Introduction:
Before I thank the organisers of this Conference and pay my
tribute to the Memory of my friend, late Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, in
whose Foundation Center this historic event is being organised, let me quickly
dismiss certain lingering pernicious fallacies that have dominated all
discussion about the coup of January 15, 1966 and the Biafra War.
First, the Chairman of the occasion, Alhaji Ahmed Joda, has
alluded to the January 15, 1966 coup as an Igbo coup that, according to him,
was replied by a Northern coup of July 29 1966.
Let it be said loud and clear that that coup, namely January
15, 1966 coup, was not an Igbo coup. It was a coup led by certain Igbo and
Yoruba Officers, involving the active participation of soldiers from the North.
The aim, as has been stated again and again, by the leaders of the coup was to
release Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was in detention at the time and install him
the Prime Minister of Nigeria.
That coup was foiled by Igbo military officers. Igbo
political leaders and activists knew nothing about the coup.
Again the Incursion into the Mid-West by the Biafran troops
was not a quest for territorial grabbing by the Igbos. Ojukwu sent troops under
the Command of Col, banjo in response to Chief Awolowo’s request for troops to
help liberate Yoruba land from the occupation of soldiers from the North. By
the time Col Banjo got to Ore, the British had gotten Gowon to offer Chief
Awolowo Vice Chairmanship of the Nigerian Government. Awolowo, therefore, asked
Banjo not to proceed on his mission.
General Yakubu Gowon knows the truth of all these things.
And that is why the Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) had written him and
asked him to tell Nigerians and the whole world the truth about the January 15,
1966 coup and the Biafra incursion into the Mid-West.to stop all the lies
against Ndigbo, which have been the basis of the burden they carry as a nation
within the Nigerian Federation.
Secondly, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Head of State
and a frontline commander on the Federal side during the war, said that they
(the Federal military leaders) conducted the war without any hate or vengeance
because it was a quarrel between brothers.
To this, one is constrained to ask a few pertinent
questions:
How did the world come to describe the conduct of the war as
POGROM?
What about the policy that hunger was a legitimate weapon of
war and so was justified in its application against the Biafrans?
What about bombing of refugee camps, market places,
churches, etc?
Again, when Chief Obasanjo said that they, the victorious
side, have been more magnanimous than the victors in the American civil war,
where, according to him, those who lost the war never had a chance to be
President of America until several decades if not a century later, I would ask
him WHAT ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA? WHAT ABOUT NELSON MANDELLA?
Such assertions rather than heal the wounds of the war, keep
the wounds aglow, rather than reconcile pour raw pepper of unjustified arrogance
on the wounded hearts of the Biafrans. How can you genuinely talk about
reconciliation with that kind of mind-set. The truth is that for General
Obasanjo, the Biafrans are defeated people. Period!
Indeed, before we can
talk about reconciliation, we must accept that grave wrongs were done to the
Biafrans, Before, During and Since the end of the war.
Tribute to General Yar’Adua:
Now, Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, let me go on to
thank the organisers of this Conference - the Yar’Adua Foundation and the six
Nigerian Universities partnering with the Foundation; the Ford Foundation and
the Open Society Initiative for West Africa who have provided support for this
Conference - Biafra: 50 Years After.
What is more, I would like to pay tribute to the memory of
my late friend, General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. I met him for the first time
during the 1994-5 National Constitutional Conference. There, we struck a
friendship that would have born great fruits but for his untimely death. I
personally escaped being arrested with him.
General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, became a great democrat after
the war despite his aristocratic background. He genuinely believed that this
wobbly Federation could be given a dependable foundation. Consequently, he set
out to recruit gifted compatriots to work with him for that purpose. What a
great hunter of talent Shehu was!
I remember two memorable moments in our interaction. One
afternoon, after lunch in his house, we sat down on the sofa. I asked him
“General why is it that when you are not smoking cigar
(cigarette), you are chewing kola nut?"
He answered me. I will not tell you his answer today. Wait
for my Memoire that should be ready by my next birthday.
At another moment, also after lunch with him and late Prof.
Aborisade, we sat down on the sofa. Shehu said to me “Dr Nwala, let me show you
why we Northerners are reluctant to relinquish political power”.
He brought out two volumes of strategic studies which he had
commissioned some intellectuals to produce in preparation for the
Constitutional Conference of 1994-5. I glanced through volume 1, which deals
with the indices of power in Nigeria. I read the discussion, looked at the
statistics and the graph, and shook my head, and said to myself this guy is a
great political actor. I also reserve the details of what I read in that volume
as well as our discussion for the sake of my forthcoming memoire.
I saw those two volumes of strategic studies at the Library
of the Yar’Adua Center when I visited there about two week ago.
What is important in this narrative is that General Yar’Adua
was a very sincere leader, he always spoke to me and to anyone in his political
company from the bottom of his heart. He was sincerely in search of a genuine
way forward. He was a man who knew that all is not well with the Nigerian
Federation and genuinely sought the correct path to its healing!
The point of the story is to reveal a bit of the life of
this great political strategist, who if he had lived after that Conference, he
and the powerful circle of comrades he had built at the Conference would have
helped to see to a more liberal accommodating political order in Nigeria.
Shehu
was the darling of a liberal democratic movement that was emerging in Nigeria
before he died. He was equally hated by what many of us call the hegemonist who
have consistently aborted every opportunity to create a democratic political
culture. It is the later who have consistently made it difficult to achieve a
genuine reconciliation in Nigeria. It is these forces that have insisted on a
Federation founded on the peace of the grave yard.
Yes, General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua along with the compatriots
he had worked to put together would have constituted an authentic force for
reconciliation and national integration. He was a victim of the forces of
hegemony.
Post –Biafra Reconciliation – What Lessons?
During the trial of Adolf Hitler after Germany and her
allies lost the war to the Allied Forces, the following exchange took place
between Hitler and his interlocutor –
Interlocutor to Hitler: You were responsible for the Second
World War?
Hitler: No! The Versailles Treaties was.
I believe this Conference has been provoked by the renewed
agitation for Biafra. In that case, a similar question can be posed to the
Biafra Self-determination Agitators in Nigeria today as to whether they are
responsible for the renewed agitation for Biafra.
I imagine that the
Biafra Freedom Agitators, just like Adolf Hitler, would emphatically respond
NO! They would rather blame the present upsurge for Self-determination and
Biafra and all its fallouts on all those leaders on the victorious side who,
rather than pursuing the path of genuine reconciliation, pursued the path of
punitive retributions against those who lost the war.
Unfortunately, as it was in the case of the defeated Germany
that was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened, so
do we find in the case of Biafra, that despite all the retributive measures
against her people, Biafra and the Biafrans, have neither been pacified, nor
conciliated, nor have they been permanently weakened.
Unlike the Treaty of Versailles that exerted bloody pound of
flesh on the side that lost the First World War, the victorious side in the
Second World War padded their retributive actions with the Marshall Plan. And
thus unlike the intended Carthagenian peace of the Versailles Treaty of 28 June
1919, the Marshall Plan brought a relatively permanent peace to Europe that withstood
the shock waves of the cold war including the Cuban Missile crises.
In pursuing the lessons of the retributive post-war
treatment of the Biafrans, I would ask the leaders on the victorious side –
When you took all their financial deposits in the banks and
paid them only £20 (twenty pounds), what did you expect the result to be –
pacification, conciliation or to have them permanently weakened?
When you allowed massacre of unarmed soldiers and leaders
even when they had declared their return to Nigeria, what did you expect? I
mean when you murdered Prof. Kalu Ezera or when you killed unarmed Col
Onwuatuegwu in cold blood, what did you expect?
When you killed and also buried alive thousands of innocent
civilians in Asaba, was that a circus show?
I escaped being killed at the end of the war through the
mysterious intervention of my college mate, Mr Nwoguegbe from Asa in Abia State
who was a member of the Nigerian battalion that overran my area on that fateful
day of January 8, 1970. The solders had sent for me and when I arrived at Nkwo
Mbaise their base, Nwoguegbe instantly recognised me and shouted Nkume! I
responded Nwoguegbe! Despite being introduced to his commander, Captain Jibowu,
the later took him to one corner, asking to be convinced why I should not be
treated in accordance with the official instructions, namely to waste any such
able-bodied young-man who may have been an actual or potential Biafra soldier.
I was lucky.
Nwoguegbe saved me, but several of my mates from my community were
not. Cornellius Oguikpe, Michael Osuagwu, Efriam Chukwunoyerem, Echewodo
Onwunali, all were murdered at the end of the war by the Nigerian soldiers.
Yes, post-Biafra was not attended by any genuine efforts to
seek reconciliation nor even to find out what led to the war. Rather, what we
have witnessed is decades of vengeance, arrogance and conspiracy against
Alaigbo and Ndigbo - Yes these are on record -
Immediate post-war punitive massacre:
1.
Dismissal of some officers on the losing side,
Reduction in rank of others,
2.
Dismissal of civil servants,
3.
Secret Execution of some officers (Col.
Onwuatuegwu, Prof, Kalu Ezera),
4.
Abandoned property seizure of Igbo property,
5.
Punitive boundary adjustment,
6.
Closure of the Eastern Sea Port and Railway
lines,
7.
Deliberate policy of encirclement of Alaigbo,
Inciting Igbo outside Igbo heartland to reject their Igbo identity,
8.
Deliberate policy of exclusion from the
governance and power equation i Nigeria,
9.
Deliberate policy of destroying Igbo businesses,
10.
Continued massacre, lynching of Igbos in many
places in the North,
11.
Insensitivity to the plight of the IDPs of Igbo
extraction who were initially the major targets of Boko Haram bombings and
killings,
12.
No serious effort at post-war reconstruction and
reconciliation.
I strongly recommend to all those who care to understand how
the Igbos view their predicament in the Federation to read the Petition of
Ohanaeze Ndigbo to the Human Rights Violations Investigating Committee of 1999.
It is captioned:
The Violations of the Human and Civil Rights of Ndigbo in
the Federation of Nigeria (1966-1999).
President Olusegun Obasanjo should speak to the nation now about why
and how that initiative of his was aborted. A Truth and Reconciliation was a
great idea, but just like all National Conference decisions meant to deal with
the resolution of the injustices of the system. It was arrogantly dismissed and
nothing happened.
Biafra : A Collective Guilt:
Have we forgotten that Biafra was a collective guilt and
that those who created the Nigerian Federation did so to satisfy their own
agenda. They designed a local agenda for the same purpose?
Have we forgotten the cause of Biafra and the war? Have we
ever come together to examine why Biafra?
Obasanjo’s Truth Commission and the Justice Oputa Commission
were arrogantly dismissed and nothing happened.
Who was the aggressor in that war?
Aborted Efforts to Solve the Nigerian Problem:
What about several efforts to sit down and dispassionately
examine the fate of the Federation and how to heal the wounds of the past.
Several aborted historical opportunities for peace and stability, or a genuine
democratic system include -
1.
Ibadan Conference of Sept/Oct 1966
2.
Aburi Accord.
3.
Abiola’s election that would have set a
precedent.
4.
1994-5 Constitutional Conference and the 1995
Draft Constitution, the best Constitutional Draft in the history of Nigeria.
5.
Conferences organised by Obasanjo's regime.
6.
President Jonathan’s 2014 Conference.
7.
Current Ferocious opposition to restructuring.
Laying the Foundations for Genuine Reconciliation – The
Biafra Initiative:
The Birth of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) – A
child of the post-war East Central State Youth Volunteer Services Corps
(ECSYVSC) whose memo to General Gowon led to the establishment of the NYSC by
the Federal Government. I led the delegation, as Chairman of the ECSYVSC, that
delivered the Memorandum to the Federal Government on the eve of the first
post-war independence anniversary, precisely on 30th September, 1970.
In response General Gowon had given Dr Ukpabi Asika’s
Government £75,000 (Seventy-five thousand pounds) in appreciation of that
historical initiative of the youth of Alaigbo. The great objective of that
historical initiative as conceived by us, the youth of Alaigbo, was to forge a
genuine instrument of national reconciliation and national integration.
What has happened to the NYSC? Any credit to the initiators?
Several attempts have been made by the chaps in the NYSC Foundation in Abuja to
interview me in order to draw inspiration from the original mind that conceived
the NYSC; each time they were discouraged from a follow-up.
It was the same way that a former Governor had advised the
Federal Government to create an institution to house the Biafra scientist. The
answer was no!, because doing so would give credit to the Biafrans.
The Road to Reconciliation:
Not Restructuring but Renegotiation of the basis of the
Nigerian Federation. Nigeria is a multi-national Federation. The task is to
agree on the terms for a form of political union among these nations and
mini-nations.
Unless this is done, there would never be any stable
Federation uniting all these peoples who are culturally, religiously and
philosophically separate nations and mini-nations.
*Courtesy: President, Alaigbo Development
Foundation (ADF), Prof. T. Uzodinma Nwala at the Yar Adua Centre Abuja entitled: Memory and Nation Building: Biafra 50 Years After: A Sober Reflection.
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