@Obong

well said.

I was almost giving up on this thread.

Niger-delta, cross-river, rivers, bendel, east central, etc; these are just recent machinations.

The facts remain unchanged, that the Efiks, Igbos, Ijaws are geographic and problably blood cousins.

Wiping out any one group is simply a first step wiping out the next.

We should all know this fact by now.

thank you Mckren. as i stated, i understand and the biafra cause, and respect the self defense taken in light of the killings in the north. but let's not leave holes in our position that allows for division. i think an efik can support biafra without necessarily losing his efikness or efik land.

naijaking, as somone above mentioned, if someone has evil planed for the ibos, he likely has evil planned for the rest of us.

@Obong

you can say it again!

I wonder why our people never realized that. I mean M.I Okpara, Margret Ekpo, Ojukwu, Adaka Boro, Saro Wiwa, etc, and even the present MEND, and Ohaneze leaders

obong:

naijaking, as somone above mentioned, if someone has evil planed for the ibos, he likely has evil planned for the rest of us.

I have nothing but great love and admiration for your posts Obong.
Igbos,Efiks,Ibibios,Anangs  and other tribes in the crosriver/Akwa Ibom area  so similar in virtually everything.
We have the most intermarriage,we have some similar words,we eat the same foods made in almost the same fashion,we dress alike,look alike,even have similar festivals.
We have names like Inyang,Affiong and Ette in various areas of Igboland.
We have Igbos who were formally in Cross River state for years and only recently now in Ebonyi state.

During the civil war my family,I was told fled to Oron because some of my great uncles had wives from that area.
People fail to realise that the Nigerian army did not stop in Igboland.
People from Akwa Ibom and Cross river were slaughtered in their hundreds of  thousands together with Igbos.
As far as the awusa and Yoruba warriors were concerned,they were all Igbos.
Outside of of our areas,the average non South Eastern or East central Nigerian call us all Igbos.which is another topic of it's own.

The same marginalisation Igbos feel in the Nigerian politics is also visited on the average Efik man.
I do not regard myself a tribalist and will not treat people differently because of ethnic origin but  when we have characters like ono and his caddy mohada AKA okoroamadi  cajoling and ridiculing a whole race of great people,they ought to be put in their rightful places.
People make decisions based on the situation at hand.
The war has been fought,the war was lost.People who were at the receiving end of things have since moved on and gone on to heights imaginable.
The Igbo man at the end of the war had $20 pounds to start life afresh having lost all property and means of livelihood and I'm proud to say that we have not done too badly as a people.
With what we see in your failed Nigerian state,every "biafran" wishes Biafra was a reality,at least by now we would not have been part of you all's mess.

Every tribe in Nigeria will at some point feel the frustration with the system in Nigerian where the Northerner sees Nigeria as his "allah given right".
Yorubas felt the pinch when Abiola was denied his rightful ascent to the "throne of Nigeria"
This is now your turn!!

strong word babyosis!

babyosisi:

I have nothing but great love and admiration for your posts Obong. Igbos,Efiks,Ibibios,Anangs and other tribes in the crosriver/Akwa Ibom area so similar in virtually everything. We have the most intermarriage,we have some similar words,we eat the same foods made in almost the same fashion,we dress alike,look alike,even have similar festivals. We have names like Inyang, Affiong and Ette in various areas of Igboland.
We have Igbos who were formally in Cross River state for years and only recently now in Ebonyi state.

During the civil war my family,I was told fled to Oron because some of my great uncles had wives from that area.
People fail to realise that the Nigerian army did not stop in Igboland. People from Akwa Ibom and Cross river were slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands together with Igbos. As far as the awusa and Yoruba warriors were concerned,they were all Igbos.
Outside of of our areas,the average non South Eastern or East central Nigerian call us all Igbos.which is another topic of it's own.

The same marginalisation Igbos feel in the Nigerian politics is also visited on the average Efik man. I do not regard myself a tribalist and will not treat people differently because of ethnic origin but when we have characters like ono and his caddy mohada AKA okoroamadi cajoling and ridiculing a whole race of great people,they ought to be put in their rightful places. People make decisions based on the situation at hand. The war has been fought,the war was lost.People who were at the receiving end of things have since moved on and gone on to heights imaginable. The Igbo man at the end of the war had $20 pounds to start life afresh having lost all property and means of livelihood and I'm proud to say that we have not done too badly as a people. With what we see in your failed Nigerian state,every "biafran" wishes Biafra was a reality,at least by now we would not have been part of you all's mess.

Every tribe in Nigeria will at some point feel the frustration with the system in Nigerian where the Northerner sees Nigeria as his "allah given right". Yorubas felt the pinch when Abiola was denied his rightful ascent to the "throne of Nigeria"
This is now your turn!!

babyosisi:

I do not regard myself a tribalist and will not treat people differently because of ethnic origin but when we have characters like ono and his caddy mohada AKA okoroamadi cajoling and ridiculing a whole race of great people, they ought to be put in their rightful places. People make decisions based on the situation at hand.

You sure aren't a tribalist. But looking back at some of your posts in this and other threads, I think you know the type of people you can deceive into trusting you as far a tribalism is concerned. For your information, I don't believe a shred of your support for anyone in the Niger Delta.

Your people made a rather harsh decision based on the situation at hand at the time. And I don't know how I have ridiculed any race in any of my replies to this thread. I just share my views of the situation at the time, as I see it. If my logic does not add up, just prove me wrong with facts, rather than looking down on my people and their trade and asking for us to dance kokoma and owigiri for you.

I will advise any Niger Delta brother, including Obong to ''shine his eyes'' and don't believe in any of the three major ethnic groups in this country - including the Igbos. That does not mean we won't relate with them as close neighbours, but we must be careful. It's because of their closeness that we find ourselves in a precarious position today.

Remember the words of one of the Igbos to the Federal Government under Gowon about the Delta people. His name is no one else than the man Chief Phillip Asiodu, an Igbo man from Asaba, who was once the Federal Commissioner for mines and Power. Read up this link

http://www.cdd.org.uk/resources/workingpapers/niger_delta_eng.htm

And then take note of these words:

Indeed, one of General Gowon's key advisers in the Federal Civil Service, Mr Phillip Asiodu, made the cynical remark that the people of the Niger Delta could do nothing to change this state of affairs because they were numerically insignificant in the Nigerian scheme of things.

What state of affairs is he talking about? - The continuous deprivation of our people their God-given rights to utilise their resources for their own good. He said that when there was agitation for the development of the Delta region, after the Civil War, with the intent of continuosly improverishing our people.

Now, he was able to say this because his people are close to our people. His ancestral lands share common boundries with our own. Their is an adage that says that it's the people that are close to you that should first be questioned in times of external aggression. They know your secrets and can easily leak it out to your enemies.

See Ono.

The poeple you should direct this anger is the federal dominated by the northerners not the igbo people- and that is our anger. The niger-delta people keep blaming the igbo people for their woes which to my understanding is pointless.

Your people sup-ported the nigerian troops against the biafra. If you can just let the igboman be and i will be very happy. With the way you people are going i am not such supporting resource control is a wise decision. You can use it agaisnt us.

McKren:

I will not go into any kind of argument with you because the Igbos did not and have never known truer friends and allies than the Efiks and Ibibios.

So why do a lot of Igbo people keep looking down on them?

babyosisi:

The same marginalisation Igbos feel in the Nigerian politics is also visited on the average Efik man.
I do not regard myself a tribalist and will not treat people differently because of ethnic origin but when we have characters like ono and his caddy mohada AKA okoroamadi cajoling and ridiculing a whole race of great people,they ought to be put in their rightful places.

Yet, each time you see "people like mohada AKA okoroamadi cajoling and ridiculing a whole race of great people," you do not put them alone in their "rightful places," you use the opportunity to unleash vicious verbal (or should we say, written) attacks on their people, tribe and region, as well.

We know you for what you are, babyosisi. It doesn't matter how many speeches you make.

Reading through this thread, there are so many farcical statements that one does not know where to start - I can only assume that either the posters did not live through the civil war, or the history of the war they read are from 'comic' strips.

1. Anyone who believes the civil war was fought by the then Biafra for oil, needs his/her head examined for delusional problems.

2. Mistakes were made by all 3 'major' (hate this word), Nigerian tribes - the Igbos, through the inaction of Ironsi after the failure of the coup (thereby helping to cement the accusation of an Igbo attempt at taking over Nigeria), the Yorubas for allowing Brigadier Ogundipe to accede command to a junior Colonel like Gowon (cowardice in the face of a National crisis - they made up for this later with the MKO Abiola fight) and most of all the Hausa/Fulani for the pogroms against Southerners. By far, the[b] greater of the crimes is the latter.[/b] All others were political crimes, the pogrom was a crime against humanity.

3. It is amusing that the Southern minority tribes do not realize that the Hausa/ Fulani killed many of their people in these pogroms, as they were all grouped as 'nyamiri' - a corruption of the Igbo term for 'give me water'. But blaming the Igbos for this has of course become a national pastime.

4. Igbo leaders, however, have not done themselves any favours with their neighbours by their attitudes towards them - starting from Zik's removal of Professor Eyo Ita, to mockery of their lifestyles and to attempts to dominate.

5. Some southern minority leaders have come to realize that they have simply substituted the feared igbo hegemony with slavery to the Hausa/Fulani, where the bulk of the oil wealth has been spent.

6. The Igbo have only enjoyed the Niger-Delta wealth, as part of federal allocation policies, and have been in the forefront of the struggle for resource control. Ohaneze has consistently supported the call for much higher derivation percentages - further buttressing the fact that the Igbo never had and still have no quarrel with the oil wealth of the Niger-Delta.

PS - lest I forget, oil was discovered in many parts of of present Imo and Abia states by 1966.

Ugwumba,
I have read some of your posts on this board. You have my utmost respect for bringing your wealth of experience to bare on several burning issues on NL. I will not forget the way you quickly dismiss the claims of people who think OBJ is not the pivot on which other thieves rotate in the thread on OBJs worth

You have done thesame here. I stated in one of my entries on this thread that the Biafran war was largely an oil war. I did not state categorically that the war was fought because of oil. I hope you will not join the band wagon of people with myopic views and tribal sentiments to further plunge this discussion into oblivion.

That said, I must state that all you've written so far is largely true; point 4 featuring prominently.

Ugwumba:

Reading through this thread, there are so many farcical statements that one does not know where to start - I can only assume that either the posters did not live through the civil war, or the history of the war they read are from 'comic' strips.

1. Anyone who believes the civil war was fought by the then Biafra for oil, needs his/her head examined for delusional problems.

2. Mistakes were made by all 3 'major' (hate this word), Nigerian tribes - the Igbos, through the inaction of Ironsi after the failure of the coup (thereby helping to cement the accusation of an Igbo attempt at taking over Nigeria), the Yorubas for allowing Brigadier Ogundipe to accede command (cowardice in the face of a National crisis - they made up for this later with the MKO Abiola fight) and most of all the Hausa/Fulani for the pogroms against Southerners. By far, the[b] greater of the crimes is the latter.[/b] All others were political crimes, the pogrom was a crime against humanity.

Hmmn. . . . . .true, mistakes were made by all the three major ethnic groups, but I fail to see why you claim the Yorubas should have prevented Brigadier Ogundipe from acceding command to a junior Colonel like Gowon. Ogundipe, was a career military man. The Yoruba people did not assist him to get into the army, neither did he get his position on the basis of their votes. The man made a career decision to quit the army, instead of insisting on taking command. How does this decision by one man, qualify a whole ethnic group to be tagged as[i] cowards[/i]?? I don't get it o! Did he ask the Yoruba to come to his rescue when he was bypassed in favour of Gowon, and they refused? Afterall, Adekunle Fajuyi volunteered to go with Ironsi when he was arrested. The decision cost him his life. Does his own action strike you as the act of a coward?

Secondly, if Ironsi had court-martialled the 5 majors immediately after the coup occurred, would the whole story have turned out differently?

Ugwumba:

3. It is amusing that the Southern minority tribes do not realize that the Hausa/ Fulani killed many of their people in these pogroms, as they were all grouped as 'nyamiri' - a corruption of the Igbo term for 'give me water'. But blaming the Igbos for this has of course become a national pastime.

The Southern minorities realise that many of their kith & kin were killed in the 1966 progroms. But instead of blaming all other ethnic groups, they have resolved to take their case to God, try & put the past behind them and move on with their lives, the best way they can. As for them blaming the Igbo, nah. . . .it is actually the other way round.

Ugwumba:

4. Igbo leaders, however, have not done themselves any favours with their neighbours by their attitudes towards them - starting from Zik's removal of Professor Eyo Ita, to mockery of their lifestyles and to attempts to dominate.

True!!   For the first time, someone has clearly identified some of the issues that caused tension between the southern minorities & their Igbo neighbours.

Ugwumba:

5. Some southern minority leaders have come to realize that they have simply substituted the feared igbo hegemony with slavery to the Hausa/Fulani, where the bulk of the oil wealth has been spent.

6. The Igbo have only enjoyed the Niger-Delta wealth, as part of federal allocation policies, and have been in the forefront of the struggle for resource control. Ohaneze has consistently supported the call for much higher derivation percentages - further buttressing the fact that the Igbo never had and still have no quarrel with the oil wealth of the Niger-Delta.

PS - lest I forget, oil was discovered in many parts of of present Imo and Abia states by 1966.

Yeah. . . . .Ohaneze started asking for higher derivation revenue, after oil was discovered in Imo & Abia states. Before the discovery, they didn't make this demand.

Southern minority leaders did not realize that they "simply substituted the feared igbo hegemony with slavery to the Hausa/Fulani, where the bulk of the oil wealth has been spent" to use your own words. The southern minourities and their leaders merely want to have a say, in the way the oil revenue from the resources in their districts is being spent, and they are tired of living by the river (i.e. oil) and washing their hands with the spittle! If the oil wealth is being used to develop other parts of Nigeria, it should also be used to develop their own area, where the oil wells are located. Period. The issue is not about 'slavery' or 'hegemony'. It goes way beyond that!!

laudate:

Hmmn. . . . . .true, mistakes were made by all the three major ethnic groups, but I fail to see why you claim the Yorubas should have prevented Brigadier Ogundipe from acceding command to a junior Colonel like Gowon. Ogundipe, was a career military man. The Yoruba people did not assist him to get into the army, neither did he get his position on the basis of their votes. The man made a career decision to quit the army, instead of insisting on taking command. How does this decision by one man, qualify a whole ethnic group to be tagged as[i] cowards[/i]?? I don't get it o! Did he ask the Yoruba to come to his rescue when he was bypassed in favour of Gowon, and they refused? Afterall, Adekunle Fajuyi volunteered to go with Ironsi when he was arrested. The decision cost him his life. Does his own action strike you as the act of a coward?

Secondly, if Ironsi had court-martialled the 5 majors immediately after the coup occurred, would the whole story have turned out differently?

The Southern minorities realise that many of their kith & kin were killed in the 1966 progroms. But instead of blaming all other ethnic groups, they have resolved to take their case to God, try & put the past behind them and move on with their lives, the best way they can. As for them blaming the Igbo, nah. . . .it is actually the other way round.

True!! For the first time, someone has clearly identified some of the issues that caused tension between the southern minorities & their Igbo neighbours.

Yeah. . . . .Ohaneze started asking for higher derivation revenue, after oil was discovered in Imo & Abia states. Before the discovery, they didn't make this demand.

Southern minority leaders did not realize that they "simply substituted the feared igbo hegemony with slavery to the Hausa/Fulani, where the bulk of the oil wealth has been spent" to use your own words. The southern minourities and their leaders merely want to have a say, in the way the oil revenue from the resources in their districts is being spent, and they are tired of living by the river (i.e. oil) and washing their hands with the spittle! If the oil wealth is being used to develop other parts of Nigeria, it should also be used to develop their own area, where the oil wells are located. Period. The issue is not about 'slavery' or 'hegemony'. It goes way beyond that!!

Men, all these ones na upper-cut deadly blows.

ono:

Men, all these ones na upper-cut deadly blows.

Ono, this is not a fight and there are no upper-cut blows coming from anywhere. But I just feel that we should distinguish between facts & propaganda. How Ugwumba (who I have a great deal of respect for), can now say the Yoruba were cowards, simply because one of them (i.e.Ogundipe) chose to leave the army, for reasons best known to him, especially when he did not consult them before taking his appointment, just beats me hollow. There were a lot of things that went on behind the scenes, before Ogundipe threw in the towel.

Read this: http://www.citizensfornigeria.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=45

Take note of the part where the writer states:

About this time, first Major Johnson and then Brigadier Ogundipe himself gave an order to a northern NCO deployed to the Federal Guards Company. The soldier blatantly said he would not take orders from the Brigadier unless approved by Captain JN Garba. So, Captain Garba was sent for and came to the Police HQ. He was initially interrogated by Lt. Col. Anwunah, searching for information about what was happening in the country. Garba then aggressively confronted Anwunah with the grievances of northern soldiers and why they had struck.When Anwunah reported Garba's intransigence to Ogundipe, Ogundipe told Garba: "I wish you boys had waited.I have just received the report about the January coup this morning and it's on my table right now.Try to talk to your friends in Ikeja, and I am sure we can settle this matter, even at this stage." . . . . . .

At about 3pm, though, Ogundipe sent for Garba again and instructed him to contribute a platoon to a second assault force which he was sending to dislodge the boys at Ikeja.Garba notified Muhammed at Ikeja and then contributed a platoon to Ogundipe under one 2/Lt. Osuma (then known as "Usman" with separate orders that should he be ordered to shoot at fellow soldiers he was to refuse and return to base.2/Lt. "Usman" did exactly as he was told before subsequently escaping from Lagos on August 1st himself. When he got back to the east, he used his real name (Osuma) to request that his property be sent back to him there. Needless to say that Ogundipe's second attempt to establish military supremacy had failed. 
Meanwhile phone calls and signals were coming in from other parts of the country, including Enugu (from Lt. Col. C. Ojukwu, the governor). At one point Ojukwu was able to speak to Lt. Col. Gowon at Ikeja.It is said that Gowon told him that he was no longer a "free agent". Ojukwu encouraged Ogundipe to keep fighting even though he himself at one point escaped from Enugu to Onitsha from where he was calling Ogundipe. The rebels later made Brigadier Ogundipe aware that they would only accept Captain JN Garba as his intermediary for negotiations. . Meanwhile, angry about the phone calls from Ojukwu,Lt. Col. Muhammed began making plans to march on Enugu - from which he was eventually restrained.

Ogundipe did not come out at any point in time, to deny the facts stated above. The truth was that he had lost control of the soldiers under his command, who were mostly from the northern region. So what was he expected to do? Hold a gun to the heads of several northern officers, and command them to follow his lead? He was only one man, for crying out loud. The spate of events that had taken place prior to the July 1966 coup, made the northern officers suspicious of army officers from other tribes, and they were therefore, reluctant to take orders from those who did not share their own ethnic background.

On a final note, when talking about the unflattering opinion most Nd'Igbo hold about their southern neighbours, it is well known among all & sundry, no matter how many times they try to deny it. History is there, to bear witness.

laudate:

Yet, each time you see "people like mohada AKA okoroamadi cajoling and ridiculing a whole race of great people," you do not put them alone in their "rightful places," you use the opportunity to unleash vicious verbal (or should we say, written) attacks on their people, tribe and region, as well.

We know you for what you are, babyosisi. It doesn't matter how many speeches you make.

you are just one inconsequential person as far as I'm concerned.
I won't dignify you with a better response.
shoo fly don't bother me

babyosisi:

you are just one inconsequential person as far as I'm concerned.
I won't dignify you with a better response.
shoo fly don't bother me

Yeah. . . . .you cannot respond, because you cannot put up a truthful or factual defence. If you like, keep shouting that you are not a tribalist, till kingdom come. Don't worry, we know you for what you are.  The facts, speak for themselves.

babyosisi,
Please go to the romance section and contribute meaningfully there if there's nothing you can add to this interesting discourse.

Laudate,
You have my word. I will not mis-talk again. Your write up there sure corroborates my earlier stance that it was the general mood in the country, especially in the North (the distrust, fear of betrayal, etc) that led to the pogrom that was to follow in the North. It was an unfortunate incident, but I believe that had Aguiyi Ironsi prosecuted the January 1966 coup plotters, we would not be talking about that war today.

. It is amusing that the Southern minority tribes do not realize that the Hausa/ Fulani killed many of their people in these pogroms, as they were all grouped as 'nyamiri' - a corruption of the Igbo term for 'give me water'. But blaming the Igbos for this has of course become a national pastime.

4. Igbo leaders, however, have not done themselves any favours with their neighbours by their attitudes towards them - starting from Zik's removal of Professor Eyo Ita, to mockery of their lifestyles and to attempts to dominate.

5. Some southern minority leaders have come to realize that they have simply substituted the feared igbo hegemony with slavery to the Hausa/Fulani, where the bulk of the oil wealth has been spent.

this portion of your post speaks to the disunity that existed explains why biafra failed as a war and may have failed as a state. "amusing that the souther minorities did not realize their own people were killed"? do you actually believe they didnt know that. fact is that despite that, they were willing to fight nigeria within a nigerian context as they are doing so now. The likelihood of igbo oppression is real. it happens in every group in the world. But don't misrepresent our position by stating tha it has become a past time to blame igbos for the killings perpetuated by the north. we know the crimes in the north were commited by northerners against easterners. those guys couldnt tell the difference between an igbo and an ibibio

we are aware of their hand in this, but it doesn't mean we should now completely give ourselves over to a state that may treat us the same way.

How Ugwumba (who I have a great deal of respect for), can now say the Yoruba were cowards, simply because one of them (i.e.Ogundipe) chose to leave the army, for reasons best known to him, especially when he did not consult them before taking his appointment, just beats me hollow. There were a lot of things that went on behind the scenes, before Ogundipe threw in the towel.

I wonder why an enlightened person will write that Ogundipe merely resiigned or had a careers change when he is suppose to take over a post being the most seniour officer. Ok. See this analogy. You are army reserve and due to be deployed in a war ozone, on the eve of your deployment you had a change of mind and resigned. Do you know what they normally do to such people? Court Marshalled. Period.

So those who said that he is a coward (mind yorubas are not) are very correct to say that.
And stereotypes is a human failing. So for igbo people to say that yorubas are generally coward is not out of place. The same is said of the igbo people being greedy and all other 'evils" attributed to them. Even our own "unbiased" Ono has not hidden his hatrd for the igbo people. He even make a generalisation that the igbo people are one the benefiaries of this defective political structure. When in reality an igbo man on the street prefers the nigeri-delta people than the hausa fulanis or the yorubas for that matter. If you doubt it mke a research of the inter-marriage rate between igbo people and the niger-delta people.

One thing is certain. As far sd people like Ono still walk the face of the earth, then you will find so many people willing and ready to challenge you.

Ono and Laudate you guys derive so many pleasure in the post below:

Igbo leaders, however, have not done themselves any favours with their neighbours by their attitudes towards them - starting from Zik's removal of Professor Eyo Ita, to mockery of their lifestyles and to attempts to dominate.

Why? Because you have not purged yourselves of immense bias.

Note: As far as there are skinheads and suicide bombers, then there will always be zionist.

ono:

babyosisi,
Please go to the romance section and contribute meaningfully there if there's nothing you can add to this interesting discourse.

Now you are beginning to sound sexist.
I sure hope you can handle a real woman not just a romantic airhead

You guys are still responding to Ono? I have never seen such hatred towards a people as the type Ono has shown here and it is really disgusting reading his hatred filled posts.

Laudate, it seems that you enjoy reading anything against the Igbos even though you spearhead same but will quickly jump to defend a statement targeting the Niger delta while opposing most comments by some Igbo people here. Make your stand clear and be bold about it. Hiding or masking real hatred with remarks and comments isn't the best in my opinion.

Afam:

You guys are still responding to Ono? I have never seen such hatred towards a people as the type Ono has shown here and it is really disgusting reading his hatred filled posts.

Laudate, it seems that you enjoy reading anything against the Igbos even though you spearhead same but will quickly jump to defend a statement targeting the Niger delta while opposing most comments by some Igbo people here. Make your stand clear and be bold about it. Hiding or masking real hatred with remarks and comments isn't the best in my opinion.

I would rather hang out anyday with ono and mohadana before I sit with someone like laudate.
A bold enemy is 100 times better than a false friend.
2face ilaudatia

I did not know about Zik and Prof. Eyo Ita, but I told the story of M.I Okpara and pipe borne water in Calabar.

Without holding brief for either politicians, we must look at these incidents from proper temporal and political perspectives.

I also heard that Ojukwu was very hard on some Onitsha officers, while most 1960s era Igbo politicians regarded the Wawa people as "un-educatable".

I think these politicians were just being politicians, and not necassarily trying to subdue their minority population, afterall by the time these suppressive actions were taking place, they had no way of knowing that cross-river, or rivers states would be created out of the then eastern nigerian region.

Chief Asiodu's statment must be also be understood in the context of his job in the federal government.

When all is said and done, him and his people remain Igbos( maybe only when convenient), but the efforts of other delta Igbos like Achuzie, must never be diminished

Did the political actions of our early politicians explain the reason why some people from Onitsha, Asaba, PH, Calabar areas formed an alliance against thier own people during the civil war?

Only time will tell.

See how this Igbo hater called Laudate keeps going around spreading Igbo hate seeds. Someone talks about how much we are friends with Efiks and Ibibios and the only thing she has to say is about how me Igbos look down on them. . .Stupid tribalist.

@Ono

It's been DAYS and you still haven't answered my question, how has the ND's tactics been effective?

@Laudate and Ono

Will Ironsi prosecuting the 5 majors also have stopped the genocide in the North?. . .You people sure do know how to propagate nonsense.

ono:

Men, all these ones na upper-cut deadly blows.

@ ono, this childishness is part of the reason why intelligent discourse is difficult in this forum.

@ laudate:

laudate:

Hmmn. . . . . .true, mistakes were made by all the three major ethnic groups, but I fail to see why you claim the Yorubas should have prevented Brigadier Ogundipe from acceding command to a junior Colonel like Gowon. Ogundipe, was a career military man. The Yoruba people did not assist him to get into the army, neither did he get his position on the basis of their votes. The man made a career decision to quit the army, instead of insisting on taking command. How does this decision by one man, qualify a whole ethnic group to be tagged as[i] cowards[/i]?? I don't get it o!

1. If Ironsi's, Ojukwu's and Nzeogwu's (all career military officers, too) mistakes have been attributed as 'Igbo' mistakes, how are we not entitled to state that Ogundipe's (career military officer) cowardice (which we know is not in contest - from notable Yoruba military leaders like OBJ, Scorpion etc. in their memoirs) is the Yoruba's.

I, by no means, attribute cowardice as being in the nature of the Yoruba, but this was used in the context of the events during that period to demonstrate where the leaders and most senior members of these tribes went wrong.

You may note that I indicate that the Yoruba displayed bravery in a different context when the continued pressure on actualizing the 'Abiola' mandate led directly to the OBJ presidency.

The Igbo, have also had their moments of cowardice in the recent history of Nigeria where a number of the Senate presidents buckled under sustained pressure from the presidency.

Courage and cowardice are alter-egos - the absence of one is the other.

2. You state that Ohaneze has only supported resource control since the discovery of oil in Imo and Abia. This you, of course, must be aware is blatantly false, since oil was discovered in these states in the mid-1960's before resource control became an issue.

You may be unaware of the history of oil exploration in Nigeria, for which you may be forgiven, but to parade such inaccuracy to 'score points' does not speak well of your intentions.

3. I do not deny that the Igbo (my tribe) have not always been good neighbours and many may have fancied control over their neighbours, but it has much less to do with oil than a typical human weakness - the majority tribe always wanting to lord it over the minority.

We all suffer from this in Nigeria, and until we learn that the three most populous tribes must allow the rest an equal voice in the affairs of the nation, we cannot go forward.

Nothing annoys me as much as the WAZOBIA sentiments that are expressed in many facets of Nigerian life. If I was from any of the less populous tribes, I would truly be livid.

If you do not find my posts balanced, I will not offer any apologies, because everyone writes from his/her personal leanings and experiences - mine is left of center and, unapologetically, Nigerian first, Igbo next.

You guys should not bother yourselves with idiots like Ono whose lazy life revolves around oil.He is well known in Nigeriavillagesquare for the same inferiority complex.



(1) In the first place it is arrant nonsense to talk of the Biafran war in terms of victory or defeat. All Nigerians are vanquished by the war. The war was unnecesary and a shame to both the Blackrace and Africans in general. It demonstrated the extent to which the long suffering Africans can go to kill themselves. Ndigbo or any group for that matter  then as now have the right to self determination the same way Nigeria got self determination from the British, if not then the British should have  also had the right to continue colonising us.


(2) It was the North  that originally intended to seccede. Gowon had even already announced "there was no basis for Nigerian unity" before the British adviced them against it, because they felt they couldnt control a government headed by a Southerner.

My question therefore to idiots like Ono; what if the North had secedded as originally planned?

(3)Every distinct group has a right to self determination as is even recognised by the United nations charter. Many nations have gained independence recently under this principle, amongst them East Timor, Montenegro, and many nations from the former Soviet Union etc. Nigeria was just a Btritish contraption that brought together strange bedfellows. So the noise about Biafra which assumes that Nigeria is a sacred unbreakable nation is stupid and childish. As the Americans have predicted, there is a 98% likelihood that Nigeria will break sometime in the near future.

(4) In every war, crisis or conflict there will be those who oppose and those who support. During the Algerian war of independence there were Algerians who fought on the French side, so also was East Timor, and so also was Biafra. There were Efiks, Ijaws even Igbos etc who supported and opposed Biafra. Indeed the second in command of Biafra major gen.Philip Effiong was from either present day cross river or Akwa Ibom state, so it is plain stupidity for idiots like Ono and his fellow co.travellers to talk of Biafra as if it was exclusively an Igbo thing, there was and still are minorities who then and now support the Biafran idea as a more viable option of neighbours and more relatively homogenous peoples both in ethnicity and religion to present day failed Nigeria.

(5) As for the claim by the madcow Ono that Igbos faced annihilation during the war, we are yet to see any conflict in history where a people have been succesfully annihilated. The genocidal war in Sudan has  been on for more than 20 years yet there are still Southern Sudanese fighting, the Palestinians have been in war for more than 50 years yet they are still fighting, not even the Germans could annihilate the jews etc Annihilation as an issue is thus only relevant in the heads of fools like Ono whose Niger-Delta region has ironically been facing repeated massacres in Odi and other areas under a permanent  military task force, yet he has the ordercity to talk of the annihilation of others.

(6) The Igbos fought a historically acknowledged hero's war of survival against all odds without arms or even food and held the rest of Nigeria up for 3 years.  In the process the Igbos showed extreme survivalist skills, creativity, and doggedness unrivalled in history. Even in what some mentally inferior goons would term a defeat they proved they are not a pushover. Wars are not always fought to win but sometimes to prove a point. If the Igbos had half or even a quater of  the weapons available to the Nigerian side the outcome of that war would have been different.

(7) Present day realities has vindicated Ojukwu. All Nigerians from East, West to the North  have been vanquished by the war. There is bad leadership, poverty, injustice, oppression, massacres, etc in Nigeria and no group is immune from it.

( Lazy idiots like Ono should be pardoned for thinking only of oil. No great nation on earth today has oil. Weath is created through hardwork, creativity and enterprise. Even if you gave noisemakers like Ono total control of their oil, they will still be dirt poor, as present day oil dependent Nigeria has proven. Nigerians must distance themselves from oil and realise that the oil has been a curse rather than a blessing. Nigeria did better with Palm oil, Cocoa and groundnut before the discovery of crude oil. If not for the discovery of crude oil Nigeria would have been richer and better. Countries like Ghana, Ivory coast, Uganda, Botswana  etc are doing better  without oil to the shame of oil drunk lazy idiots like Ono.

(9) The annihilation that Ono and his co.travellers wished on others are closer to happening to his Niger-Delta group than anywhere else. We shall see how many of them will survive when the Nigerian army decides to launch a full scale offensive against the criminal child kidnappers in their childish so called militancy.

(10)Besides Nigerians should be careful when they hear urchins like Ono talking of the Niger-Delta as if it is a homogenus mono-ethnic region. The Niger-Delta in reality is a multi-ethnic region with much internal discord and acrimony such that the Ijaw, Itshekiri,Urhobo etc are constantly embroiled in bloody conflicts. If left alone they cannot even stay together peacefully. So nobody  should be fooled by the holier than thou image of the Niger-Delta  computer urchins like Ono is wont to bandy about here.Ono probably comes from a tiny insignifant ethnic group struggling to be relevant because of crude oil, but  crude oil will thankfully  finish one day, when it finishes we shall see how bastards like Ono can open their lazy mouths again!

obong:

this portion of your post speaks to the disunity that existed explains why biafra failed as a war and may have failed as a state. "amusing that the souther minorities did not realize their own people were killed"? do you actually believe they didnt know that. fact is that despite that, they were willing to fight nigeria within a nigerian context as they are doing so now. The likelihood of igbo oppression is real. it happens in every group in the world. But don't misrepresent our position by stating tha it has become a past time to blame igbos for the killings perpetuated by the north. we know the crimes in the north were commited by northerners against easterners. those guys couldnt tell the difference between an igbo and an ibibio

@ obong, read the posts of some of those who say they are from the Niger-Delta here and you will come to this same conclusion (note that I refer to those southern minorities who have made statements here).

During the civil war, south eastern minorities were divided in their support for Nigeria and Biafra - many supported because of a shared sense of the injustice of the pogroms, while many others did not because of a real fear of igbo dominance.

To give the impression that the south eastern minorities were in any way unified to[i] 'fight nigeria within a nigerian context'[/i] is not only untrue, but does a great disservice to those who fought and died on Biafra's side.

Excerpts of Gowon's first broadcast on the radio after illegally taking over power as proposed by the rebels led by the Danjuma's, Bissalla's, Akhanha, Walbe

I now come to the most difficult but most important part of this statement. I am doing it concious of the great disappointment and heartbreak it will cause all true and sincere lovers of Nigeria and of Nigerian unity, both at home and abroad, especially our brothers in the commonwealth. As a result of the recent events and of previous similar ones, I have come to strongly believe that we cannot honestly and sincerely continue in this wise, as the basis for trust and confidence in our unitary system of Government has been unable to stand the test of time. I have already remarked on the issue in question. Suffice it to say that putting all considerations to the test, political, economic as well as social, the basis for unity is not there or is badly rocked, not only once but many times. I therefore feel that we should review the issue of our national standing and see if we can help stop the country from drifting away into utter destruction.

What would computer area boys like Ono say about people like chief great Ogboru, major Mukoro and major Gideon Orkar from the so called Niger-Delta and middle belt who carried out a failed coup in 1990 to break-up Nigeria?

That coup vindicated Ojukwu and proved beyond all doubt that Nigeria has deep seated problems which goes beyond Biafra.

Ndigbo with or without Nigeria does not need the Niger-Delta. They are large enough in every respect to make a nation of their own. Nations like Singapore and Taiwan are a source of inspiration to Ndigbo. With harwork, creativity and enterprise Ndigbo should be able to build their own nation more properous than any that can ever be built by lazy oil dependent folks like Ono and his co,travellers.

perhaps idiots like Ono should tell us why Nigeria was classified as the worlds 2nd poorest country inspite of the useless oil that he sings about.

Even countries as poor as Chad, Niger etc without a drop of oil were placed ahead of Nigeria. What a shame!