Throwback:


I have no sympathy for you.

It is not my fault that you found yourselves at the obnoxious end of the shortsighted politics of your own leaders.

You are right and I am wrong, yet I am not the one lamenting about the past.

Ngokafor:



Who needs your sympathy??...dude to hell with you and whatever you represent...mscheww!

OPEN LETTER OF RESIGNATION TO ODUMEGWU OJUKWU

FROM Robert S. Goldstein

Public Relations Representative of Biafra in the United States
(Published in the Morning Post, Lagos, August 17, 1968)
.

As your Public Relation’s Representative in the United States, it is my distasteful duty to tender my resignation based on the following points:

POINT 1 – In November of 1967 when we met in Umuahia, you and your Cabinet were very impressive. You told me of the woes of your little Republic, that thousands of people had died, were dying and more were prepared to die for freedom’s sake.

You and your Cabinet told me you believed world opinion would help your cause if you could get your story across.
You expressed the opinion that very few if any people in the United States knew of the plight of the Biafrans.

You asked me to tell the world that Britain had teamed up with Russia in a conspiracy with the Federal Government of Nigeria to murder every Ibo in Biafra. You suggested I use my talents to induce the Press to write about the Biafran side of the war, as at that time all news came out of Lagos.

You will recall I did not take the asssignment that day but stayed on several days before deciding to take that job.

To help win the peace

At that time I stated to you and your cabinet that I was taking the assignment making it crystal clear I would try my best to help win the peace not the war.

POINT TWO – I immediately arranged the first world Press conference in Biafra inviting the US Press as well as journalists and television people from England, France, Switzerland, Africa and other parts of the Globe. This was the first news break through. I arranged regular trips into Biafra for the world Press, helped set up stringers, etc., so that your statements and the statements of your Cabinet would be heard.
At that time, I was absolutely positive you were right and your cause was a just one in the best interests of the free world and your countrymen.

POINT THREE – Finally the Republic of Biafra was recognized first by Tanzania, then quickly followed by Gabon, the Ivory Coast and
Zambia. Our public relations work was paying off, world opinion was starting to side with us.

Peace talks were arranged at Kampala. I thought that if anyone walked away from the table it would be the Federal Government. But to my dismay it was Biafra that left the Conference. After all the fighting and killing, I knew that peace would not come easy but I could not understand leaving the Peace Conference until the last point was negotiated and the avenue explored.

POINT FOUR – Then urgent telex messages were received from
‘Biafra’ telling of tens of thousands of people starving in the refugee camps, the villages, the bush country – stating if something weren’t done in the next few months over a million women, children and aged would be starved to death. I immediately contacted the Press, urgently petitioned the State Department for action on their part.

Food, medicine and milk were sent to the only available ports open for immediate shipment to ‘Biafra’ via land routes through Federal and Biafra territory, under the auspices of world organizations such as the International Red Cross among others.

Then came the incredible answer from ‘Biafra’ that land corridors could not be acceptable until there was a complete ceasefire, and that an airlift was the only solution to feed the starving.

You then appeared before the various Heads of State and
representatives of the OAU at Niamey in Niger. I fully expected you to at least accept the world help that was offered your starving
throngs. However, you delayed, hoping to use these unfortunates with world sympathy on their side as a tool to further your ambition to achieve war concessions at the upcoming peace talks in Addis Ababa. Thus innocent victims continue to perish needlessly of starvation, the most agonising death that can befall any living
creature.

POINT FIVE – This was incredible to me. I am now convinced that I have been used by you and your cabinet to help in military
adventures of your origin….using your starving hordes as hostages to negotiate a victory.
If at some later date, following the issuance of this letter, you do concede to allow a mercy land corridor…would you expect me to agree to espouse before the world Press the incredible delay of your decision. What explanation could I honestly give for the needless prolongation of this horror.

Inconceivable acts

I pray this communication may in some small way influence you to move affirmatively, allowing the mercy land corridor to be born.

It is inconceivable to me that you would stop the feeding of
thousands of your countrymen (under auspicies of world
organizations such as the International Red Cross, World Council of Churches and many more) via a land corridor which is the only
practical way to bring in food to help at this time. It is inconcievable to me that men of good faith would try to twist world opinion in such a manner as to deceive people into believing that the
starvation and hunger that is consuming ‘Biafra’ is a plot of Britian, Nigeria and others to commit genocide.

POINT SIX – I cannot in all conscience serve you any longer. Nor can I be a party to suppressing the fact that your starving thousands have the food, medicine and milk available to them…..it can and is ready to be delivered through international organizations to you. Only your constant refusal has stopped its delivery.

I am this date, tendering my resignation and am returning to Mr. Collins Obih of the African Continental Bank all the fees you have given me (Letter of Credit No. 354 $400,000 US.)

I have sent your representative in New York a Bond in the amount of 800.000 pounds that I was holding in your behalf. I have also this date, sent the Bond of 200,000 pounds issues by the Central Bank of Nigeria back to them for disposal.

POINT SEVEN – I am now convinced that one Nigeria is the only solution to peace. I also call upon you Mr. Ojukwu to allow your starving people to be fed. Their well-being is of deep concern to me as well as other right thinking people of the world. Your acting in the utmost haste in this matter is in my opinion the first step toward any lasting peace in your country.

imhotep:
Lzaa this is a new one oh

POINT SIX – I cannot in all conscience serve you any longer. Nor can I be a party to suppressing the fact that your starving thousands have the food, medicine and milk available to them…..it can and is ready to be delivered through international organizations to you. Only your constant refusal has stopped its delivery.

POINT FIVE – This was incredible to me. I am now convinced that I have been used by you and your cabinet to help in military
adventures of your origin….using your starving hordes as hostages to negotiate a victory.
If at some later date, following the issuance of this letter, you do concede to allow a mercy land corridor…would you expect me to agree to espouse before the world Press the incredible delay of your decision. What explanation could I honestly give for the needless prolongation of this horror.

POINT SEVEN – I am now convinced that one Nigeria is the only solution to peace. I also call upon you Mr. Ojukwu to allow your starving people to be fed. Their well-being is of deep concern to me as well as other right thinking people of the world. Your acting in the utmost haste in this matter is in my opinion the first step toward any lasting peace in your country.

GoroTango:
Oga the civil war was not about igbos standing up to the north. The events that led to it are well chronicled so don't try to distort history

imhotep:

It was about crude oil

Throwback:


Your greed led you to a position where you had to fight.

Yorubas are not backbones to serve the purpose of the Igbos or come to their rescue after fomenting trouble.

Azikiwe was in control of his full senses when he ensured that Nigeria will not have a secession clause, and that such a move would only be settled by war. If only he knew he was sealing the fate of his own people.

You never remembered your Yoruba partners in NCNC when it came to sharing the juicy spoils from your partnership with the North. Yet with greed you wanted more and thought best to eliminate political and military leaders from other regions except yours.

Rather than be grateful that the Yorubas were civilized enough not to have their own pogrom against you in their region, your delusional entitlement makes you expectant that the Yorubas will lay down their life to protect you in the crisis you caused.

You have never been useful to us, we do not owe you any delusional loyalty after an alliance gone wrong with your Northern partners.

Throwback:


Go and laugh over the graves in Biafra.

Those that laughed and gloated like you after the Jan 1966 coup, never had the opportunity to ever laugh and gloat heartily in the rest of their lifetime.

Throwback:








Biafra was unable to provide food security for its citizens. It was not Nigeria's obligation to provide or allow food to a separatist state that had already been successfully blockaded.

It claimed to have the greatest army known to black Africa, yet that great army could not secure food for its citizens.

The mere situation that they were dependent on Nigeria's mercy to allow food pass through Nigeria into Biafra, already suggest that they were already defeated and were expected to surrender, which is the ultimate plan of the economic blockade as detailed by Azikiwe when he outlined what would be done to the North if they attempt to secede illegally, Azikiwe having ensured that there was no allowance for secession in our constitution.

Sanctions, embargoes, blockades are not imposed for fun. They are imposed to hurt and force a retraction of policy or position. If you chose to suffer and persist, please don't look for pity now. If you choose to persist only to capitulate eventually, then it is only evident that living in denial can never become reality.

Ojukwu starved millions of children who needed a leader that wasn't mad. A beggar who felt he could dictate terms to the Nigerian government over the use of its own airspace, and ultimately employing famine and genocide as an international media propaganda that eventually sickened the very international media consultant whom Ojuku hired. Such that they turned round to beg Ojukwu to let his people have food.

However, the mad man knew how to preserve himself and his family, and ensured they never suffered until an eventual escape to avoid the death he willfully imposed on others.

There is no admission to make to a people who say others are cowards and they are not. Even the current democratic debates and discussions on how to restructure the country is considered as begging by the same people who insist that is weakness and cowardice.

Peace is the price for cowardice, while misery is the result of blind arrogance and delusional self evaluation.

I have no admission to make to such who chose their own path while I chose mine.

SakuraSimiola:
This is why people hate us.

This is why Nigeria does not work.

The blockade was civilian genocide. It had nothing to do with the military.

These were children who had nothing to do with the politics of grown men.

Starving children is WRONG

It's wrong in Igbo culture.

It's wrong in Hausa culture.

It's wrong in Yoruba culture.

In 2018 we cannot justify our forefathers starving millions of children and call ourselves civilised.

And we wonder why these people hate us.

Igboid:
“Its (mass starvation) is a legitimate aspect of war (Anthony Enahoro, Nigerian Commissioner for Information at a press conference in New York, July 1968)

“Starvation is a weapon of war, and we have every intention of using it against the rebels” (Mr Alison Ayida, Head of Nigerian delegation, Niamey Peace talks, July 1968.)

“The Igbos must be considerably reduced in number”, Lagos Policeman quoted in New York Review 21 December, 1967)


“Until now efforts to relieve the Biafran people have been thwarted by the desire of the central government to pursue total and unconditional victory and by the fear of the Ibo people that surrender means wholsesale atrocities and genocide. But genocide is what is taking place right now- and starvation is the grim reaper. This is not the time to stand on ceremony, or go through channels or to observe diplomatic niceties. The destruction of an entire people is immoral objective, even in the most moral of wars. It can never be condoned”, (Richard Nixon, during the presidential campaign, September 9, 1968)

“All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder”, (Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Nigerian Minister of Finance, July 28, 1969)

gidgiddy:


The same Yorubas who are today begging the North for control of their own land via restructuring. At least Igbos rose and fought, what did Yorubad do except embrace slavery to the North?

I would rather fight and lose than become a willing slave without a fight

Throwback:


Fight and lose, it is your headache. Stop wailing like babies in the aftermath that you were killed and impoverished. You should be proud of the fight you invited.

When you were forming alliance and enjoying the spoils, you did not know you were embracing slavery.

When Azikiwe was insisting that Nigeria must not have a secession clause you did not know you were embracing slavery.

When Azikiwe was detailing how the North will be economically blockaded if it attempts to secede, you did not know you were detailing your own sorrow.

When you were establishing a unitary government, you did not know you will become perpetual losers under such arrangement.

Igboman, stop courting my sympathy. When you were dictating the type of Nigeria you now reject, having found yourselves as followers rather than leaders, all was well with that Nigeria.

I have no sympathy to give you. Continue fighting with those you aligned with.

When there was a need to fight for Democracy and the rights of the Yorubas, we fought and won. The current democracy allows for debate to chart a new direction for the country, but such constitutionally recognised debates are considered begging by a tribe that would rather self destruct like a blind fool, only to ask others why they did not come to its aid.

Continue fighting your own fight to undo the errors of your elders who lacked foresight.

Throwback:


They hate Yorubas for many reasons.

Firstly you dare to become premier in your own tribal region when an Igboman migrant was also aspiring to the post.

You dared to win a war where they wanted to ilegally secede and attempted to invade the SouthWest in a bid to keep the war tied down in Yorubaland, while the aggressors would be enjoying peace in their own region.

They love to gloat to other tribes but have realised gloating to the Yorubas is a case of a child boasting to his teacher.

If Ojukwu refused to surrender after being defeated with a successful economic blockade, the result is what they suffered, only to later surrender after Ojukwu ran away to preserve his own and his family's cherished life.

If Ojukwu refused to accept the land corridor always offered by the Nigerian side as the route to allow food get to Biafra, then the blood of the dead is on the head of Ojukwu. Little wonder he died as an invalid while his contemporaries like Gowon and Obasanjo look fit as ever.

If Biafra failed to secure food for its people being already landlocked inside Nigeria as the federal forces had already secured the coastal territories, then that failed republic was only hoping to win the war by mercy and media propaganda, which it did do and failed.

Mercy only has its place in war after a surrender, not before. Also a beggar can never dictate terms by which it will receive humanitarian supplies, such that it insisted on the air route so as to stealthily import weapons to ensure the war continued.

Of good note is that all that was done as police action to get the illegal Biafra to retrace its step, were the very actions that Azikiwe outlined as punitive measures that will be taken by Nigeria against the North if that region tried to illegally secede from Nigeria, as he had already ensured that secession was not allowed in the constitution.

And we wonder why these people reject the very practices, policies, rules, laws and decree they foisted on Nigeria.


In 2018 we cannot justify the stupidity of continuing in a war when you are already at the mercy of your enemy, only to surrender eventually.

SakuraSimiola:
Someone is telling you starving children is wrong.

And your response is

Mercy only has its place in war after a surrender, not before.

You see the psychopaths our nation produces?

This is the legacy of hatred. Where we hate each other so much we justify the unjustifiable.

DeeMain:


Beautiful nonsense. All warped logic and zero heart.

You sir is the definition of a seared callous mind.

For your information Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ironsi or even the coup plotters' sins do not represent the Igbo nation's sins just like Jonathan's sins did not represent that of the entire Ijaw nation.

These people were humans that made mistakes, erred and had weaknesses just like Obafemi Awolowo and the rest of us. Stop equating the wisdom or lack of it and the mistakes of one man or a group of men to that of their whole tribe.

It's this sort of tribal stereotype and propaganda that led to the pogrom and the subsequent civil war which we are still on the aftermath till this day.

Do well to find your lost humanity young man. Feel. Empathize. Swap places. Use your brain to make the world a better place.

InfiniteLoopx:
Throwback is a devil incarnate. May the experiecne of innocent fallen Biafran children be the portion of his future generation.

Throwback:


Your greed led you to a position where you had to fight.

Yorubas are not backbones to serve the purpose of the Igbos or come to their rescue after fomenting trouble.

Azikiwe was in control of his full senses when he ensured that Nigeria will not have a secession clause, and that such a move would only be settled by war. If only he knew he was sealing the fate of his own people.

You never remembered your Yoruba partners in NCNC when it came to sharing the juicy spoils from your partnership with the North. Yet with greed you wanted more and thought best to eliminate political and military leaders from other regions except yours.

Rather than be grateful that the Yorubas were civilized enough not to have their own pogrom against you in their region, your delusional entitlement makes you expectant that the Yorubas will lay down their life to protect you in the crisis you caused.

You have never been useful to us, we do not owe you any delusional loyalty after an alliance gone wrong with your Northern partners.

DejiSantos:
It's sad that you have many of our compatriots.

Trying to rationalise the starvation of our children.

It's disgusting.

Trying to blame it Ojukwu. Kmt.

Guestlander:


You capture so much with little words. I doff my hat to you sir. This is the straight up truth about the ibos in Nigeria.

imhotep:

It was about crude oil

Throwback:


Fight and lose, it is your headache. Stop wailing like babies in the aftermath that you were killed and impoverished. You should be proud of the fight you invited.

When you were forming alliance and enjoying the spoils, you did not know you were embracing slavery.

When Azikiwe was insisting that Nigeria must not have a secession clause you did not know you were embracing slavery.

When Azikiwe was detailing how the North will be economically blockaded if it attempts to secede, you did not know you were detailing your own sorrow.

When you were establishing a unitary government, you did not know you will become perpetual losers under such arrangement.

Igboman, stop courting my sympathy. When you were dictating the type of Nigeria you now reject, having found yourselves as followers rather than leaders, all was well with that Nigeria.

I have no sympathy to give you. Continue fighting with those you aligned with.

When there was a need to fight for Democracy and the rights of the Yorubas, we fought and won. The current democracy allows for debate to chart a new direction for the country, but such constitutionally recognised debates are considered begging by a tribe that would rather self destruct like a blind fool, only to ask others why they did not come to its aid.

Continue fighting your own fight to undo the errors of your elders who lacked foresight.