45 years ago, Nigeria ended the only and deadliest civil conflict since her existence. Reportedly, more than 3 million people died, the index consists mainly of children and women, the cause mainly bullet and starvation. The human casualty of this 30 months war is far greater than the present mayhem being carried out by Boko Haram for a couple of years now; let us not dabble into the statistics. And the kicker is that more 90% of the victims of that conflict were from a particular ethnic group.

It is disturbingly worrisome that the Government and people of Nigeria do not want to revisit this dark past in our chequered history. The incident (it should be called an incident until an official term is fixed for it; whether war or better still, genocide) had been relegated to the recycle bin of history and no one, absolutely none wants to restore it to what it was: a dark, hunting and divisive past of our nationhood. The Biafra war is a major event that redefined our nationhood, and should not be consigned to the background. Nobody wants to discuss the series of events that led to the conflict, the actual prosecution of the warfare and the occurrence thereof, and finally, the post-war period and subsequent governmental policies and declarations. Undeniably, nobody.

All one often hear is: “it is the past”, “it has happened”, “it is done, no victor no vanquished”; are you kidding me? Nigerians (and Africans generally) do not learn from history. As once said by a certain wise man; “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Recent times in other climes, whenever a great misfortune and human mistakes led to a conflict and warfare, after the calamity and fight, they go back and analyse the causal effects of such events, official pronouncements are made, each party takes responsibility of their actions or inactions as the case maybe, and everybody learns from the experience and it is remembered and marked. Suffice it to point out that such incidents are marked not because it is funfair and ceremonious to remember a warfare as one does his birthday or wedding ceremony. A nation marks and remembers her disturbing past not because it is pleasant, but because future generations yet unborn totally needs to learn and know what happened so that HISTORY WILL NOT REPEAT IT SELF.

But no, not my dear country. We continually live in denial of our past and often prefer to “move on”, whatever that means. People died; fathers, mothers, children; animousity is bred and future generations will never learn what truly happened to their progenitors. Without an official theme, position and statements, the events are continuously altered and skewered to suit some side (depends on which source), the bitterness, hatred and discontent grows and take deep root, thereby extending the divisive crack threatening the unity of this country.

We often hear and visit places like Arlington Memorial, WW 1& 2 memorials, Vietnam memorial, (even 9/11 has a memorial in its remembrance) and many other war memorials where nations come together to reminisce and denounce what happened, so that the event shall never repeat again. Often do you hear clauses about Nigeria dividing or war breaking out in the near future if this occurs, or if that fails to take place. The elites and ruling group, the masses and the officious bystander would have chosen lighter rhetorics or more friendly tone if we, as a nation, ever learnt anything from the only war that happened decades ago. As we have refused to learn from history, let us hope that we do not repeat the same history we stubbornly refused to learn from.

Their END is @ hand(masterminds of boko haram)