Renewed spirit of resistance in Biafra
[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 December 2015, 23:09 GMT]
What was believed as the disintegration of the Biafran struggle following Nigeria’s internationally backed genocidal war, has been proven wrong by the recent popular grass-root movement among the people of the former territories of Biafra in the South and South-East of Nigeria, calling for independence throughout their homeland. The Nigerian state response is repression, during their clamp down on a pro-Biafra protest on the 2nd December in Anambra state, Nigerian security forces opened fire killing nine civilians. The resurgence in the call for self-determination and sovereignty in the former territories of Biafra, comes at a time when peoples’ have renewed their demand for self-determination in Catalonia, Eelam, Northern Ireland, Northern Kurdistan and West-Papua.
The Biafra case proves that geo-political injustice, military might, genocidal massacres or sinister diplomatic manoeuvres cannot destroy the spirit for freedom and the desire for sovereignty among oppressed people.
Perhaps this very truth lies behind the genocidal outcomes of COIN strategies as even the most benevolent policy maker is driven by this paradigm to opt for genocidal military solutions as it remains that an oppressor cannot win the ‘hearts and minds’ of a beleaguered people when their liberty, national aspirations and grievances as well as their aspiration for self-governance is kept hostage or silenced at the barrel of the gun.
Contemporary developments show that an oppressed people cannot be bereft of the spirit for national resistance and freedom indefinitely when the structural and material conditions of oppression remain.
The revitalization for the call for self-determination and sovereignty has since the late 1990s been led by the Movement for Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), which since its inception has pledged to secure the Igbo people’s right to self-determination through a non-violent (satyagraha) and grass-root based mobilization. They have since then been recipient of Nigerian state intimidation, arrest, torture and murder. Likewise another movement on the forefront is the Indigenous people of Biafra (Ipob) which also runs the Radio Biafra.
The director of Radio Biafra and Ipob leader Nnamdi Kanu, was arrested this October in Lagos on his return home from London and charged under ‘criminal conspiracy, intimidation and belonging to a criminal society’. His Wife, Uchechi Okwu-Kanu, in an interview with IBTimes UK, stated that her husband is a prisoner of conscience and fears that he is subjected to torture in custody by the Nigerian state Security Services (DSS).
Since his arrest, the demonstrations calling for an independent Biafra has intensified in the southern states of Nigeria, alongside government efforts to curb it. A joint military force of the Nigerian state deployed to stop pro-Biafra protests in the Anambra state on 2n December, opened fire and killed 9 protestors according to the Abuja based Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (Huriwa).
Huriwa also issued a statement demanding justice: "The killings are unlawful and the Nigerian government must investigate them. We also demand that Inspector General of Police, Mr Solomon Arase, be brought to justice. We hold him accountable for the killings, which occurred not long after he issued a statement warning that police would take action to stop the protest."
The Biafra war which lasted from 1967 till 1970, commenced when the Igbo nation declared themselves and their homeland to the Southeast independent from the post-colonial Hausa-Fulani dominated Nigerian state with centralized power in Lagos.
As in many cases of decolonization in the Third World, the administrative system secured as the platform of independence, was a colonial state structure implanted with the foresight of securing imperialist interests in the era of post-Independence. Likewise, the present Nigerian state system was cemented by the British colonial regime in 1914, when three separately administered territories (Northern Niger Protectorate, Lagos Colony, the southern Niger protectorate) which the British had conquered from native political sovereigns, were amalgamated into one unit centralizing power in Lagos, the seat of the Hausa-Fulani elites.
The call for independence followed a military coup and a counter-coup in 1966. The latter emerged when Muslim Hausa officials of the Nigerian army denounced the coup as a Christian Igbo conspiracy, resulting in massive riots which unfolded in the north wherein mobs, police forces and the Hausa controlled military orchestrated murderous pogroms against the Igbos settled in the north. What followed were a mass exodus of the Igbos into their traditional homeland, and the determination of Igbo military officials and bureaucrats to join with their people to build an independent land for the Igbo nation, Biafra.
There are parallels between the Eelam and Biafra struggle for national liberation and sovereignty, from domestically developing military weaponry and technology to becoming victims of geopolitical injustices.
The Nigerian state enlisted the aid of rivalling world powers, which followed with a convergence of geo-political interests in enhancing Nigerian military capacities in order to implement a genocidal solution to the Biafran question.
An unholy alliance, comprising of the U.K. and U.S. as well as Egypt and the Soviet, calculated their respective interests in order to be safeguarded in defeating Biafran sovereignty, and to secure for Lagos the strategic coasts, the oil fields and other minerals in the Igbo homeland to the South East.
Hence, Nigeria backed by major world and regional powers commenced on a genocidal war during the late 1960s, which saw over one million dead, the destruction of the Igbo homeland, and consequently the crushing of the Biafra state and movement.
In the concluding phase, the Biafra leadership capitulated, and the following decades saw the galling silence of the Igbo people for Biafra, or at least so it seemed.
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External Links:
What was believed as the disintegration of the Biafran struggle following Nigeria’s internationally backed genocidal war, has been proven wrong by the recent popular grass-root movement among the people of the former territories of Biafra in the South and South-East of Nigeria, calling for independence throughout their homeland. The Nigerian state response is repression, during their clamp down on a pro-Biafra protest on the 2nd December in Anambra state, Nigerian security forces opened fire killing nine civilians. The resurgence in the call for self-determination and sovereignty in the former territories of Biafra, comes at a time when peoples’ have renewed their demand for self-determination in Catalonia, Eelam, Northern Ireland, Northern Kurdistan and West-Papua.
The Biafra case proves that geo-political injustice, military might, genocidal massacres or sinister diplomatic manoeuvres cannot destroy the spirit for freedom and the desire for sovereignty among oppressed people.
Perhaps this very truth lies behind the genocidal outcomes of COIN strategies as even the most benevolent policy maker is driven by this paradigm to opt for genocidal military solutions as it remains that an oppressor cannot win the ‘hearts and minds’ of a beleaguered people when their liberty, national aspirations and grievances as well as their aspiration for self-governance is kept hostage or silenced at the barrel of the gun.
Contemporary developments show that an oppressed people cannot be bereft of the spirit for national resistance and freedom indefinitely when the structural and material conditions of oppression remain.
The revitalization for the call for self-determination and sovereignty has since the late 1990s been led by the Movement for Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), which since its inception has pledged to secure the Igbo people’s right to self-determination through a non-violent (satyagraha) and grass-root based mobilization. They have since then been recipient of Nigerian state intimidation, arrest, torture and murder. Likewise another movement on the forefront is the Indigenous people of Biafra (Ipob) which also runs the Radio Biafra.
The director of Radio Biafra and Ipob leader Nnamdi Kanu, was arrested this October in Lagos on his return home from London and charged under ‘criminal conspiracy, intimidation and belonging to a criminal society’. His Wife, Uchechi Okwu-Kanu, in an interview with IBTimes UK, stated that her husband is a prisoner of conscience and fears that he is subjected to torture in custody by the Nigerian state Security Services (DSS).
Since his arrest, the demonstrations calling for an independent Biafra has intensified in the southern states of Nigeria, alongside government efforts to curb it. A joint military force of the Nigerian state deployed to stop pro-Biafra protests in the Anambra state on 2n December, opened fire and killed 9 protestors according to the Abuja based Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (Huriwa).
Huriwa also issued a statement demanding justice: "The killings are unlawful and the Nigerian government must investigate them. We also demand that Inspector General of Police, Mr Solomon Arase, be brought to justice. We hold him accountable for the killings, which occurred not long after he issued a statement warning that police would take action to stop the protest."
The Biafra war which lasted from 1967 till 1970, commenced when the Igbo nation declared themselves and their homeland to the Southeast independent from the post-colonial Hausa-Fulani dominated Nigerian state with centralized power in Lagos.
As in many cases of decolonization in the Third World, the administrative system secured as the platform of independence, was a colonial state structure implanted with the foresight of securing imperialist interests in the era of post-Independence. Likewise, the present Nigerian state system was cemented by the British colonial regime in 1914, when three separately administered territories (Northern Niger Protectorate, Lagos Colony, the southern Niger protectorate) which the British had conquered from native political sovereigns, were amalgamated into one unit centralizing power in Lagos, the seat of the Hausa-Fulani elites.
The call for independence followed a military coup and a counter-coup in 1966. The latter emerged when Muslim Hausa officials of the Nigerian army denounced the coup as a Christian Igbo conspiracy, resulting in massive riots which unfolded in the north wherein mobs, police forces and the Hausa controlled military orchestrated murderous pogroms against the Igbos settled in the north. What followed were a mass exodus of the Igbos into their traditional homeland, and the determination of Igbo military officials and bureaucrats to join with their people to build an independent land for the Igbo nation, Biafra.
There are parallels between the Eelam and Biafra struggle for national liberation and sovereignty, from domestically developing military weaponry and technology to becoming victims of geopolitical injustices.
The Nigerian state enlisted the aid of rivalling world powers, which followed with a convergence of geo-political interests in enhancing Nigerian military capacities in order to implement a genocidal solution to the Biafran question.
An unholy alliance, comprising of the U.K. and U.S. as well as Egypt and the Soviet, calculated their respective interests in order to be safeguarded in defeating Biafran sovereignty, and to secure for Lagos the strategic coasts, the oil fields and other minerals in the Igbo homeland to the South East.
Hence, Nigeria backed by major world and regional powers commenced on a genocidal war during the late 1960s, which saw over one million dead, the destruction of the Igbo homeland, and consequently the crushing of the Biafra state and movement.
In the concluding phase, the Biafra leadership capitulated, and the following decades saw the galling silence of the Igbo people for Biafra, or at least so it seemed.
Related Articles:
29.11.15 Heroes Day addresses in diaspora slam ‘US-Sri Lanka’ agenda ..
14.06.14 Nigeria to ape ‘Sri Lanka model’ in handling Boko Haram insu..
05.10.12 ‘Surrendering a struggle’: Biafran lessons to Tamil Eelam
27.11.10 Heroes Day - 2010
15.09.10 ‘Extreme position of appeasement’
09.04.09 In the name of its civilization IC is answerable
22.05.05 The Idea of Eelam- Taraki
External Links:
| International Business Times: | Biafra: Nigeria must investigate unlawful killings in Onitsha, urges rights group | |
| International Business Times: | Ipob, Massob and Buhari's government: How is Nigeria dealing with pro-Biafran separatist movements? |
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