On this occasion of our second anniversary, I shall go further in the examination of the meaning and import of our revolution by discussing the wider issues involved and the character and structure of the new society we are determined and committed to build. Our enemies and their foreign sponsors have deliberately sought by false and ill-motivated propaganda to becloud the real issues which caused and still determine the course and character of our struggle. They have sought in various ways to dismiss our struggle as a tribal conflict. They have attributed it to the mad adventurism of a fictitious power-seeking clique anxious to carve out an empire to rule, dominate and exploit. But they have failed. Our cause is transparently just and no amount of propaganda can distract from it.

Our struggle has far-reaching significance. It is the latest recrudescence in our time of the age-old struggle of the black man for his full stature as a man. We are the latest victims of a wicked collusion between the three traditional scourges of the black man – racism, Arab-Muslim expansionism and white economic imperialism. Playing a subsidiary role is Bolshevik Russia seeking for a place in the African sun. Our struggle is a total and vehement rejection of those evils which blighted Nigeria, evils which were bound to lead to the disintegration of that ill-fated Federation. Our struggle is not a mere resistance – that would be purely negative. It is a positive commitment to build a healthy, dynamic and progressive state, such as would be the pride of black men the world over.

For this reason, our struggle is a movement against racial prejudice, in particular against that tendency to regard the black man as culturally, morally, spiritually, intellectually, and physically inferior to the other two major races of the world – the yellow and the white races. This belief in the innate inferiority of the Negro and that his proper place in the world is that of the servant of the other races has from early days coloured the attitude of the outside world to Negro problems. It still does today.

Not so long ago the fashion was to question the humanity of the Negro. Some white theorist attributed the creation of the Negro to the Devil, others even identified the Devil as the first Negro. Later they derived the Negro from the accursed progeny of Ham. Nearer to us still in time, it became a topic for serious debate in learned circles in Europe whether the Negro was, in fact, a man; whether he had a soul; and if he had a soul, whether conversion to Christianity could make any difference to his spiritual condition and destination. By the nineteenth century it had been reluctantly conceded that the Negro is, in fact, human, but a different kind of man certainly not the same kind of man as the white. Pseudo-intellectuals went to work to prove that the Negro was a different kind of man from the white. They uncovered abundant so-called anthropological evidence from archaeology which “proved” to them conclusively that the Negro was no more the same kind of man as the European than a rat was a rabbit.

It is this myth about the Negro that still conditions the thinking and attitude of most white governments on all issues concerning black Africa and the black man; it explains the double standards which they apply to present-day world problems; it explains their stand on the whole question of independence and basic human rights for the black peoples of the world. These myths explain the stand of many of the world governments and organisations on our present struggle.

Our disagreement with the Nigerians arose in part from a conflict between two diametrically opposed conceptions of the end purpose of the modern African state. It was, and government worth the trust placed in it by the people must build a progressive state that ensures the reign of social and under the leadership of the Hausa-Fulani feudal aristocracy preferred anarchy and injustice.

Since in the thinking, of many white powers a good, progressive and efficient government is good only for whites, our view was considered dangerous and pernicious: a point of view which explains but does not justify the blind support which these powers have given to uphold the Nigerian ideal of a corrupt; decadent and putrefying society. To them, genocide is an appropriate answer to any group of black people who have the temerity to evolve their own social system.

When the Nigerians violated our basic human rights and liberties, we decided reluctantly but bravely to found our own state, to exercise our inalienable right to self-determination as our only remaining hope for survival as a people. Yet, because we are black, we are denied by the white powers the exercise of this right which they themselves have proclaimed as inalienable. In our struggle, we have learned that the right of self-determination is inalienable, but only to the white man.

- Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (THE AHIARA DECLARATION – The Principles of the Biafran Revolution)

I have heard

If GEJ had listened to OBJ and applied UDI FORMULA!!!

Bokoharams are not Ibos, Tivs, Idomas, Ibibios, Ijaws, Hausas, Yorubas etc.
Bokoharams are majorly Fulanis, advanced into Herdsmen's hooliganism and now Kidnappers.
GEJ was a President like PMB. He launched the best celebrated National Conference, NC, and got a good Report. Why did GEJ fail to implement that Report?
GEJ knew that Bokoharam was foreign, ISWA, and not like Biafra or the people of UDI(a pure internal insurrection). Why did GEJ handle them with such kid gloves?

The Yorubas have come out without equivocation to demand Restructure. The Ibos should now join in calling on the various Legislatures to sit down seriously this time to simply amend The Exclusive List to adjust the overbearing authority of the F.G.