By Taiwo Olanegan
Self-determination of Biafra is legitimate and achievable. However, nations no longer get divided with bombs. Nowadays, they are split with a biro or crayon. Therefore, barbarous, or murderous state agitators and gangs won’t get invited to a United Nations (UN) negotiation table. But are tried, convicted, and jailed. You want to achieve Biafra. It is an easy math. But not by decapitating heads.
Let the Igbo begin their Great Exodus rather than another war. Move east. Settle east. Invest east. Live east. Vote east. That is the key. lsrael did same pre-1948, sustaining the movement until 1970. The Jews had a systemised second exodus after the biblical one. They moved en masse to Jerusalem. They ferried themselves from Europe, America, Asia, and Africa to repopulate, popularise, and rebuild their ancient boundaries and geography. To renegotiate and consolidate the independence of modern Israel.
You can’t want Biafra and keep moving from home. To become a dot in a circle. Fenced about by a circumference of hateful tribes and disrespectful ethnics. And now you bomb your homes, villages, towns, and lob off the heads of your sons with machetes. Stupid! That was Sinn Féin strategy in Northern Ireland for decades. But it never worked until they stopped being English and turned culturally, economically, and politically Irish. It’s great to want to be Biafran. But go home to vote. Rebuild APGA. Establish great and trustworthy regional leaders. Rebrand your lgboness. Until then, you would lack the assets and arsenal to negotiate your continuous stay or exit from obodo Nigeria.
See, Catalonia is the Igbo of Spain. She’s tired of the federation with Spain. But she made herself so sexy and adorable – Madrid is on his knees begging her not to leave. That is enough simile for Biafra to learn from. Sadly, although the Igbo are the greatest entrepreneurer stock in Africa, deftly politics and diplomatic manoeuvres are emblems not boldly pasted on their sails. Forced curfew, arson and beheading are the ways of thugs and terrorists. These would earn Biafra nothing but more scornful looks. From cynical Nigeria.
The silliest l read from an Igbo section, is that these killings in the southeast are done by unknown gunmen. Or that the bloodletting is by a third force or fifth columnist. Some Igbo intelligentsia opined also, that if the north used and negotiated power with Nigeria through boko haram and terrorism, why not the east? This is akin to comparing white with grey, or lightning to fire. The lgbo need to be aware, that the implied silence of the Nigerian state, and the hushed and unspoken words of the other tribes on the carnage ongoing, is: “lf Igbo want to destroy their land, economy, institutions, sons, and daughters. Let them do so quickly. We care not.”
l wish the southeast would reverse itself before things get out of hands. No one in Nigeria is ready to help N’digbo not to fall. A dot in a circle is a nuance expression on the national spread of N’digbo.
…Taiwo Olanegan first published this opinion on May 24, 2022.
