is no international community that will support itother than those selling the arms and weapons but as a clandestine activity.

Something so interesting is that all Igbo intellectuals go against the call for patriotism to support the formation of the tribally oriented Biafra state. Top intellectuals like Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo supported formation of the Biafra state. Achebe’s novels like Girls at War,Be aware Soul Brother,Chike and the River as well his last book There was a Country are all about cultivating intellectual and emotional commitment to the formation of the Biafra state. Christopher Okigbo actively fought in the Biafra war, himself being a poet he wrote the national anthem for the state of Biafra, he was killed by in a battle front at Nsuka.This emotional act of putting poetry behind the tribe made several scholars to blame Okigbo. In fact Ali A. Mazrui wrote a novel, the Trial of Christopher Okigbo; it is book of two hundred pages about Okigbo, blaming him for blind enthusiasm with ideology and ethnicity. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is in fact a bitter pro-Biafra, her book, A Half of the Yellow Sun is all about Biafra, Igbo intellectualism and Chauvinism as well as allegorical exposition justifying the Biafra consciousness.

Igbos always call for formation of Biafra whenever there is a President from the Northern part of Nigeria. But they are usually silent about the formation of Biafra when a fellow Igbo is the president .This is wrong use of the tribe as a political ideology. Nigerian intellectuals Elechi Amadi, Wole Soyinka and Olusegun Obasanjo don’t agree with the Biafra movement. Soyinka openly condemned Achebe for writing the tribally biased memoirs, there was a Country; Soyinka argued that Achebe would not have written this book. Captain Elechi Amadi wrote about misconceptions of Biafra in his novel, Sunset in the Biafra. Amadi is anon Igbo; he is an ikuer who comes from eastern Nigeria where Biafra was ideally to be formed. He dismissed the Biafra idea as Igbo mania for their tribe. They are tribal-maniac

There are better governancesolutions to the politics of tribal exclusion in Nigeria, but not violence and even war as we are seeing in Nigeria, and maybe it will persistently accompany the secession process of forming the Biafra state. There can be change in constitution through a referendum or parliamentary legislation, proper devolution, increased inclusivity and political participation, improved security, support for marginalized communities, equal chances for economic opportunities, legal prohibition of police brutality, harsh punishment of tribalism in the public offices, inter-community dialogues as well as enhanced democratic space are some of the political surrogates to Biafra.

Otherwise 21st century Africa does not need a new state, but it needs regional integration towards pan-Africanism.

Alexander Opicho,
Lodwar, Kenya.

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Articles by Alexander Opicho