M y earliest memories of Biafra
are the same as my earliest memories of my father. I can remember
sitting next to him on a bed and I touched his arm. He turned to me and
he said: “Can’t you see your father is crying.” It was many years later
that I realised he was crying because of Biafra. That was 50 years ago
today. I didn’t see my father cry again. He was mourning the loss of the
Biafra dream.
For me and for many of the diaspora, Biafra is a
presence that haunts us. It is a part of our history that is not spoken
about and yet we try to make sense of it by reading, watching plays and
attending lectures. All of this in an attempt to understand this dream
that was on the cusp of being realised and yet failed so painfully.
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I was two when the war began and four when it ended. This was a civil war in Nigeria
fought between the Nigerian government and the eastern region of
Nigeria. Predominantly the home of the Igbo people, the eastern region –
in response to violence and massacres, as well as political, economic,
cultural and religious tensions – declared itself the State of Biafra on
30 May 1967 and seceded from Nigeria.
Nigeria was a creation of the British in 1914. It was established for
colonial administrative convenience. It merged three separate cultures
into one. To the north were the Fulani and Hausa-speaking people, often
nomadic, principally of the Muslim faith. To the west of the River Niger
were the Yoruba, largely farmers living under a rigid monarchical
system and Christian. To the east were the predominantly Igbo-speaking
people, also Christian, but with a strain of Judaism and more republican
in their outlook. Nigeria is not (and never has been) a cohesive whole.
However, in 1960, Nigeria was granted independence. Violence and coups
ensued.
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In response to Biafra’s secession, the Nigerian government, backed by
the former colonial master, countered with a brutal war. Millions of
Biafrans died, most as a result of the deliberate government policy of
starvation. From July 1967 to January 1970, Biafrans fought to free
themselves from Nigerian oppression and from the lingering vestiges of
poisonous colonialism. Biafra was starved into submission. Biafra was,
and still is, a powerful vision of freedom and self-determination.
I have a deep and abiding rootedness in Biafra and the UK. My father
studied at the LSE in the early 1960s and his first job as an academic
was in England. I was born in the UK and brought up in two different
cultures. To me, Biafra is a dream and a shadow. It is a dream of my
father. I remember bouncing into the kitchen aged nine or 10 (we were
living in Norwich at the time) and informing my mother that I was
Biafran because Dad said so, and she told me (quite rightly) that Biafra
does not exist. I ignored her. This was 1975, five years after the war
had ended but my father still dreamed. He was Biafran and so were we. At
least once a week we had to eat fufu, a traditional Biafran meal. As
far as my father was concerned, fufu, like our Biafran identity, was
both compulsory and necessary and he made sure that we knew this. My
sisters and me would hanker after fish and chips!
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My father died
17 years ago. We flew his body home to be buried. It went without saying
that he needed to be laid to rest in the place that was truly home for
him. My father’s tie to the home country was a tie to the dream of
Biafra. He never stopped believing in Biafra. It was a passion and a
dream that consumed him. His passion for Biafra shaped the way my two
sisters and I were brought up. His passion for Biafra lingers in my life
and has influenced the way I interact with the world and the way in
which I struggle and thirst for justice.
But Biafra is also a shadow. Not just for me, but for many people. It is
the shadow of our past in Nigeria as a nation, whether we acknowledge
it or not. The shadow of Biafra exists in the memories of the war and
the many stories that are told about it behind closed doors. The shadows
and dreams of Biafra are invisible but still very profound.
Dad brought us up to believe in Biafra. He was always deeply
passionate about Biafra and our home town of Mbaise. When I was 12, we
moved to Nigeria from the UK. Dad wanted us to attend school in Nigeria.
We lived in a small town called Idah on the eastern bank of the River
Niger in the middle belt region of Nigeria.
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My
father had unwritten rules. We were not allowed to study in the north.
We were not allowed to marry anybody from the north and he gave us
strict instructions to marry from Mbaise in the southeast of Nigeria.
Needless to say, that was the one time I disobeyed him because I
eventually married a Yoruban man from the west of Nigeria.
The furthest we ever got to the north was a town called Jos and I think
we drove through Abuja once. As far as my father was concerned, northern
Nigeria was a no-go area. He was living in the shadow of Biafra and
when we think about the way so many Biafrans were killed in the north
before the war and what is happening today with Boko Haram, I can understand why he felt so strongly about this.
Some years after his death I remember rebuking a cousin of mine when I
heard that she had moved to northern Nigeria. That fear and the shadow
were very much alive for me even though I was living in London. These
shadows became part of our day-to-day lives, affecting our choices and
decisions.
As an adult I can see more deeply how the dream of
Biafra has shaped who I am. I am a priest, but I am also a community
activist. My thirst for justice and the need for a better world was
nurtured by my father and his dream of Biafra.
During the war, my father was away campaigning and trying to raise money
for an organisation called The Friends of Biafra. His dream was so
powerful and the needs of Biafra so urgent that he simply had to leave
his family at this crucial time and respond. My youngest sister was born
then, but Biafra had to come first.
His thirst for justice and his activism shaped my own thirst for these
things. At eight, I was raising money to buy presents for elderly people
in a nearby home. At 10 I was joining sponsored sleep outs for Amnesty
International. At 12 I was writing about Steve Biko. The dream of my
father continues to shape and influence me in my contemporary social
justice activities.
Biafra is part of who I am. It is part of my family heritage. I
remember the stories about the war where my relatives fled from town to
town to avoid the approaching Nigerian soldiers. I remember the stories
of what they did to survive.
I had a cousin who went by the name
of Surpriser. His real name was Goddy and he fought in the Biafran army.
During the war he hid the family’s valuables and property by digging a
deep hole somewhere on family land. After the war he recovered
everything and from that time onwards he was known as “Surpriser”.
As
a teenager, I always thought he was rather odd and often under the
influence of something but I think the fighting affected him in more
ways than we ever fully understood. I wish he was still alive so that I
could speak to him and ask him what happened. As an adult as I look back
over my life I can see how Biafra has shaped my life in both dreams and
shadows. And I know that many of us in the Biafran diaspora have
similar stories and experiences.
It is now 50 years after the end
of the war and I think it is right for us to remember, because in doing
so we honour our ancestors. We honour those who died during the war
often from starvation, and we honour those who fought for Biafra.
I think that there is still the need for answers and dialogue about
the war. I think it is a shame that Nigeria has never seen the need to
have such dialogue or some kind of public acknowledgement or remembrance
of the war. These dreams and shadows will never disappear. They need to
be embraced and they need to be acknowledged because these dreams and
shadows abound today.
The people waving the Biafran flag today in
protest are mostly people who were young children during the war and
some were not even born at that time. They wave the Biafran flag because
the dreams and shadows of Biafra are as strong today as they were when
my father had them. These dreams and shadows affect Nigeria today; the
shadows will never disappear and the dreams will never die. The Nigerian
government needs to realise that silence is not an answer to the truth.
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There is a passage in the Bible where God asks Cain “Where is your
brother Abel?” Cain tries to rebuff God, but God says: “Your brother’s
blood cries out to me from the ground.” The blood that was shed for
Biafra is perhaps part of the reason why these dreams and shadows still
exist. It is important for us to remember Biafra but it is also
important for Nigeria to remember Biafra and for the United Kingdom to remember the part it played in the cruel devastation of the Biafran people.
As
for me and people like me, we will continue to remember, especially
through stories and plays, films and drama, dialogue and reflection and
through the activism for Biafra that still continues today. Let us
continue to remember. Let us continue to dream. Igbo Kwenu! Biafra
Kwenu!
The Reverend Ijeoma Ajibade is a Church of England priest, ministering at Southwark Cathedral and St Philip’s, Earl’s Court
Read about the inhumane tactics of the Biafran war, which ended 50 years ago today, here
