THE RESTORATION OF BIAFRA NATION

Wednesday 15 January marked 50 years since the end of Nigeria’s bitter civil war. That was the day that Colonel Philip Effiong submitted the articles of surrender to Yakubu Gowon at Dodan Barracks, Lagos. Gowon famously declared that there were “no victors, no vanquished”. By a curious coincidence, January 15 was also the date when,  in 1966, the first military putsch led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu triggered a chain reaction that culminated in the tragic civil war, 1967–1970. As a child I recall when the thick of night dozens of Igbo families turned up at my parents’ modest home in the parsonage in Murya, a mission settlement just outside Lafia, today the capital of Nasarawa State. One of the women had just put to bed. Daddy did all he could to protect them from a bloodbath that was to consume more than a hundred thousand defenseless people. I have never seen such fear in the eyes of grown men. After barely a week, my parents received death threats from the neigbouring village...

Tony Okafor, Awka The Indigenous People of Biafra has flayed  Facebook Nigeria for allegedly shutting down the  page of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu. The group’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, in a statement, said  the action was taken by Facebook Nigeria to diminish the growing popularity of Kanu in his cause.  Powerful said the page had endeared Kanu to most people as it was used to expose the atrocities of government. He said Biafra, during the Nigeria’s Civil War, suffered great denial of media space, and IPOB would not allow a repeat in the 21st century. Powerful said, “We can confirm that Facebook Nigeria has shut down the page of our leader, Nnamdi Kanu. “This is not unconnected with the fact that our leader’s page has become a rich resource for those determined to expose the evil regime in Nigeria and enthrone a better life for the masses. “We mince no words when we say that Facebook Nigeria is more corrup...

  Social Media Network,   Facebook , has shut down the page of  Nnamdi Kanu , the   Indigenous People of Biafra   (IPOB) in what appears to be a clampdown on Biafra agitation championed by the IPOB leader. Naija News  reports that Kanu’s group, the IPOB made this claim in a statement issued on Thursday, January 23 by its Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful. In the statement, the IPOB alleged that the action was taken by Facebook Nigeria who, it said viewed the page as a platform to exposing the ills in government. The IPOB warned that Biafra had suffered greatly as a result of the denial of media space in the late 60s, saying it could not afford to allow same to continue in the 21st century. According to IPOB:  “We can confirm that Facebook Nigeria has shut down the page of our leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. “This is not unconnected with the fact that our leader’s page has become a rich resource for those determined to expose the ev...

Robert Bennett  says no account of the war should ignore its origins in a mainly Igbo military coup in 1966.  Alan Healey  thinks too many people still look at Britain’s colonial past as a golden age.  Judith Nicoll  recalls her father, who was shot down and killed while flying food and medicines into Biafra Frederick Forsyth (Buried for 50 years: Britain’s shameful role in Biafra, Journal, 21 January) arrived in Biafra shortly after I was evacuated in June 1967 at the start of the war, just 15 miles north of Nsukka, where I was working as a university lecturer. No account of the Biafran war should ignore its origins in a mainly Igbo military coup in January 1966, a coup in which three Nigerian political leaders were assassinated (none of them Igbo). Among them was a man who, by popular accounts, was a modest and good politician: the prime minister, Tafawa Balewa. The military justified their actions with widespread corruption in government. The eventu...

Nigeria’s   wartime Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon has given further insights into happenings that led to the Biafra war, which ended 50 years ago. According to excerpts from an exclusive interview with the former military leader and published as part of Mike Awoyinfa’s Press Clips column in this edition of Saturday Sun, Gowon said Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu’s excuse for avoiding initial peace meetings before the war eventually broke out was absolute nonsense. His words, “For absenting himself from the meetings, Ojukwu tried to use insecurity as excuse.  But to me, that was absolute nonsense.  Even in Accra, in Aburi, there could be the question of insecurity there.  Anything could have happened.  If we wanted, could we have not have arranged for some deranged persons in Ghana to deal with that particular problem?  That was really the question that he tried to raise.  That it is insecurity.  We promised him security.  That all of us wer...

IS it just merely fortuitous that the utterly unnecessary Amotekun controversy in the South West is coming at exactly the same time as Nigeria is commemorating 50 years to the end of the county’s three-year fratricidal conflagration – one of the bloodiest and deadliest civil wars in Africa? That was a largely ethno-regional inspired conflict among supposed brothers in which no less than two million lives were estimated to have been lost. This was in addition to the colossal loss in properties, businesses and infrastructure on a humongous scale. The absolutely avoidable arrogance and total lack of humanness in the response of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mallam Abubakar Malami, to the decision of the South West governors to set up the Western Nigeria Security Network popularly known as ‘Operation Amotekun’ shows vividly that the mindset that led the country down the ruinous path of war is still alive and well in some quarters in today’s Nigeria. In his brusque a...

The leader of the  Indigenous People of Biafra  (IPOB),  Nnamdi Kanu , has again alleged that  President Muhammadu Buhari  is dead and that the person in Aso Rock, Nigeria’s presidential villa, is an impostor whose name is Jubril Al-Sudani from Sudan. Naija News  reports that since Kanu resurfaced in Israel in October 2018, he has been alleging that President Buhari is an impostor, a claim which the President quashed after the IPOB leader presented what he described as “ scientific proof .” Reechoing his earlier stance that Buhari is dead and replaced by “ Jubril of Sudan “, Kanu cited the absence of President Buhari at the official Buckingham Palace photo call for African heads of state at the banquet in London as part of the British-Africa Summit as a proof that the President is an impostor. This online news platform understands that the IPOB leader made this claim in a post on social media network, Facebook on Wednesday, January 22. Of...