Nigeria’s Biafran Burden By Okey Ndibe
Posted: October 31, 2011 - 23:18

Okey Ndibe
Columnist:  Okey Ndibe
Biafra is back in the news in a big way, thanks, in large measure, to the recent death of Steve Jobs, co-   founder of Apple. In a bestselling authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson, we learn that Biafra had something to do with Mr. Jobs’ renunciation of Christianity. To paraphrase the story: as a 13-year-old, the late inventor extraordinaire had confronted his Lutheran Church pastor with a photograph of two starving Biafran children on the cover of Life magazine. The young Steve asked his teacher whether God was aware of the plight of the children. Once he was assured that divine omniscience implied that God had such knowledge, Steve Jobs, there and then, announced his divorce from Christianity.

I have seen that picture that drove an impressionable teenager to sever ties with his Christian faith. It is near-impossible to look at it and remain composed or untouched. The eyes of the famished Biafran babies are particularly disconcerting. In fact, there is a certain desolate impression etched on the subjects’ faces. To view that picture – which has been widely shown on TV and circulated on the Internet in the brouhaha generated by Jobs’ death – is to gain a glimpse into the ways in which the violence of war ravages the innocence of children, terrorizes the most vulnerable, and upends humane values.

There is, I think, a paradox in the way that Steve Jobs’ death has resurrected Biafra in the imagination of the global community. That paradox lies in the fact that, as the world was once again tuning in to the bloodiest tragedy in Nigeria’s history, Nigeria seemed determined to persist with its willed amnesia. That amnesia has a long history.

At the end of the war, with the federal side’s superior firepower triumphing, then Head of State Yakubu Gowon declared that there was no victor, no vanquished. That announcement, seen by some as an uncommon act of magnanimity, earned great adulation for Mr. Gowon. He also impressed the world by proclaiming that the war-scarred country would embark on rehabilitation, reconciliation and reconstruction. Few of Gowon’s admirers were detained by the fact that his (victorious) government’s actions were often at odds with its avowed policy of nurturing healing. Two examples of this gap between precept and practice should suffice to underscore the point.

One was a policy that enabled the government to strip the erstwhile Biafrans of their wealth. At the end of the war, the Nigerian government implemented a policy that gave each Biafran adult twenty pounds as so-called ex-gratia payment. This would have been a commendable policy had the payment been designed to assist cash-strapped Biafrans to re-enter the Nigerian economy. Instead, the government decided that the paltry sum served as full redemption for any financial assets owned by individual Biafrans prior to the war. It was a self-evidently unjust policy of expropriation, and it dealt a crippling economic blow to the guts of a people who had paid a devastating price, with their blood and limbs, and who needed to be bolstered in their desperate effort to re-start their lives.

There was also the issue of abandoned property, a notion that matched – if not surpassed – the ex-gratia policy in odiousness, illogicality and patent injustice. In a move that exposed the hypocrisy of its avowed policy of reconciliation, the Nigerian government declared that Biafran citizens who owned property in parts of the country outside the formerly secessionist territory had effectively “abandoned” those assets.

What emerges, then, is a portrait of a nation caught pants down at critical moment indulged in dishonorable acts. In one breath, it was proposed that the preservation of Nigeria’s corporate unity was an idea worth spilling more than a million lives for, and the maiming of even more. Yet, in another breath, the same Nigeria demonstrated unwillingness to extend economic justice to those who had sought to leave the union. We were told that “to keep Nigeria one was a task that must be done.” But – that task accomplished – we were told that the erstwhile Biafrans, now forcibly re-“Nigerianized,” were not entitled to the ownership and enjoyment of their property and income. 

A central tragedy of Nigeria is that it has continued to carry on as if it never fought a war – as if its very viability as a proposition had never been contested in a war that cost more than a million lives, limbs, and extensive wreckage of its physical space. As Dr. Louis Okonkwo stated during the session earlier in the day, Nigeria’s history is donut-shaped – with a huge hole in its middle. This hole represents all the tragedies that we repress, attempt to erase, or refuse to acknowledge. Besides, owing to the existence of this donut history, Nigeria constantly slips and falls through the gaping hole.

There is no question that federal troops massacred hundreds of innocent, unarmed civilians in Asaba in the heady early days of the Biafran War in October, 1967. Many other nations have witnessed similar callous, shocking events in their history – and often on a larger scale. We have Pol Pot’s murderous reign in Cambodia, a pogrom in which approximately twenty percent of the Cambodian population perished; Hitler’s campaign to exterminate the Jews; the My Lai massacre of some 500 Vietnamese perpetrated by American soldiers, and less than a year after the Asaba massacres; the hundreds of thousands who perished in Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge in the late 1930s; and the huge socio-economic disruptions as well as human rights abuses that accompanied – or marked – China’s cultural revolution in the 1960s.




Africa has been both stage and victim of great acts of genocide. For more some three centuries, a consortium of European nations laid siege on Africa and carried out the capture, sale and enslavement of Africans, as well as the appropriation of Africans’ land and other resources. Adam Hochschild, in his book titled King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, offers us a grimly fascinating exploration of the savage violence that accompanied and was authorized by imperialist incursions into the Congo.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Africans and the world were horrified by the use – in, among other places, the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, and Rwanda – of violation, enslavement, and the amputation of limbs as modes of war.

It is not widely recognized that those shocking acts were virtually lifted from the bloody manual of King Leopold 11’s gruesome and sickening pillaging of the Congo’s human and natural resources. If this fact is not general knowledge, it is in part because, both among Africans as well as Europeans, some of the horrendous depredatory practices fomented and fertilized by Euro-imperialism remain unknown or unspoken. In an effort to maximize the harvesting of wild rubber that fed King Leopold’s depraved appetite for profit, the Belgian potentate’s operatives were authorized to kidnap children and women, who were then ransomed back to their disconsolate fathers and husbands in exchange for ever increasing amounts of rubber. Hochschild writes that, “Like the hostage-taking, the severing of hands was deliberate policy…If a village refused to submit to the rubber regime, state or company troops or their allies sometimes shot everyone in sight, so that nearby villages would get the message.” Hochschild then makes the point that “As the rubber terror spread throughout the rain forest, it branded people with memories that remained raw for the rest of their lives.”

It is important to underline, then, that the massacre in Asaba was far from exceptional. The critical difference between Asaba and, say, My Lai, is that there was some gesture to investigate what happened in Vietnam. Ultimately, the outcome of the My Lai investigations fell terribly short of expectations. Still bogged down in a war that baffled the best of its military tacticians, the United States’ was far from prepared to fully expose its unattractive underbelly. There was no doubt that the American public was horrified by the mowing down of defenseless Vietnamese men, women and children, even if the soldiers who wielded the guns were spared any sanctions. 

In the case of the massacre in Asaba, the Nigerian state’s recourse to silence is indefensible. At minimum, the government should admit that its soldiers committed a gruesome act. And there may be a glimmer of hope. A few days ago, Champion newspaper quoted Emma Okocha, whose book, Blood on the Niger, offers the fullest chronicle of the massacre in Asaba and elsewhere, as disclosing that the federal government had actually approved (but never effected) financial compensation for the families of victims of the massacre. If that is true, then President Goodluck Jonathan would do well to order that such compensation be paid immediately.

Even so, we must state that no amount of cash can redeem a life, or fully atone for the torment faced by survivors of casualties – those whose lives were unjustly taken. A deeper act of restitution is called for. And that is why the project to erect a permanent monument to the victims of the massacre is of utmost importance. Until and unless we provide a space to honor the memory of the innocents executed in cold blood, for no just cause, we condemn ourselves to the fury and bitterness of the unappeased.

(This column is the first part of Ndibe’s keynote at the Asaba Memorial Park Symposium in Tampa, Florida last Saturday. The second will be published next week)

(okeyndibe@gmail.com)


http://saharareporters.com/column/nigeria%E2%80%99s-biafran-burden-okey-ndibe

Biafra is back in the news in a big way, thanks, in large measure, to the recent death of Steve Jobs, co- founder of Apple. In a bestselling authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson, we learn that Biafra had something to do with Mr. Jobs’ renunciation of Christianity. To paraphrase the story: as a 13-year-old, the late inventor extraordinaire had confronted his Lutheran Church pastor with a photograph of two starving Biafran children on the cover of Life magazine. The young Steve asked his teacher whether God was aware of the plight of the children. Once he was assured that divine omniscience implied that God had such knowledge, Steve Jobs, there and then, announced his divorce from Christianity.

man the guy no even waste time

^

This was probably the picture he saw. There are others, worse than this. At 13, it's hard to comprehend such evil and suffering    I don't blame him.





http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/images/life/biafra.jpg
This one is heart wrenching

but even as a 13 year he must have been very strong willed to take that decision at that age.i wonder if anyone in this part of the world can do that at that age.

^
His side of the world is far more enlightened.

^
In this part of the world, at 13, you can't even ask questions about money and sex, talk less of questioning God in front of elders and pastors.

They would've chased him out with slaps and multiple konks on his head.  

T8ksy:

I wonder if Ojukwu saw the same picture?

He even boasted of charging relief agencies "Land fees" before they are allowed to drop food aids for dying ibo kids.

Castrated monkey, quit hating.
Eadioot.

some salient points ,
can the lord be this unfair as noted by jobs ?
If an american luke warm christian saw this and was grieved what about the millions of church adherents in nigeria?
God eventually blessed jobs works as we saw in apple and even americans attest to it while
Nigeria reals in curses since the end of that war.

Jobs was obviously too young to realize that God was not complicit in any war. If he was, how come the victims of the said war are still fervently serving him today?

For people like Okey Ndibe though, the war never ended. Anything, even the decision of a 13 year old steve Jobs from an era gone by, can now "resurrect" Biafra in his mind and in the minds of some phantom international community.

Get over it already! You are not the first to lose a war and definitely will not be the last.

Aigbofa:

Jobs was obviously too young to realize that God was not complicit in any war. If he was, how come the victims of the said war are still fervently serving him today?

For people like Okey Ndibe though, the war never ended. Anything, even the decision of a 13 year old steve Jobs from an era gone by, can now "resurrect" Biafra in his mind and in the minds of some phantom international community.

Get over it already! You are not the first to lose a war and definitely will not be the last.

how can he get over the war when the war is still highly in existence? Are u telling me that the activities of boko haram and other ethnic strifes are not part of the war targetted against the igbos? How many federal parastatals are being headed by the igbos? Why would there be refineries in the north, while igboland that produces oil is bereft of any NNPC office? Why is the federal roads in the igboland in a moribund state? What is keeping gowon from coming overtly to divulge the real events that led to the war?

T8ksy:

I wonder if Ojukwu saw the same picture?

He even boasted of charging relief agencies "Land fees" before they are allowed to drop food aids for dying ibo kids.

and ojukwu is still boasting that Yorubas are still useless and hopeless despite all the wealth of igbos that awolowo stole and gave to them.

I would rather we left we left our case in the hands of god than coming here to join issues with dolts. It's only a barmy man that'll say that God has not been fighting, otherwise, how could a group of people with paltry sum of twenty pounds overtake their oppressors in less than a decade, with such a supersonic speed? I can vehemently aver to you, that americans can never achieve this, they'd rather commit suicide that to struggle with such an amount.

kasiem:

how can he get over the war when the war is still highly in existence? Are u telling me that the activities of boko haram and other ethnic strifes are not part of the war targetted against the igbos? How many federal parastatals are being headed by the igbos? Why would there be refineries in the north, while igboland that produces oil is bereft of any NNPC office? Why is the federal roads in the igboland in a moribund state? What is keeping gowon from coming overtly to divulge the real events that led to the war?

Boko haram and other ethnic strifes as you mentioned are not targeted at igbos. They are just symptons of a badly managed country.
Everything that transpired before and after the war is public knowledge. I really doubt if there is anything more to divulge.
There's no section of Nigeria that doesn't feel marginalized. The only people that are not complaining are the people who have robbed and are still robbing Nigerians.

kasiem:

I would rather we left we left our case in the hands of god than coming here to join issues with dolts. It's only a barmy man that'll say that God has not been fighting, otherwise, how could a group of people with paltry sum of twenty pounds overtake their oppressors in less than a decade, with such a supersonic speed? I can vehemently aver to you, that americans can never achieve this, they'd rather commit suicide that to struggle with such an amount.

Of course, everyone with a contrary opinion is a dolt. Go on with your supersonic speed, but quit whining for christ's sake.

Aigbofa:

Boko haram and other ethnic strifes as you mentioned are not targeted at igbos. They are just symptons of a badly managed country.
Everything that transpired before and after the war is public knowledge. I really doubt if there is anything more to divulge.
There's no section of Nigeria that doesn't feel marginalized. The only people that are not complaining are the people who have robbed and are still robbing Nigerians.

who are the major victims of all the ethnic uprising in the north? How many times have the hausas fought the igbos in kano? Why would it sound as a history for igbomen to be made IGP and CAS in a country where everybody is equal? How many supreme court justices are the igboland? Do you know how much the igbos are losing every year as a result of having five states?

Aigbofa:

Of course, everyone with a contrary opinion is a dolt. Go on with your supersonic speed, but quit whining for christ's sake.

o'boy, we aint yowling, rather if you want to be pragmatic with yourself, there is every reason for other tribes to feel abashed of themselves with the miraculous and workaholic progress of the igbos.

kasiem:

who are the major victims of all the ethnic uprising in the north? How many times have the hausas fought the igbos in kano? Why would it sound as a history for igbomen to be made IGP and CAS in a country where everybody is equal? How many supreme court justices are the igboland? Do you know how much the igbos are losing every year as a result of having five states?

kasiem:


how could a group of people with paltry sum of twenty pounds overtake their oppressors in less than a decade, with such a supersonic speed?

Which one is it? Are you marginalized or have you overtaken your oppressors as stated above?
I get mixed messages like these from Igbos all the time? Which one is it? Are you marginalized or not?
One minute you are doing better than everyone else, next minute Nigeria is grossly unfair to you, as if Nigeria is especially fair to any particular group!

Aigbofa:


Which one is it? Are you marginalized or have you overtaken your oppressors as stated above?
I get mixed messages like these from Igbos all the time? Which one is it? Are you marginalized or not?

ok, get it, we've overtaken our oppressors in the face of marginalization. Can u do anything about it?

kasiem:

ok, get it, we've overtaken our oppressors in the face of marginalization. Can u do anything about it?

And may God bless you even more, but quit complaining. You are becoming boring.

do u realize that despite all the persecution suffered by christ, he still triumphed over his oppressors? Are the christians not being proud of that?

kasiem:

do u realize that despite all the persecution suffered by christ, he still triumphed over his oppressors? Are the christians not being proud of that?

What persecution? You fought a war and lost, big deal. Many wars has been won and lost on the African continent since Biafra and none was less gruesome;

Ethiopian/Eritrian war, Rwanda, Angolan civil war, Congo, Liberian civil war, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and recently in Sudan. Some are still raging and probably new ones will be started.

It is not marginalization. It is just the nature of war, someone must lose and someone must win.

fighting a war and loosing is one thing .
Fighting using food as a means of war is another thing .
Even the war in libya and other places food was not used as a weapon.
Having your landed property which you left in the face of victimisation and ethnic cleansing being declared abandoned property is another thing.
Being given 20 pounds or 5000 naira in place of the billions you had in bank is another thing.

what Nigerian fail to understand or comprehend is how come the country has not made any meaningful progress since 1970 despite that the country has not fought any war since then.
The one tha baffles is most is that the so called victors in the civil war are not even better than the loosers 41 years after the war.
The loosers now produce more garduates (human Capital) than the victors.
The loosers own more landed properties than those who confisticated their property.
The loosers command more per capital income than the so called victors.

kasiem:

and ojukwu is still boasting that Yorubas are still useless and hopeless despite all the wealth of igbos that awolowo stole and gave to them.

Its ur father that is useless. what wealth did the igbos give us? its ur father that is the thief. what wealth did the igbo man give yorubas ? we have more land than u landless dolts so why u dey shout


abi is not when u tried to steal nigerias oil wealth that the war started . ok.

asorocker:

fighting a war and loosing is one thing .
Fighting using food as a means of war is another thing .
Even the war in libya and other places food was not used as a weapon.
Having your landed property which you left in the face of victimisation and ethnic cleansing being declared abandoned property is another thing.
Being given 20 pounds or 5000 naira in place of the billions you had in bank is another thing.

what Nigerian fail to understand or comprehend is how come the country has not made any meaningful progress since 1970 despite that the country has not fought any war since then.
The one tha baffles is most is that the so called victors in the civil war are not even better than the loosers 41 years after the war.
The loosers now produce more garduates (human Capital) than the victors.
The loosers own more landed properties than those who confisticated their property.
The loosers command more per capital income than the so called victors.

look at his dummy . how can igbos have more landed property , have u seen nigerias map before

[img]http://www.waado.org/images/Maps/nigeria2.gif [/img]

niger state alone is more than twice the size of the whole entire igbo land. so how can ur dumbass have more land ?

unless u want to say the igbos own all theland in the rest of nigeria.

dummy,jus cus u own a few houses dont mean u have more land. slowpoke. of the highest order.

asorocker:

fighting a war and loosing is one thing .
Fighting using food as a means of war is another thing .
Even the war in libya and other places food was not used as a weapon.
Having your landed property which you left in the face of victimisation and ethnic cleansing being declared abandoned property is another thing.
Being given 20 pounds or 5000 naira in place of the billions you had in bank is another thing.

what Nigerian fail to understand or comprehend is how come the country has not made any meaningful progress since 1970 despite that the country has not fought any war since then.
The one tha baffles is most is that the so called victors in the civil war are not even better than the loosers 41 years after the war.
The loosers now produce more garduates (human Capital) than the victors.
The loosers own more landed properties than those who confisticated their property.
The loosers command more per capital income than the so called victors.

That's one benefit of the war;
The survival skills of an average Igbo man went into overdrive and never stopped.
The thing withl recovering from such a disadvantaged position emanation from a genocidal war, is that you wont even know when your have fully recovered.
An average Igbo has more than recovered economically and in other ramifications from the debilitating effect of the war and have not even realized it, so they are still 'striving to recover'; but unfortunately, Nigeria has not recovered having decided to keep the Igboman down, rather than building up Nigeria.

Such policy failed woefully, as the Igboman spread out to take advantage of Nigeria's sheer docility emanating from their wickedness. The Igboman learnt a new way of life, and have never looked back - ever.

The genie is out of the box, and Nigeria is now running scare.


Wetin man go do?

I dey laugh oooo!!!

@ poster you must be a hard core ignoramus , has it not been told you that igbos own 73 % of the landed property in Abuja or do you still want to continue wallowing in self imposed ignorance, you can confirm this from El rufai , at least he is fulani and not igbo.
you can ask Fashola how much landed property igbos own in Lagos

[size=20pt]God bless Igbosssssssss

God forgive Nigerians for the sinned against us

For those Nigerians that fail to realize their mistakes, may the punishment be theirs.

But we must move on as a nation.[/size]

Kilode?!:

^

This was probably the picture he saw. There are others, worse than this. At 13, it's hard to comprehend such evil and suffering    I don't blame him.





http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/images/life/biafra.jpg
This one is heart wrenching

I am sure you have seen worse pictures that this; yours is just but a prank. Good luck!!!

oduasolja:

look at his dummy . how can igbos have more landed property , have u seen nigerias map before



niger state alone is more than twice the size of the whole entire igbo land. so how can your dumbass have more land ?

unless u want to say the igbos own all theland in the rest of nigeria.

dummy,jus cus u own a few houses dont mean u have more land. slowpoke. of the highest order.

Do us a favour and shut up.You have just shown how ignorant you are.

Igbo just keep acting like loosers, from biafra to compensation. always complainin about their billions what billions ? ? ?.  billions in pounds abi ? igbos suldn't be talking about compensation for a war they fought for what they believe in. after all it cost the Nigerian Govt. money as well fight a war it did not ignite.
Igbo army generals shuldn't have carried out the coup they executed(targeting mainly yorubas and northern army officers), that coup messed up everything 4 igbos politically.

asorocker:

fighting a war and loosing is one thing .
Fighting using food as a means of war is another thing .
Even the war in libya and other places food was not used as a weapon.
Having your landed property which you left in the face of victimisation and ethnic cleansing being declared abandoned property is another thing.
Being given 20 pounds or 5000 naira in place of the billions you had in bank is another thing.

what Nigerian fail to understand or comprehend is how come the country has not made any meaningful progress since 1970 despite that the country has not fought any war since then.
The one tha baffles is most is that the so called victors in the civil war are not even better than the loosers 41 years after the war.
The loosers now produce more garduates (human Capital) than the victors.
The loosers own more landed properties than those who confisticated their property.
The loosers command more per capital income than the so called victors.

Igbos dont have more graduates than yoruba do and delta/edo has highest literacy level if thats what u talking about (graduate to populatn also). as for per capital income they also provide more fatality via fake substandard products. lesson learnt never gamble with what u cant afford to loose.

Kizilala:


Do us a favour and shut up.You have just shown how ignorant you are.

U be fuul, U talk like that cos u exchanged your brain with that of a zombie! Go meet a geologist to tell you more bout Naija land,