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The agitation for the sovereign state of Biafra is generating healthy debate in Nigeria even though people differ on the right way to go about achieving it and how the federal government should handle the matter
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Dec 21, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
THE recent clamour and protest over the creation of the Sovereign State of Biafra and the release of Nnamdi Kanu, leader, Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, and director, Radio Biafra, who is languishing in detention in Nigeria, may have been scaled down but the echoes are still reverberating within and outside the country. Many prominent Nigerians and socio-cultural groups have been calling on the federal government to handle the protest with carefully and diplomatically to ensure it does not get out of control.
Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, urged the federal government to employ more diplomacy in handling the agitation for the Republic of Biafra. Soyinka said statements like “Nigeria is indivisible,” “This won’t happen under my watch,” “Nigeria’s unity is non-negotiable” would not help matters.
The Nobel laureate, who spoke in an interview on Channels Television programme, Channels Books’ Club, last week, pointed out that he had said earlier that Biafra could not be defeated. According to him, “Once an idea has taken off, you may defeat those behind it in a war but that does not mean the end of the idea.”
He lamented that he had been misunderstood at the time. He said the attitude of the government should be to sit down with those leading the renewed agitation and ask: “What can we do to make the Igbo feel part of the country, what can we do to make them to feel that they belong and not alienated. This is what we are ready to push for in the overall governance content of the country. It is not to be carrying on that this will not happen under my watch; Nigeria is indivisible, Nigeria’s unity is non-negotiable.”
Similarly, Orji Uzor Kalu, former Governor of Abia State affirmed that the right of the Igbo had been embedded in the United Nation’s charter, which gave them the full right to ask for secession if they were no longer comfortable in living together as one country called Nigeria. Speaking to newsmen in Lagos, he stressed that the way and manner the youths were going about the demonstration was wrong as they had turned what was supposed to be a peaceful protest into violent killings and destructing of properties.
He said, “Those boys are right, they have a right to demonstrate, but not violent demonstration, not killing soldiers because if I am a Commander-in-Chief, and you kill one of my soldiers, I will kill everybody. You cannot kill soldiers. You cannot kill police. You have a right to say no, we want our own Republic. The United Nations charter gives them the right to ask for self-determination. It is not a right of determination to go and destroy people’s properties, to go and destroy Nigerian Armed Forces, whether it is Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy or Nigerian Police. These are not the rights. They have the right to speak for self-determination. This is the full right.”
The former governor advised the federal government to manage the country as a federation by setting up committee comprising of traditional rulers and politicians to intervene in the matter. Kalu said it is the duty of the committee to find out why they are agitating and informed that what they are doing was not the best way to go about it. “This is the right time to nip the agitation in the bud, but not by force. It is a wrong strategy hearing people saying that we will quench it by force. We cannot quench anything by force because it is their right to ask for self- determination,” he said.
The Northern Governors Forum led by Kashim Shettima, Borno State governor, appealed to all Nigerians living the north not to panic over the protested that happened in Onitsha. The northern governors condemned the Onitsha protest which spiralled out of control without blaming any individual or group. They appealed for calm, saying all Nigerians must realise that the evil being perpetuated by the Boko Haram insurgents against innocent Muslims, Christians and followers of other religions regardless of their geopolitical divides in the last six years was more than enough trouble for the country, hence the need to come together as a single unit to collectively fight terrorism that is a threat to all law-abiding Nigerians.
“We condemn the crisis in very strong terms. The governors of major cities in the north in particular have been in critical meeting to share thoughts, and we have collectively taken firm measures to ensure that the violence doesn’t spread to any part of the 19 northern states. We will also be working with our colleagues in the south to nip the crisis in the bud although we will not disclose the measures we have taken so that those who may want to take advantage of the Onitsha mayhem will not know our strategies. We urge all Nigerians to be calm. We particularly call on all Nigerians living in the northern states not to pay attention to differences in religion and ethnicity,” he said.
Adding its own voice, the Igboezue International Association of Nigeria and Diaspora had appealed to all the pro-Biafra groups in the country and Diaspora to ensure that all their protests and demonstrations were done peacefully because Igbos are not known to be violent people, but peaceful even in the face of marginalisation.
Pius Okoye, national president of the association, while briefing newsmen in Onitsha, on Sunday, December 6, said there was room for peaceful protest worldwide and the Nigerian constitution also provided room for peaceful protest and demonstration. “Government is a continuum. It is not a private business. The last National Conference was well represented by all parts of the country. Nigerians expected continuity regarding the outcome of that National Conference, but we were disappointed that no mention had been made of it. However, we believe the implementation of its recommendations would bring peace in Nigeria,” he said.
Okoye said IPOB and MASSOB had the right to protest and demonstrate as far as it was peaceful and non-violent and within the ambit of the law, warning that involving or allowing violent miscreants to infiltrate their fold will make nonsense of their agitations that have been recognised worldwide. “It is the duty of the police to control protesters and prevent them from destroying lives and properties, or involving in violent activities. The military should not shoot at protesters like animals.”
Nonetheless, the federal government has said that they are detaining Kanu in the interest of peace. Ayo Ibitoye, senior officer with the Department of State Services, DSS, told the court that it would be in the interest of justice, peace and order, to allow the IPOB leader to remain in custody of the security agency.
The government told the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, that it was not in a hurry to release Kanu because its investigations had revealed that he was the brain behind recent clamour for the creation of Biafra Republic and had already received huge sums of money to purchase weapons. Government in a counter-affidavit before the court, said that prior to his arrest, Kanu, had already made enquiries about prices of all the weapons he intends to buy.
The IPOB leader has been in detention since Saturday, October 17, when he was picked up at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, by the Department of the State Security, DSS.
In the last few months, Kanu and his pro-Biafra group have left nobody in doubt they want the creation of the sovereign state of Biafra. In pressing for his unconditional release from detention by the federal government, members and supporters of his group have been holding protest marches in major cities in the South-East and South-South, calling for secession. The group, apart from calling for an unconditional release of Kanu, argued that the South-East had been neglected and marginalised by the federal government for too long and that they were tired of the forced marriage called Nigeria.
According to the agitators, the poor distribution of the country resources has led to underdevelopment and poor infrastructure in the region. This, they argued, had consequently resulted in the high number of employment among the youths in the South-East, the highest rate of bad roads caused by erosion which has cut off some communities from the rest of the country.
The IPOB specifically charged that the situation had worsened in the past six months of the President Muhammadu Buhari regime, claiming that all the positions in the three branches of the federal government that mattered had been handed over to indigenes of the north while only few Igbo people are serving as ministers. The current situation in the country, the group argued, is totally against the spirit of the Nigerian Constitution, which directs that no section of the country predominates over the rest and that all positions must be distributed in such a manner as to conform to the federal character.
So far, the continuous protests on the streets of the southeast and south-south states seem to have met the intentions and programmes of the leaders of the groups. They have succeeded in drawing attentions of the federal government of Nigeria, the international community and indeed prominent Nigerians to their cause. And if it is not handled carefully by the federal government, the international community might one day ask Nigerian government to allow the Biafra Republic to be carved out of the country.
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