As Nigeria’s socioeconomic and political shenanigans continue, separatist and secessionist agitations are becoming increasingly popular among many beleaguered Nigerians as a possible way to navigate the muddle. Historically, agitations for the emergence of a sovereign state of Biafra have been recurring in Nigeria’s journey to nationhood, culminating in a bloody 30-month civil war.
However, despite sustained attempts by successive generations of Biafran ideologues to re-midwife the defunct Igbo-dominated state into existence, Biafra has refused to come. Accordingly, this article examines the prevailing issues in the post-Civil War Biafran struggle and argues that the failure to achieve Biafra is primarily a matter of strategy.
On May 27, 1967, the Eastern Nigeria Consultative Assembly which consisted of eminent personalities, chiefs and elders in the defunct Eastern Region of Nigeria instructed the military governor of the region – Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu – to declare Biafra and secede from Nigeria following mass killings of Igbos all over the country in a pogrom which was supposed to be in reaction to what was tagged the “Igbo coup” of January 15, 1966, orchestrated by predominantly Igbo-speaking military officers, and resulting in the lopsided assassinations of prominent military and civilian personalities of mainly northern and western extractions. Consequently, Ojukwu declared Biafra on May 30, 1967, officially commencing the long search for an Igbo-dominated sovereign state. Following the declaration, events quickly escalated, and what was originally intended by the Yakubu Gowon government as a “police action” to arrest the seceding region eventually dovetailed into a bloody 30-month civil war. With the Biafran capitulation and eventual formal surrender to Nigerian authorities on 15 January 1970, the life of the fledgling republic tragically ended. Since then, hopes for the second coming of Biafra appear to have persisted, but Biafra has refused to come.
That Biafra has not come is not because the agitation for Biafra is abominable, unrealistic, or impossible to achieve. Biafra has not come because the strategies for achieving it have been largely inadequate. In fact, most of the time, the Biafran state resurrection strategy has been more emotive than objective. Fundamentally, the strategies for the actualization of the sovereign state of Biafra seem to have been based on three principal assumptions: the first is the belief that the state of Israel and its Western allies are solidly behind Biafra and that, one day, Israel will force Nigeria to release or relinquish Biafra. The second assumption is based on the feeling that Biafra requires Nigeria’s acquiescence, permission, or approval to come into existence as an independent and sovereign nation. The third assumption seems to be anti-intellectual, preferring to bestow the responsibility of restoring the defunct state of Biafra on illiterate and semi-literate personalities with a high propensity for dastardly and unbridled violence. These assumptions clearly constitute the core of contemporary Biafran revival strategies despite their obvious flaws. Therefore, our analysis of the failure to achieve Biafra must begin and end with them.
The first assumption which seems to be premised on an excessive but misplaced belief in the centrality of the state of Isreal to the matter of Biafran resurrection probably stems from the now anthropologically disproved myth that Igbos are descended from the Israelis and that in fact, the Igbos amounted to what is often considered as the “lost tribe” of Israel which ought not to be abandoned by mainstream Israel to face undue harassment and humiliation in the Nigerian polity. Perhaps, one historical and existential justification for such a belief is the Rwanda-Congo DR experience. As a fallout of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the Tutsi-controlled Rwandan government constantly sees it as a responsibility to protect the Banyamulenge and other Kivu Tutsis from discrimination and attacks by local militias operating within the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, the Rwanda-Congo DR experience differs in context from what is expected to happen between Israel and Nigeria. First of all, if the defunct state of Biafra is to be resurrected by external intervention, then such a decision would likely revolve heavily around Britain. Not Israel. The reason is simply economic. Britain has more economic interests in Nigeria than Israel does, and in the political economy of international relations, a sovereign state interferes in the internal affairs of another sovereign state only to protect its strictly economic interests. Such interventions may appear altruistic at first, but they ultimately boil down to protecting vested interests.
Other countries that are likely to feature heavily in the decision to resurrect Biafra would include the United States of America (USA), China, France, and even Russia, not in terms of their permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) but mainly in terms of their vested economic interests in Nigeria. Unfortunately, since Israel is not a member of the UNSC and does not have substantial economic interests in Nigeria, there is very little that it can do to enforce the re-emergence of a defunct Biafran state through external intervention. The little it can do is to lobby the USA, which clearly controls the United Nations (UN) to allow for the emergence of a sovereign Biafra by possibly insisting on a referendum, but even in taking the decision, the USA would have to carry Britain along; otherwise, the interventionist efforts could be sabotaged by a heavily vested and conservative Britain. Moreover, a USA-led intervention to bring about the emergence of a sovereign Biafra would likely entail very high economic and political concessions that may not be palatable to Britain or even China, which are heavy investors in the Nigerian enterprise.
Therefore, the focus on Israel as the centerpiece of Biafran liberation ideology is not only misplaced but also insufficient to cause a significant transformation in the consensus of powerful states. Worse still, successive leaders of the Biafran struggle seem to have done very little to command the confidence of key international players who would likely be involved in any decision to “liberate” Biafra through external means. If anything, they have mostly done the contrary. For instance, contemporary Biafran “relations” with a country like Britain have been unduly hostile, possibly attracting a silent but powerful disdain for the Biafran struggle within the British establishment. Interestingly, there has been occasional support for the Biafran cause by some American and British government officials, but these hardly reflected the official positions of their respective establishments.
The second assumption, which sees Biafra as requiring Nigeria’s legal and political approval to come into existence, probably arises from the “legacy” of Biafra’s civil war defeat, and is akin to the usual situation in which most slaves relied on their masters’ goodwill for freedom, requiring only a few radical ones to dare to escape through “illegal” means. However, more than anything else, it is this second assumption that appears to have had the most profound effect on Biafran state restoration strategies, resulting in the almost permanent stagnation of the contemporary Biafran state restoration effort. For example, one particular effect of this second assumption on the restoration strategies was the apparent hope and confidence in the Nigerian judiciary to administer Nnamdi Kanu’s case justly and fairly, resulting in his possible acquittal. Related to this effect was also the hope of certain eminent personalities from the South East geopolitical zone of securing concrete commitments from the Nigerian government to release Nnamdi Kanu via a political solution. Unfortunately, despite the perseverance of the Biafran ideologues throughout the very long trial period of the IPOB leader, and despite a number of “pilgrimages” to Abuja by some eminent personalities in Igboland in search of a “political solution,” Nnamdi Kanu ended up in prison. When examined critically in the context of Nigeria’s contemporary sociopolitical configuration, it is clear that the situation would have been very different if Nnamdi Kanu were a bandit commander or even the leader of Boko Haram. At least, attempts at his extrajudicial release would have featured more prominently in the strategy to get him out of detention than the mere reliance on the goodwill of the Nigerian authorities. Yet, this would have been for a cause that was probably not as noble and socially permissible as the struggle for self-determination.
Additionally, his lieutenants would probably have shown greater discipline in managing the movement throughout the period he remained in detention. If Nnamdi Kanu were the leader of Boko Haram or a Kachalla, there is no way that his lieutenants would not have infiltrated the officials who regularly brought him to court with a view to extracting critical information about convoy movements, enabling them to stage one or two ambushes on the convoy to forcefully effect his release, even in the heart of Abuja. If Nnamdi Kanu was the leader of Boko Haram, the move by the Nigerian government to confine him to Sokoto Prison would have been silently appreciated because given the security architecture of the country, it portended more difficulty trying to extrajudicially release him from a Kuje Prison located in the heart of a heavily-guarded seat of power like Abuja compared to another prison in far-flung Sokoto which cannot boast of as much security fortification as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Therefore, the Biafran opposition to Nnamdi Kanu’s confinement to Sokoto Prison was more so because the secessionist movement was not extrajudicially-minded in its efforts to release the separatist leader. Unfortunately, the continued detention of the IPOB leader has clearly impacted negatively on the struggle for self-determination, infighting among erstwhile lieutenants, and commodification of Biafran freedom fighting now hold sway, all to the chagrin of genuine Biafran ideologues.
Consequently, the intellectualism of the Igbo intellectual class is considered useless by the “Biafran establishment” and is summarily equated to “Otelectualism” (or intellectuals who reason from their anus) by no other than Nnamdi Kanu himself.
The third assumption, which is predominantly anti-intellectual, seems to have compounded the problem of Biafra’s refusal to come. This assumption is rooted in the notion that the intellectual class in the defunct mainland Biafra (especially in Igboland) has been a major impediment to the agitation to resurrect Biafra. Specifically, this intellectual class is not only lampooned for its inability to forge a workable plan for Biafran self-determination or contribute to the actualization of the movement intellectually, but it is also berated for what is perceived as its tendency to hobnob with the Nigerian government – the oppressor of Biafra – for personal gains. Consequently, the intellectualism of the Igbo intellectual class is considered useless by the “Biafran establishment” and is summarily equated to “Otelectualism” (or intellectuals who reason from their anus) by no other than Nnamdi Kanu himself.
Consequently, with the intellectual class effectively humiliated and “subdued,” the struggle to actualize the sovereign state of Biafra became the personal fiefdom of illiterate and semi-literate individuals with an undue propensity for unbridled violence, yet with little or no clout to pull the requisite international connections that would make things happen at home. Ironically, the consequence of this flawed strategy has been felt more by no other than Nnamdi Kanu himself because since his current condition as a convict and prison inmate, the alienated intellectual class with their local and international connections have felt no considerable urge to dabble into matters relating to his release, while many of the businessmen who lost their relatives and property to the harrowing era of “sit-at-home” appear to have also distanced themselves from the struggle, preferring only to seek national and international relief for their struggling enterprises.
Worse still, the illiterate and semi-illiterate individuals to whom the Biafran struggle appears to have been “bequeathed” seem not to be interested in articulating practical and effective mechanisms for releasing the IPOB leader, choosing instead to wallow in unending infighting and name-calling. The greatest contradiction in all of these is that Nnamdi Kanu himself was too enlightened to have alienated the intellectual class.
Alone or in combination with others, these assumptions form a critical impediment to the concretization of the Biafran dream, which must suffice in the actualization of a sovereign state of Biafra. However, as our analysis has shown, there are only two options that are available to the Biafran ideologues in view of the present circumstances – namely, to either abandon the Biafran state resurrection movement and work towards a more united and prosperous Nigeria, or to revisit the body of Biafran state resurrection strategies for more productive outcomes.
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■ Christopher Uchenna Obasi is a retired military officer and a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences, Coal City University, Enugu.
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