₦airaland Forum

madridguy:
IPORK are terrorists. The pigs and idiots are totally confused. Willie will crush you home and away.

you're too old to be talking like this, behave your age.

GoroTango:
Its a very ignorant perception. Even in core northern states like Borno and Kebbi there are indigenous christian communities with populations in their hundreds of thousands

with the number of churches and church owned schools destroyed so far by Boko Haram , no judge would see reason with you.

NgeneUkwenu:
Their Business!
Tony Nwoye Is The Governor In Waiting!

we don't care.

myright:
don't forget that after incident at Nkpor, he gave a press release, terming IPOB miscreants and supporting the genocidal security apparatus

in all honesty, the guy deserves to defend himself in an American court, they behave like Mad Men here and behave themselves when they travel abroad. the name zoo is a befitting title for them.

Afam4eva:
I'm beginning to think that pro-Biafra supporters an in particular, IPOB are full of egocentric characters because i don't understand the constant demonizing of Willie Obiano who has done nothing but added his quota to the development of Anambra and Igboland. He's probably the only Igbo governor who has made giant strides and he keeps getting heckled by IPOB. You must learn to separate your agitations which you're entitled to from the constant harrasment of Obiano.

nobody is against Willie obiano, he made himself liable to criminal prosecution when he lied at the army tribunal that nobody was killed by soldiers at the Catholic Church at nkpor despite a video by amnesty international documenting the evidence, the army subsequently submitted the report to the United States government who rejected it. if he had kept quiet and minded his business, he might not been involved in the subsequent court case, he was too desperate to please buhari and ended up putting himself into trouble, buhari is not even a respondent in the case nor is he known to have housing and a residency permit in the USA like obiano.

even Ghana is better than Nigeria.

anybody hoping on the restructuring of Nigeria is deceiving himself, disintegration is the only way out.

at the rate igbos in the north are buying land and building houses outside onitsha right now, even Nnamdi Kanu can't convince them to trust their lives and lives of their family members Into the hands of northern muslims by not relocating. by 2019 elections, very few igbos men would be in the north after relocating their families back home.

after the Hausa Vs Yoruba clash at ife, only Yorubas were arrested including an Obama, they're still unjustly detained till today, plus many other problems affecting the Yorubas but you hardly see them agitate or discuss their problems rather they would be moving from one igbo thread to another spewing hatred over what is not their Concern. a famous philosopher said that "an unexamined life is not worth living "

Tolexander:
which of the MASSOB factions?

Cos I know Ralph Nwazurike and Uchenna Mmadu as leader(s) of MASSOB.

Many times, leader of a group doesn't talk, but the spokesperson.

uwazulike was expelled by massob and he formed BIM, massob does not have factions .

zuchyblink:
Accoridng to Punch, Mr Sunday Okereafor, the MASSOB National Director of Information, said in an interview that they would continue the struggle through non-violent means and they would not be deterred by IPOB . When I saw punch, I knew it was no news.

the same way they lied a few days ago that he had called off the boycott of elections .lie Mohammed won't see these as fake news.

Tolexander:
But logical reasons to counter the news will be so good rather than the unwarranted assumption and conclusion of false interference by the APC government.

the head of massob is uche mmadu Not whoever was mentioned in that article. naij. com is not even a news website.

MrRationaL:
.
Bro check Naij.com

naij. com is not a news website .the head of massob is uche mmadu.

Jonlota12:
Heads must roll for sure

this news report is too watery, poor journalism.

the simple is that it's now impossible to arrest Kanu on allegations of hate speech or whatever without arresting the area youths first, the north shot themselves on the foot with that I'll advised quit notice, they thought the solution to all problems is violence and threat of violence.

UncleJudax:
Abeg, what has Nzeogwu got to do with non-implementation of the Aburi Accord?

please help me to ask him o

they would soon accuse him of poisoning buhari through his air conditioner.

the enemy to my enemy is my friend, God bless Biafra, the land of the rising sun.

aycorporat:
He can't write same article again, as he has wined with the dogs and must be ready to take excrement as nutrition. If The Aburi accord had been implemented, Nigeria would have been head above shoulders with other developed nations of the world.
However, let us not lay blame on the doorstep of the northern oligarchy alone as I learned from history that our Igbo brothers taunted them when Nzeogwu Kaduna killed the Sardauna, going as far as printing labels of an archangel represented by Nzeogwu slaughtering the revered premier.
We still need each other in this country even if we are to operate on regional lines.

the Aburi accord was an agreement between all parties after tens of thousands of igbos have already been killed in the north, they simply refused because it makes everybody equal thereby removing power from their hands, it's the same reason, they're against restructuring today.

This article was written by Femi Adesina the current Spokesperson to President Buhari in 2012 after the demise of Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu.

Hmmmmm...... Plz read;

THE ABURI ACCORD THAT WOULD HAVE SAVED NIGERIA FROM ALL HER PROBLEMS...( but aborted by the Fulani Oligarchy)

By FEMI ADESINA( current spokesperson to President Buhari)

In December 2009, I was at Aburi, while holidaying in Ghana. We Nigerians call it A-b-u-r-i, but the Ghanaians pronounce it as E-b-r-i. For those who have read widely about the civil war that we fought between 1967 and 1970, Aburi is a significant place. This was what I wrote about Aburi, after returning from that journey:

“Aburi. Beautiful, serene Aburi, set daintily atop a hill. It is home to a botanical garden that is 119 years old. But for us in Nigeria, Aburi goes beyond just nature and its preservation. It is the town where General Yakubu Gowon and Odumegwu Ojukwu met, to try and avert the Nigerian Civil War that lasted between 1967 and 1970. They came out with Aburi Accord, which later broke down. And a shooting war started. You could see the Presidential Lodge on a hill, where the Nigerian leaders had parleyed at the behest of Ghanaian leaders. It all ended in futility.”

As one of the key parties to the Aburi Accord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, returns to mother earth today, it is also apposite to return to Aburi, and look at the letter and the spirit of the accord once again, an agreement that was violated by the Federal side, and which made a bloody internecine war inevitable.
For most part of 1966, the northern part of Nigeria, particularly, had been turned to killing fields. Non-natives, especially Igbos, were killed in thousands. Many fled, many others were displaced. There was complete anarchy in the land. The average Igbo looked up to Lt. Col Odumegwu Ojukwu, military governor of the Eastern Region, to provide leadership and direction. He did not fail. He picked the gauntlet and championed the cause of his people.
By January 1967, the drums of war were loud and clear, reverberating across the length and breadth of Nigeria. But there was a last ditch effort to prevent what was imminent. There was a peace meeting hosted at Aburi, in Ghana, by the then Ghanaian head of state, Gen J. A. Ankrah. At the meeting were Gowon, Ojukwu, all the military governors of the regions, and some top civil servants, both from the Federal side and the Eastern region. The meeting held on January 4 and 5, 1967, and came out with what is popularly known today as the Aburi Accord.
The agenda of the meeting consisted of three crucial issues: (i) Reorganization of the Armed Forces (ii) Constitutional agreement (iii) Issues of displaced persons within Nigeria.

The two-day meeting reached consensus that were acceptable to both sides. Among others, it was resolved that legislative and executive authority of the Federal Military Government was to remain in the Supreme Military Council (SMC), to which any decision affecting the whole country shall be referred for determination provided it is possible for a meeting to be held, and the matter requiring determination must be referred to military governors for their comment and concurrence. What does this mean in simple language? The SMC would run the affairs of the country, but not without consulting the regions as represented by the military governors. This was something akin to federalism, even under a military government.

Other terms of the agreement include that appointments to senior ranks in the police, diplomatic and consular services as well as appointment to superscale posts in the federal civil service and the equivalent posts in the statutory corporations must be approved by the SMC. What does this mean again in simple language? Equity, fairness, true federalism.
Other matters like the holding of an ad hoc constitutional conference, fate of soldiers involved in the January 15, 1966 coup, rehabilitation of displaced persons, etc, were also amicably resolved, and the conferees returned happily to Nigeria. Only for the Federal side to deliver a blow to the solar plexus: the Aburi Accord, Gowon said, was unworkable, and he reneged on all the agreements.

Using the Eastern Nigerian Broadcasting Service, Ojukwu played the tape recording of the proceedings at Aburi repeatedly, to educate the populace on who was playing Judas. Later, he made a broadcast in which he said: “we in the East are anxious to see that our differences are resolved by peaceful means and that Nigeria is preserved as a unit, but it is doubtful, and the world must judge whether Lt. Col Gowon’s attitudes and other exhibitions of his insincerity are something which can lead to a return of normalcy and confidence in the country.

“I must warn all Easterners once again to remain vigilant. The East will never be intimidated, nor will she acquiesce to any form of dictation. It is not our intention to play the aggressor. Nonetheless, it is not our intention to be slaughtered in our beds. We are ready to defend our homeland.”

In a piece I did last December, shortly after Ojukwu passed away, I said he was virtually pushed into war by the infidelity of the Federal side to the Aburi Accord. I still stand by that position. Ojukwu was called ‘warlord’ for many decades, but he was by no means a warmonger. He only did what he needed to do for his people–and for the country.

As his earthly remains are interred today, it is tragic that Nigeria is still submerged in the morass that Ojukwu already identified about 45 years ago. Today, bombs go off like firecrackers in the country. There is agitation for the review of the revenue allocation formula. There are strident calls for the convocation of a sovereign national conference. Even some component parts are threatening to pull out of the federation if anything happened to their ‘son’ who is now in power. Didn’t Ojukwu warn of these landmines ahead? Were all these issues not already settled at Aburi? Foremost journalist and media administrator, Akogun Tola Adeniyi, in a recent media interview, explained the Aburi Accord this way: “Let every region be semi-autonomous and develop at its own level.” Yes, that was the spirit and letter of Aburi, but which sadly became a road not taken. And is that not why we are still suffering today, living in a rickety and decrepit country that can burst at the seams any moment? I tell you, Ojukwu was a prophet, and like most prophets, he had no honour in his own country. Pity. But whether we like it or not, there’s no way we won’t return to Aburi. Willy-nilly. I only hope it will be sooner than later, before Nigeria goes to grief. On Aburi I stand.

Federal Government was perfidious and duplicitous on Aburi. It is still the same way today. That is why as Nigerians, we are most times disillusioned, dismayed, dispirited, dejected and depressed. When will change come to this land? Our hearts are getting weary.
Last December, I wrote that Ojukwu should be buried like a hero. I’m glad at the rites of passage so far, culminating in the interment today. Yes, bury him like a true hero. An icon, an avatar, deserves no less. This generation will surely not see another like Ojukwu. He fought not only for his own people, but for a true federation founded on justice, fair play, equity and rectitude. Unfortunately, he did not see the Nigeria of his dreams. Will we? Adieu the Ikemba, the Eze Igbo Gburugburu. May your soul rest in peace. Ka nkpur’obi gi zue ike n’adukwa.

By Femi Adesina
Friday March 02, 2012

Poser by Patriot Carl Oshodi;

"THE QUESTION IS, CAN HE ( FEMI) STILL BOLDLY WRITE THE SAME ARTICLE NOW OR ADVICE HIS PRINCIPAL ON WHAT HE WROTE?

the north have concluded that Nigeria would never be restructured, disintegration is the only way out now.

this deserves the front-page more than celebrity news pf actresses baring cleavage.

God bless Biafra,the land of the rising sun.

NgeneUkwenu:
I said it two days ago! These touts can only be found in Aba and Onitsha..

i guess enugu,asaba,port harcourt etc are in mali?funny enough you suddenly found your voice,go to the official update thread pn the front-page and see with your own eyes and confess with your own lips that abakaliki is part and parcel of the struggle.lauretta onochie

pictures or i don't believe it.

50 years on: Nigeria's Biafra secessionist movement
On Biafra Remembrance Day we ask pro-secessionist leader Nnamdi Kanu if the call for secession is growing louder.
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Nnamdi Kanu, is the leader of the group known as the Indigenous People of Biafra, which is calling for the secession of southeastern Nigeria [Chika Oduah/Al Jazeera]
byChika Oduah
Umuahia, Nigeria - Nnamdi Kanu waves his hand and puffs in frustration: "Nothing seems to be working in Nigeria. There is pain and hardship everywhere. What we're fighting [for] is not self-determination for the sake of it. It's because Nigeria is not functioning and can never function."

The leader of a group demanding the secession of southeastern Nigeria is speaking exclusively to Al Jazeera in the parlour of his father's home in the southeastern city of Umuahia.

It's the first time he has spoken to an international media outlet since he was granted bail on health grounds last month. His bail conditions prohibit him from being in a crowd of more than 10 people, leaving the country and giving media interviews.

But when asked if he is worried that he will get in trouble with the Nigerian authorities for speaking to Al Jazeera he scoffs, "I don't care," and rolls his eyes.

"I can't go outside to call for a press conference. I can't go on Biafra Radio to broadcast. I can't allow large [groups of] people to basically congregate outside to see me … it's like asking me not to breathe," he says.

On the other side of the parlour door, dozens of people are waiting to see Kanu. A throng of young men dressed in black guard the compound. They refer to Kanu as, "our supreme leader" or "his royal highness".

Kanu left Nigeria to study economics and politics at the London Metropolitan University and started Radio Biafra, an obscure, niche, London-based radio station in 2009.

In one broadcast, Kanu said: "We have one thing in common, all of us that believe in Biafra, one thing we have in common, a pathological hatred for Nigeria. I cannot begin to put into words how much I hate Nigeria."

Over the past two years, Kanu's status has risen.

Today, he's a highly visible activist and leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) organisation, and after being imprisoned in the Nigerian capital of Abuja for nearly two years on treasonable felony charges, he has now returned home.

"Kanu is my saviour," says Sopuru Amah, a senior student at one of Nigeria's oldest universities, the University of Nigeria in the southeastern city of Nsukka.

"Just like Jesus was sent to save the world, Kanu was sent by God himself to save the Igbo people."

Nigeria's ethnic politics

With an estimated population of more than 180 million, Nigeria is often called the "giant of Africa". The complexity of Nigeria's population is compounded by its ethnic diversity. Around 250 ethnic groups, each with their own languages, reside in Nigeria. With a myriad of ethnicities dotted across the landscape, three major groups tend to emerge in national dialogue due to their sheer numbers: the Yoruba, from the southwest; the Hausa-Fulani in the north and the Igbo from the southeast.

Pro-Biafrans say the federal Nigerian government is discriminating and marginalising them, the Igbo people.

"I'm not allowed to contest for the presidency of Nigeria because I'm Igbo. I'm not allowed to aspire to become the inspector general of police because I'm Igbo. I'm not allowed to become chief of army staff because I'm Igbo. What sort of stupid country is that?" Kanu asks. "Why would any idiot want me to be in that sort of country?"

In Kanu's mind, Umuahia does not exist in Nigeria. It is in Biafra and he is waiting for the world to acknowledge it.

Since the 1964 appointment of the first indigenous Nigerian as the head of the Nigerian Police Force, known as the inspector general, more than a dozen officers have held the post. Two of them have been Igbo. In a lineup of almost two-dozen chiefs of army staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the Nigerian army, two have come from southeastern Nigeria.

Perceptions of marginalisation

"The southeast feels it has been politically marginalised. There is a point to that. It has been shrunken from being one of the three major regions of the country to now being virtually a minority with the smallest number of states of the six zones in the federation," explains Nnamdi Obasi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

He says that there has only been one Igbo president and one Igbo vice president since Nigeria declared independence from the UK in 1960.

Pro-Biafrans also complain that the federal government is not funding enough infrastructure development in the region, despite a recent announcement by the federal Minister of Power, Works and Housing that road construction will be completed in the southeast.

The southeastern region of Nigeria has five states, while other regions have more.

"They certainly are at a disadvantaged position now," Obasi says. "The political configuration of the country ensures that less federal allocation gets to the southeast."

Nigeria's national economics is closely tied to its politics. Nigeria is a highly centralised federalism that relies on revenue from oil sales. Money trickles down from the central government and more money flows towards regions that have more state and local governments.

A recent poll conducted by SBM Intelligence, a local research group, found that the pro-Biafra movement is gaining popularity in the southeast and that this growth could be a reaction to the perception that the region is marginalised and economically deprived.

"So the Nigerian government has to be seen clearly as carrying the region along," Cheta Nwanze, a lead researcher at SBM Intelligence, says.

But pro-Biafrans like Amah have written off the Nigerian federal government and, in particular, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

"Buhari hates the southeast because we didn't vote for him," says Chukwudi Diru, a taxi driver with a mini Biafran flag taped to the dashboard of his 2003 car.

In his landmark 2015 election victory, Buhari garnered the least amount of votes in the southernmost and southeastern region.

Buhari commented on this during a visit to the United States shortly after his win. During an address at the United States Institute of Peace, Buhari responded to a participant in the audience who asked how he would bring development to the oil-rich Niger Delta region in the south, which has suffered decades of environmental degradation due to oil spills and oil bunkering.

"I hope you have a copy of the election results," Buhari responded to the woman. "Naturally, the constituencies that gave me 97 percent cannot, in all honesty, be treated [in the same way] on some issues with constituencies that gave me five percent. I think this is a political reality."

Buhari's soundbite has been tagged and re-posted across Nigeria's social media spaces.

"To be honest, things like the president's 97 percent and five percent comment only helped add further fuel to the fire that the southeast is being marginalised," Nwanze says.

And that fire is already burning in the southeast. On storefronts along the streets of Umuahia, photos of Nnamdi Kanu and Odumegwu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, the leader of the short-lived Republic of Biafra (1967-1970) are pasted on wooden doorframes.

At the campus of Amah's university, more students are reading pro-Biafran books and followers of Kanu hold "evangelism" meetings to preach the gospel of pro-Biafra.

At crowded bus stations in town, Kanu's voice booms from loudspeakers. Many people here mark May 30 as Biafra Remembrance Day.


Lawrence Akpu, centre, fought on the Biafran side during the 1967-1970 Nigerian-Biafran War and suffered a spinal cord injury. He is part of the Disabled Biafran War Veterans group [Chika Oduah/Al Jazeera]
A bloody past

Kanu and leaders of other pro-Biafra groups have called for supporters to stay at home on May 30 to remember those who died during the 1967-1970 Nigerian-Biafran War.

This May 30 will mark 50 years since the 1967 declaration of the Republic of Biafra, by the late Ojukwu.

The declaration of the establishment of the Biafra nation, carved out of southeastern Nigeria, came after failed attempts by the Nigerian government to address the grievances expressed by southeastern Nigerians. In 1966, thousands (PDF) of Igbo civilians were killed, mainly in northern Nigeria.

The 1966 killings began after a group of young army officers - some of whom were Igbo Christians -overthrew Nigeria's democratic government and assassinated several people, including the prime minister and other Muslim northern leaders.

"They came with every dangerous thing, some with arrow, some with gun, some with cutlasses, some with iron. So anything they could handle, they handled it and began to kill Igbo people," says Lawrence Akpu, recalling the day in 1966 when he was in a market in a town in northern Nigeria where he lived with fellow Igbos. "Everybody started running up and down and from there, we left everything we had."

Akpu joined the mass exodus of Igbo people from northern Nigeria to their ancestral homeland in the southeast.

When the war started, he joined a Biafran brigade to fight Nigerian soldiers. He says he fought wearing rubber sandals and t-shirts with holes in them. During a heavy wave of shelling, a piece of shrapnel cut into his spinal cord. Today, he's in a wheelchair.

Three years of war left southeastern Nigeria in ruins. Estimates of the death toll range from one million to six million. After the Nigerian federal military government - supported by the UK - imposed blockades that made it difficult for aid groups to deliver food and relief supplies to Biafra, many children died of kwashiorkor, a severe form of malnutrition characterised by a distended abdomen.

Igwe Christopher Ejiofor, aide-de-camp to Ojukwu throughout the war, remembers carrying nearly dead children as he helped to manage relief services.

"I can't count the number of people I picked [up] who were at the point of starvation and death," he says. "And every time I took them to the hospital, they died and I [would go] back the next day [with more children]." Igwe Ejiofor is the traditional ruler of his community in the southeastern state of Enugu.

When images of Biafran children flooded Western media, the world began to pay attention. Beatles singer-songwriter John Lennon returned his MBE order in protest at the UK's involvement in the Nigerian-Biafran War. Writer Kurt Vonnegut travelled to Biafra and wrote about the war. Steve Jobs, according to Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography of the Apple co-founder, began to question his beliefs about God after he saw a picture of two skeletal Biafran children on the infamous July 12, 1968 cover of Life magazine. In the wake of what unfolded in Biafra, doctors and journalists formed Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.


Igwe Christopher Ejiofor served as the aide-de-camp to the leader of the short-lived Republic of Biafra, Odumegwu Ojukwu [Chika Oduah/Al Jazeera]
Biafra today

The war ended in January 1970 with the surrender of the Republic of Biafra, which dissolved and was reincorporated into Nigeria. The federal government' s "no victor, no vanquished policy" was promoted to foster national unity.

But today, the pro-Biafra movement is back and louder than ever.

Dozens of pro-Biafra activists were arrested last week in cities across southeastern Nigeria.

Last year's May 30 Biafra Remembrance Day ended in what Amnesty International described as part of a "chilling crackdown" that left at least 60 peaceful pro-Biafran activists dead at the hands of Nigerian security forces. An investigation by the organisation revealed that more than 150 pro-Biafrans were killed from August 2015 to August 2016.

"The night before the rally, the security forces raided homes and a church where IPOB members were sleeping," the report reads.

Amnesty International has released a statement recommending that the Nigerian security forces not repress today's Biafra Remembrance Day activities.

Nigerian federal government officials say the country must remain united.

"They say that secession is the answer to the charges of marginalisation," said Acting President Yemi Osinbajo during a Biafra civil forum last week in Abuja. "Brothers and sisters, permit me to differ and to suggest that we're greater together than apart."

But people like Amah and Kanu no longer identify as Nigerians. They say Nigeria has failed them. They are Biafrans.

And with that Kanu stands up and goes outside to meet the people who have waited hours to see him.

Source: Al Jazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/05/50-years-nigeria-biafra-secessionist-movement-170529151102396.html
Godbless Biafra,the land of the rising sun.

jj

after the Hausa vs Yoruba clash at ife,only yorubas were arrested including an oba,they're still unjustly detained till today plus many other problems affecting the yorubas but you hardly see them agitate or discuss their problems rather they would be moving from one igbo thread to another spewing hatred over what is not their concern. a famous sage said that "an unexamined life is not worth living"

police helicopter patrolling onitsha now, these guys are clowns.

after the Hausa vs Yoruba clash at ife,only yorubas were arrested including an oba,they're still unjustly detained till today plus many other problems affecting the yorubas but you hardly see them agitate or discuss their problems rather they would be moving from one igbo thread to another spewing hatred over what is not their concern. a famous sage said that "an unexamined life is not worth living"

the Gospel according to a well known liar and Unity beggar, we'll expect more pictures from pro Biafrans.