BIAFRA : Cross River in Biafra?

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By Kangwa Sunday Tiralumun

SIR: The proponents and advocates for the creation of the new sovereign state of Biafra are either through ignorance or wilful negligence selling a Utopian aesthetic political ideology. The fanatical adherent of this new gospel of ‘liberation’ will roundly attack your personality, insult your tribe and question your education for daring to ask them to explain the difference in this new proposed country and present day Nigeria.

That was my experience in a grocery store last week in United Arab Emirates where a fellow described me as a fool who preferred to be a slave to a ‘HAWUSA’ man than be free to live my life under (not even within or inside) Biafra!

While the right to self-determination as enshrined in the UN charter is clear and revocable, subjecting a tribe, nation and ethnicity into your agenda so as to pull crowd is annexation, which is contrary to known public international law and against the same canons that the proponents routinely cite. The resolution of May 27, 1967 that gave Col. Ojukwu, governor of the then Eastern Region, was supposedly made up of delegation of stakeholders from the present day Cross River State. But the same cannot apply in the present day reality. For while the new breed Biafra apologists have consistently bemoaned the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorate by Lord Lugard, the same set of critics of Lugard’s imposition see nothing wrong in redrawing the international boundaries of Nigeria, calling their new project Biafra – without first consulting the inhabitants of their new country.

Maybe a referendum was done and I wasn’t aware. I doubt if anything close to even an opinion poll was ever held.

I do not lack the ability to live free and live my life as enshrined in the constitution and other treaties, articles, charters or conventions that Nigeria is a signatory to; I just wouldn’t want to be a denizen in 21st century colony of disgruntled irredentist that spawn bigotry into national discuss.

This country has been looted dry by her haters irrespective of tribe and ethnicity. If Nigeria were a mother, she would’ve died of cancer. She has been sucked dry, exposed to scavengers, nationals and foreigners alike. I seriously don’t see what difference being a ‘Biafran’ will make. The last time we see our politicians is during elections, they abscond and come back only for re-election. How these and other governance issues and public policies can be resolved only through self-actualization is what I haven’t been exposed to by the new mongers of the Biafra confraternity.

I will work and pray for the restoration of Nigeria’s glory and hope to see Nigeria prosper rather than see her fall.