The federal government, through NBC may dismantle and confiscate the equipment’s of radio Biafra. They may jam its operating frequencies; they may denigrate its operator Nnamdi Kanu, they may pan gimmicks. Standing tall amongst their stunts is the expunging of history from our secondary school curriculum to make us forget the unjust killings and massacres that occurred on the portion of God’s real estate called Nigeria from 1967 through 1970, but that doesn’t change the fact that Biafra Lives On.

We may not be tampered by war, but we see the evidence of Biafra manifest in our everyday lives. Like the lullaby of demons and symphonies of rueful songs made from hell screams, we hear Biafra in the tormented screams resonating across our perimeters.

We see its ghosts in the rivers of withered hopes that flow from the eyes of yet another Nigerian family who just lost its breadwinner to a Nigerian death – a death that could have been avoided if our health care system wasn’t dysfunctional, if our roads weren’t death traps, or if the Nigerian Medical Association detected only some weeks earlier that that medical doctor who runs a private hospital and also practices at the Federal Medical Centre knows nothing because he cheated through medical school.

These evidences are served in different assortments: The tired smile of that overworked and belabored young man whose minimum wage take-home pay really can’t take care of home or cater for the needs of his young wife, new born baby and aged mother. The educationally disadvantaged and misnomers in the North who now abducts our daughters, maim our sons, displace our mothers and fathers from their addresses. Leave garbed skulls buried in the rubble of what yesterday was home, and litter our streets with twitched, scalded bodies and tore open skulls.

We may not be tampered by war, but Biafra is evident in the traces of dissatisfaction we see on the faces of the elderly and the hints and gazes of disappointments in the eyes of our youths. We see it in the epileptic power that buoy and smother the dreams of young, budding entrepreneurs. Our olfactory organs testify to the red smell of innocent blood, putrid human flesh and umpteen clandestine, extrajudicial killings – all searing and abiding scars of the pogrom.

Tomorrow and every tomorrow thereafter, we’ll run across that young unemployed graduate who is high on sorrow, drunk with pain and now carries a dark cloud over his head. He used to be a rabid optimist, but this country, the realities this country brought to his platter, made him a gloomy and moody pessimist. We’ll come across that secondary school student who is surly, wondering if he’ll ever amount to something in a country where his elder brother who graduated from our territary institution some five years ago and still can’t find a job.

Whether at the airport or in church or market or at the hospital, we must have had cause to experience that familiarity strangers adopt with each other after sharing in the disappointment of public service. Perhaps, when NEPA as the street calls them or PHCN as the establishment calls them, seized power or when the gas station sold petrol at ridiculously high rates.

We must have seen that Nigerian, that white collar employee whose head is buried in worry because his company is about to downsize or right-size or merge with another or be acquired. We must have seen streets fevered with darkness or woke to the intemperate ardor of listening to hums and cacophonies of generators.

These shared misfortunes, these common woes and collective struggles for a better country, makes us all citizens of the land of the rising sun. If you have in anyway been a victim of shenanigans of national coyness, congratulations!

You are an esteemed citizen of the Republic of Biafra. The layer after layer of discontent that has settled and formed a mass in our minds’ mind and leaves us standing valiantly, is the national passport of citizens of this great republic.

The idea may look idiotic on the face of it, but look beyond the shallowness. Take off your rose colored lenses and you’ll see that Biafra is deeper than Col. Ojukwu, MASSOB, Radio Biafra, Biafra Zionists and other offshoots of the holocaust. Be objective for just a split second and you’ll agree that Biafra isn’t just a country. It is a culture, a country, and an ethnic group we all belong to. It is a country that lively kicks not just in all parts of Nigeria, but in the heart of hearts of all those who’ve been fated to be Nigerians – dead or alive, in part or full, based in Diaspora or at home.

E pluribus unum; out of many, one. Biafra may not be the source of all our problems, but it sure is one of the severest symptoms of it. Forty-five years after, Gowon’s “no victor, no vanquish” remains just a slogan. It has even been an enabler, a springboard to integrating those who escaped Ojukwu’s mapping into the great republic we all now share.

As I scribble down these words, brows crinkled half in consternation, the other half in concentration, I set out not to generate a worldwide debate or to incite or fan the embers of latent mutual hatred among ethnicities. But to make it known that regardless of background or origin, we are all kindred souls. We are kit and caboodle. We are all Biafra. That is what was, and it remains what is. It’s just that most of us don’t know it yet.

Joel Pereyi is an award winning essayist and freelance writer. He maintains a bimonthly column for the Abuja-based FCTPost.

Source: The FCT Post - http://www.fctpost.com/2015/08/17/we-are-all-biafra-by-joel-pereyi/

FTC

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#Yawn.

Can you guys just active this Biafra and let us be??

They don't realize the psychological impact it has on our lives and so they ended up gnashing their teeth in denial and hope it never happened while the culprits walk. We all know about Biafra, it's where over a million people have starved to death in the past six months. Over 3 Millions of people died. Think about that for a minute. We have been rendered paupers by monetary policy fiat, our properties declared abandoned and confiscated, kept out of strategic public sector appointments and deprived of public services. The rest of the country forced us to remain in Nigeria and has continued to deny us equity.
The Northern Bourgeoisie and the Western Bourgeoisie have conspired to keep the Igbo out of the scheme of things. The indigenization decree in 1971, kept us away from acquiring wealth. No rehabilitation or reconstruction.
Biafra is not just a tribal thing, political or hate as many of you may presumed. It's the destruction of a nation, people who feels they are not protected in Nigeria and felt creating a country of their own will grant them full access to their potentials and freedom.

It's only those with no soul will ask us to forget the past and move on. Before you type that word... Think again. Millions died fighting for their freedom. Millions.

Its either this hopeless country called Nigeria takes nation building seriously or collapse like Soviet Union

I de hear oh

coolzeal:
They don't realize the physiological impact it has on our lives and so they ended up gnashing their teeth in denial and hoped it never happened while the culprit walk. We all know about Biafra, it's where over a million people have starved to death in the past six months. Over 3 Millions of people died. Think about that for a minute. We have been rendered paupers by monetary policy fiat, our properties declared abandoned and confiscated, kept out of strategic public sector appointments and deprived of public services. The rest of the country forced us to remain in Nigeria and has continued to deny us equity.
The Northern Bourgeoisie and the Western Bourgeoisie have conspired to keep the Igbo out of the scheme of things. The indigenization decree in 1971, kept us away from acquiring wealth. No rehabilitation or reconstruction.
Biafra is not just a tribal thing, political or hate as many of you may presumed. It's the destruction of a nation, people who feels they are not protected in Nigeria and felt creating a country of their own will grant them full access to their potentials and freedom.

It's only those with no soul will ask us to forget the past and move on. Before you type that word... Think again. Millions died fighting for their freedom. Millions.

The b@stards and their slave masters are quick to shout 'move on',when they are brazenly and glaringly holding the rest of us down.Nigeria sucks.

WhiteTechnology:
Its either this hopeless country called Nigeria takes nation building seriously or collapse like Soviet Union

For me,sinking this hell-hole of a country,is my right.Because God Himself is ashamed of the name Nigeria.

What an article beautifully written.But those slaves and their masters will soon come here to talk trash.

NDPVF:
For me,sinking this hell-hole of a country,is my right.Because God Himself is ashamed of the name Nigeria.

Those who seek freedom will get it no matter how long it takes


God bless the free borns of the South.

They don't know how we feel

NDPVF:
The b@stards and their slave masters are quick to shout 'move on',when they are brazenly and glaringly holding the rest of us down.Nigeria sucks.

Nigeria, Britain, Russia in alliance with USA want to exterminate us from the face of the earth while all the world and humanitarian bodies watch. Why? For trying be a nation. I still don't get it..

coolzeal:
Nigeria, Britain, Russia in alliance with USA want to exterminate us from the face of the earth while all the world and humanitarian bodies watch. Why? For trying be a nation. I still don't get it..

I double dare them this time.

NDPVF:
I double dare them this time.

The rise of Africa to her economical, technological and human development will be the collapse of the Western world. At such, they will eradicate anything good in Africa to their own advantage. Biafra is the key to such development and economy freedom. They don't want that and Nigerians are blind to see. Shame.

Home is where the heart is. Biafra is therefore my Home!

Please go to www.change.org , search for the keyword "Biafra" and sign the ongoing petition for United Nations to organize a peaceful referendum on Biafra.

If you haven't signed and shared it on your social networks, why not?


Many thanks for your co-operation.

'There was a country'called Biafra,we wld have forgotten that country but yet everyday you wake up to the same reality that brought about the quest for it. The old order that has held Nigeria to its knees,will never let us attain an egalitarian society,where people are not denied their due rights because of their ethnicity,religion and believe,where merit,equity and justice reigns supreme.A land where you are encouraged to optimize your potentials without victimization,where quota system is abolished,a land where a boy from the south-East and a girl from the North-West makes it into the universities with the same cut-off mark etc only then can the spirit of Biafra be laid to rest,though it will forever live in our hearts.God bless us.

Oh Biafra! The land of the rising sun! If there is anything I cherish more than life, it is Biafra!


Chukwu abiama, may I not die until I see Biafra!

WhiteTechnology:



Those who seek freedom will get it no matter how long it takes


God bless the free borns of the South.

what about the Osu ibos? Are they free borns as well?

Pls go to face book ! Search Radiobiafralondon and follow namdikanu let's give him support!! And tell them the normal way of yellowbar people changing there names to IGBO names and south south names to talk rubbish # all haill the land of the risen sun! If nigeria wnt let us go !! We will bring this country down with fire and brimstone!! I dnt think they knw what we are planning @ all! Just two weeks we. Will outrun the zoo

"We'll come across that secondary school student who is surly wondering if he will ever amount to something in a country where his elder brother who graduated from our tertiary institution some five years ago and still can't find a job". Do you know the hoplessness of that? After spending 70% of your productive life in education you see yourself amounting to nothing because of a failed country. Have we asked ourselves the physcological effect it will have on our young generations? Could this be linked to the abysmal performance of the just realeased W.A.E.C, N.E.C.O and G.C.E where about 70% of the students failed? If you are not encuraged you'll be discouraged. Indeed, Nigeria needs much to be desired.

coolzeal:
The rise of Africa to their economical, technological and human development will be the collapse of the Western world. At such, they will eradicate anything good in Africa to their own advantage. Biafra is the key to such development and economy freedom. They don't want that and Nigerians are blind to see. Shame.

......That is the gospel truth. Well Said!

1toRtoiSe1:
what about the Osu ibos? Are they free borns as well?

the osu tradition has long been abolished unlike d YO'ROBBERs that stil bury ppl alive because 1 silly fat man died

UmuEri:
Oh Biafra! The land of the rising sun! If there is anything I cherish more than life, it is Biafra!


Chukwu abiama, may I not die until I see Biafra!

Then you should plan on living forever...... ...muumuu.....you will surely get Biafra....

hoobs:
the osu tradition has long been abolished unlike d YO'ROBBERs that stil bury ppl alive because 1 silly fat man died

shut up! It hs not been abolished.

Ok, can you marry an Osu? I know your answer will be yes cos you re also an Osu.

1toRtoiSe1:
shut up! It hs not been abolished.

Ok, can you marry an Osu? I know your answer will be yes cos you re also an Osu.

and you are under your brown roof telling me what's happening in my backyard baaa?....the igbos are adaptive ppl,we flow wid time,unlike the YO'ROBBERS that still bury a man alive because a silly man died

It's as though Seun Osewa has something against the Igbos, I wonder why this article is not on front page. Well it's your forum, suit yourself.