The Biafra struggle is an expression of a legitimate right to self-determination induced and fueled by the Nigerian State. It is sustained by the emotions and common solidarity of the Igbos of South Eastern part of the country whose successive generations have been victimized with Nigeria’s apparatus of State power, but most unfortunately; this legitimate aspiration has continued to be jeopardized by its own leadership which has repeatedly fallen into the hands of demagogues with poor conflict handling attitudes.

In spite of this unfortunate fact, the aspiration will be kept live as long as the Nigerian State continues to neglect to adopt peace building and conflict transformation strategies rather than its approach of coercion against the agitators. Those in whose grip the country has been held up in her structural contradictions, constitutional and institutional aberrations, and who continue to promote the prejudices and tendencies that engendered the agitation in the first place should realize that they are running a race against time.

There is no doubt that the Igbos constitute the most dispersed population in Nigeria if not on the African continent. They are found in every human community in the country and even across the world, they are basically merchants trading in every ware available and required by humans. They carved a niche for themselves in this field of human endeavor, and the ways and manners they go about it have attracted for them the combination of admiration, envy and hatred.

Socio-politically; the Igbos developed a republican system with its attendant egalitarianism and the high sense of liberty which open the individual to the attainment of the highest station in life as his or her abilities could detect. Obstacles to individuals on the social ladder are very limited and there is no entrenched aristocracy. Theirs has been a truly republican society.

This is the socio-philosophical foundation of the adventurous nature of the Igbos. It has also been contended by some school of thought that the nature of the soil in the Igbo territories which is not very suitable for agriculture; the basic industry of all African societies, accounts in great measure for the people’s focus on trading as their fundamental preoccupation as well as their mass migration to other territories for their sustenance.

A fact that is hard to be contradicted is that the Igbos have remained the most self-sustaining ethnic nationality in Nigeria. They have the credit of mobilizing for community self-help projects, human capital development through apprenticeship and collective pooling of capital for investments especially in merchandise. They have a tradition of capital accumulation and the resilience to survive adversities. Like the Japanese in the spirit of the Meji Restoration demonstrated in their quick recovery from the devastations of the World War 11, the Igbos recovered from the genocide visited on them by the Nigerian State during the civil war which lasted for thirty months. They rebuilt their destroyed communities and businesses and bounced back to their original status that in the first place attracted for them the jealousy of some other peoples of Nigeria especially those who orchestrated the Kano attack in 1954 and the pogrom between 1967 and 1970. A visit to South Eastern Nigeria today will confirm the creative, generative and self-sustaining spirit of the Igbos. The region has the least level of unemployment in the country and economic activities by self-employment are highest in the region with its attendant consistent highest regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate.

Unfortunately; this people have remained at the receiving end of Nigeria’s crisis of co-existence especially as this relates to the mutual suspicion and antagonism among the ruling and political elites of the northern and southern parts of the country. The absence of national unity in Nigeria was clearly revealed early enough by Alhaji (Sir) Tafawa Balewa when he addressed the Legislative Council in 1948 in the following words.



‘’Since 1914, the British government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds; in their religious beliefs and customs, and do not show  themselves any willingness to unite’’. ‘’Nigeria unity is only a British intention for the country. Many people deceive themselves by thinking that Nigerian unity is one, particularly some of the Press people…..this is wrong’’.  I am sorry to say that this presence of unity is artificial and it ends outside this chamber, the Southern tribes who are now pouring into the North are more or less domiciled here and do not mix with the Northern people……and we in the North look upon them as invaders’’. CONTINUE READING: https://atlanticpostng.com/analysis-the-biafran-struggle-twice-stumbling-on-a-similar-stone/