MANY Nigerians think President Muhammadu Buhari is the leader the nation needs at a time like this. On January 15, 2020, however, he uniquely failed to live up to that expectation. For, that day was the 50th anniversary of the end of the civil war. As Number One citizen, given the challenges facing the nation on several fronts, he should have used the opportunity of that moment to set the nation on a course of genuine reconciliation.

Interestingly, January 15 every year is Nigerian Armed Forces Remembrance Day, on which the nation celebrates her fallen heroes. And as usual, this year, top officials of the federal government, led by the President and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo laid wreaths at the National Arcade in Abuja. Surprisingly, however, the government forgot, or is it ignored, the fact that on that day in 1970 officials of the breakaway Biafra Republic led by Lt. Col. Philip Effiong brought the “Instrument of Surrender” to Lagos.

That war is believed to have claimed an estimated two to three million people. Thus, the anniversary this year was a milestone on a platter of gold for the President to set the nation on the path of healing. And Nigeria needs healing because of too many festering sores, some of them dating back several decades.

However, thankfully if the government ignored the milestone, some groups, such as the Christian Aid, Nzokwu Umunna and Ndigbo Lagos, in collaboration with civil society organizations and Igbo Youth Movement Enugu, independent of each other, assembled eminent Nigerians in London, Lagos and Enugu respectively to remind us that the ship of state is adrift and we may be inexorably drifting towards another civil war.

And haven’t we been told many times by the likes of General Theophilus Danjuma that no nation survives two civil wars? At the Lambert Palace, London, David Olusoga, a historian, declared that the Nigeria-Biafra war was, without doubt, one of the most devastating post-independence conflicts in modern history.

“It caused untold sufferings on an unprecedented scale and left an indelible imprint on the Nigerian nation we know today”.

And Christian Usie, country manager of Christian Aid. observed that while fifty years on, Nigeria is flourishing on so many fronts, amid that success lies so many heart-breaking disparities.

The nation has the largest number of people, estimated at 95 million, almost 50 per cent of her population, living in extreme poverty. And that has earned us the sobriquet of the world’s “poverty capital”. As if that is not enough, there is the grave humanitarian crisis in our North east region where Boko Haram continues to wreak intolerable havoc on millions of people.

Some parts of the northwest region is besieged by bandits who not only are kidnapping people for ransom with bewildering impunity, but also engage in cattle rustling. And there is palpable fear in the North central and the South as kidnapping, ritual killings and herdsmen and farmers’ clashes have become the norm.

As if all these crises are not grave enough, there is renewed agitation among the Igbo for a Biafra Republic. That was the sole reason why Nigeria fought a 30-month civil war which ended on January 15, 1970, when General Yakubu Gowon, then military head of state, received the Instrument of Surrender.

At that occasion, the then 36-year-old head of state declared that there was “No Victor, No Vanquished”. His government moved swiftly to heal the wounds of the war by embarking on the 3Rs, Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction. That should have set the country on the path of national rebirth.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/fifty-years-hence-the-nigeria-on-my-mind/