₦airaland Forum

@nuzo,
Kobojunkie is not a man, rather a lady. One thing that baffles me is that while she tries to make peole see her as a neutral person, she openly diminishes her image by illogical, irrational statements.
To her, the killings mean little or nothing and we should remain in this country and bury the issue of the killings under the carpet.
She wants one nigeria but will never talk about the action of the north which is the greatest threat to the existaence of Nigeria as a single nation.
Well, I really dont know for sure whether she is from the north since her (Kobojunkie's) real name is Tracy Okorie . . sounds Igbo . . or rather Ikwerre.
from general observation, she enters a thread and seemingly for no reason, decides to take a stand opposite to what the general stand of others is, usually to (maybe) create a controversy.
@Tracy Okorie.
Could you please give us a break since the objectives of the post do not suit you?
Can you take time to evaluate you presence here? If you haven't, read the first line and he humble enough to go where your ideas are suited to the objectives of the thread.

For once I see a mature Yoruba Man in Seun . .the owner of Nairaland.
Seun, I wish you could imbibe in your brothers the spirit of letting people be just as you have shown by moving the thread to foreign affairs.
We know we are foreigners in the Land of Nigeria and your singular act has confirmed that some Nigerians are reasoning.
This is a sign that one day, the Nigerians will on their own accord allow Biafra to become a Foreign land, just like pharaoh had to allow the Israelites to leave when God dealt with his household.
Biafrans, Igbos do not feel that this action( moving the thread to Foreign affairs) is to insult our cry for our separate nation, rather it is a sign that God is hearing.
Believe it or not, this is a sign. The nation of Nigeria will one day admit that we are not part of them (but foreigners) as this forum just has.
Seun, Thank You for this. We owe you our gratitude.

L+G,
"Insanity is defined as repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result" . . Albert Einstein.
What has the nation of Nigeria done differently to expect a better future? We have tried being a single republic and it is not working. Why dont we try being separate?
If after 48 Years the nation of Nigeria is not working, why then can't we look in another direction for solution?
Nations have developed ahead of us. We are still struggling to be "one nigeria".
Let us give secession a chance. Let us try a different approach lest we be mad men by virtue of Einstein's quote.

Another issue that bugs me quite a while is that the people who scream one Nigeria tactically avoid talking about the killings of igbos in the North failing to note that that is the greatest threat to the one nigeria they scream. Kobojunkie may fall as a typical example here.
@ Kobojunkie
Screaming "One Nigeria" without making attempts to make your Islamic brothers to agree that they have done wrong and sign that they will never repeat those cannibalistic acts, makes me see how vain a full-fledged man can be in this modern day and age. How can you want to quench smoke without tracing the fire? How can you want a peaceful republic without traceing and addressing the very issue that is the greatest threat to the peace that you profess?
Did Igbos just wake up and decide to secede? No.
Something made the Igbos decide to secede. If you want to address this issue without openly acknowledging the wrongs done against the igbos and at the same time calling your Nothern brothers to order, you are just like a man trying to swim with a lead block tied to your neck.
The Northerners DO NOT want the Igbos to go.
The Northereners love to kill the Igbos at the slightest provocation.
What do you call that? Imprisonment.
However, one thing is sure. If you puch a man to the limit, he will definitely revolt.
Sooner or Later, this secession will occur and the northerner, when finally left with their republic that may by then be like Chad and Niger, may wish to have the South back even if it means they (the North) will not be given any public office to hold in the government.

And yet they do not want you to secede.
They want you to stay with them so that whenever they want they can wake up and start killing you. I do not see the reason why the Igbos should not want to secede.
I would really love to see the answer to that question.
Can someone help with an answer?

1) The (probably) Highest international position held by a Nigerian was held by an Igbo - Emeka Anyaouku (Secretary General of the Commonwealth). Remember that asides the UN, the common wealth may be seen as the largest union of nations across the continents.
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting at Kuala Lumpur in 1989, Anyaoku was elected the third Commonwealth Secretary-General. He was re-elected at the 1993 Limassol CHOGM for a second five-year term, beginning in July 1995 - WIkipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeka_Anyaoku

2)The probably highest position held in the World Bank is also held by an Igbo - Okonjo-Iweala -Managing Director of the World bank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngozi_Okonjo-Iweala

3)The highest scientific award a Nigerian has ever received is The Gordon Bell Prize for SuperComputing by Phillip Emeagwali

4)The probable highest banking (and probably economic) award received by a Nigerian was received by an Igbo - Our one and Only Professor Chukwuma Soludo!
He won the World/African Banker of the Year Award,
Central Bank Governor of the year Award and many others
At the 2005 Annual Meetings of the IMF/World Bank in Washington, DC the publishers of the Annual Meetings Daily and African Economy Magazine awarded him "The Global Central Bank Governor of the Year, 2005" , citing the result of his financial sector reforms as unprecedented anywhere within such a short period of time.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5245825/Soludo-scoops-highest-award-the.html
http://www.cenbank.org/OUT/PUBLICATIONS/PRESSRELEASE/GOV/2006/PR%2012A-1-06.PDF
http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/appointment/article11/120607

Also, the First Nigerian Judge @ the International Court of Justice was Charles Onyeama from 1967 to 1976.

5)The Most succesful footballer in Nigerian History is Igbo - Kanu Nwankwo

6)The Only footballer listed on Pele's prestigious list of All-Time football legends was Igbo - Okocha. . . commonly referred to as The Legend of African Football

7)You may also want to know that about Professor Bath Nnaji - a force in robotics and the first man to build an indigenous energy plant. He was one of the inventors of the concept of e-design.
You may also want to know that the first Nigerian VC of the first Nigerian University (University of Ibadan) was Professor Kenneth Dike.
. . . Kenneth Dike (1917-1983) was a Nigerian historian and the first Nigerian Vice Chancellor of the nation's premier college, the University of Ibadan. During the Nigerian civil war, he moved to Harvard University, Boston . . .

Who else there says that Igbos are not naturally gifted people considering that some of these people's families were given only N20 after the war to start a new life.

Again if you are a wide reader, you may know Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), the first political leader of Britain's black community who was Igbo.
You really need to read about him. He was one of the first people who championed the abolition of the slave trade. There are reports that he may be the first literate Nigerian. Can anyone produce a written work of any other Nigerian or maybe even a black person before 1800?

Read his history and you will see how an Igbo man in 17th Century was sold as a slave and managed to buy his freedom, travel round the world as far back as the 1700s and end up a multi-millionaire in UK (in todays terms 23 Million Naira) in a time when slave trade was still booming business. Many freed blacks till date may not be as fulfilled as he was back in the days . .
. . .Later, Olaudah Equiano was sold on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean Leeward Islands. Equiano's literacy and seamanship skills made him too valuable for plantation labour. It also made him less desirable to some slave traders. Equiano was too well educated for some and the fact that he knew how to navigate a ship scared many away from him. He was acquired by Robert King, a Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who traded in the Caribbean. King set Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765 King promised that for forty pounds, the price he had paid for Equiano, Equiano could buy his freedom. King taught him to read and write more fluently, educated him in the Christian faith, and allowed Equiano to engage in his own profitable trading as well as on his master's behalf, enabling Equiano to come by the forty pounds honestly. In his early twenties, Equiano succeeded in buying his freedom.
Meaning that he could sail a ship probably even before he was 20.
Read this
. . . . Soon after, the elder daughter died, aged four years old, leaving Joanna to inherit Equiano's estate, which was valued at £950: a considerable sum, worth approximately £100,000 today. . . . . . .23 Million naira in a foreign land where you arrived as a slave and may be the only black man in the neighbourhood. Guess that was why he had to own the estate he lived in.
This is a clear example of how the God-given gift in the Igbos makes them come out of obscurity to build a life and excel beyond their equals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano
Read His Book too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interesting_Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Olaudah_Equiano

Don't forget one of the Greatest Black Mathematicians - Professor Chike Obi who solved a 361 year old mathematical puzzle by Fermat.
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/obi-chike-fermat.html

Do not forget the Brave King Jaja of Opobo who was taxing the British Traders during the colonial era while other empires where slaves to the same Brits that he was collecting tax from! The act eventually got him imprisoned by the Brits but what can I say . . .A BRave King Jaja was
[b]. . . .Jaja of Opobo (1821–1891) (full name: Jubo Jubogha) was a Nigerian merchant prince and the founder of Opobo city-state. Born in Amaigbo in Igboland and sold at about age twelve as a slave in Bonny. Jubo Jubogha later took the name "Jaja" for his dealings with the British.
Jaja proved his aptitude for business at an early age, earning his way out of slavery, was acculturated according to Ijaw (Ibani) rituals and eventually established himself as head of the Anna Pepple House. Under Jaja's leadership, Anna Pepple soon absorbed a number of Bonny's other trade houses until internal divisions forced Jaja to break away as Opobo city-state in 1867.
Opobo soon came to dominate the region's lucrative palm oil trade, and was soon home to fourteen of what were formerly Bonny's eighteen trade houses. Jaja also moved to block the access of British merchants to the interior, giving him an effective monopoly; at times, Opobo even shipped palm oil directly to Liverpool, independent of British middlemen.
At the 1884 Berlin Conference, however, the other European powers designated Opobo as British territory, and the British soon moved to claim it. When Jaja refused to cease taxing British traders, Henry Hamilton Johnston, a British vice consul, invited Jaja to negotiations in 1887. When Jaja arrived, the British arrested him and tried him in Accra in the Gold Coast then exiled him to Saint Vincent in the West Indies.
In 1891, Jaja was granted permission to return to Nigeria, but died en route. Following his exile and death, the power of the Opobo state rapidly declined. . . .[/b]

Igbos are born to be Great!
Biafra is born to be Great!

Kobojunkie:
But @TeniBaba, these people who want to secede are not in the majority, they remain a small minority of ibos, most of whom where not even alive during the “biafra” war, so you see, how can we let them go when the one’s screaming are not speaking for the majority of ibos?

Are you sure?
I really dont think so. Things are very volatile now and everyone has "wisened up".
The Leader of the Niger Delta people's Volunteer Force , Asari Dokubo openly referred to the north as Parasite on the media!
If Niger Deltans that were supporting them during the war are now calling them parasites then it means the ratio of people getting fed up with Nigeria/Northern dominance may be increasing.

Sorry for the mistake
Christ lived 33 ¹/₂ years.
That was a typographical error.

@Poster,
While i am not against celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, I wish to inform you that Jesus Christ was NOT born on the 25th of December. The birth os Christ was MOVED to that day by the early roman catholic church as a compromise to allow the ROman pagan worshippers to accept/accommodate Christianity.
Trace your facts well and you'll be shocked.
As a result , i see it more as a dishonor to shift your Savior's birthday in an attempt to please man. I see it as debasing. Christ was really born in October.
for all those who will doubt, here is a simple check. Christ lived 33 ¹/₅ years. Calculate abd you will see that from december to easter (when he died) will give not give you the actuall length of his stay on earth. It ill only be 33 ¹/₅ years if you calculate from early october.
Obrigado

@tpia,
I didn't need to be told the first time i saw it in a mail sent to me that L+G meant Ladies and Gentlemen.
L+G, M+B means ladies and gentlemen, men and brethren
Obrigado
. . . . just in case you dont know what that means, google-translate it. Its Portuguese.

Umu Nwoke Na Nwanyi,
Biko nu gaa na ebea tunye onu na okwu gbasalu Biafra obodo anyi

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-186168.0.html
Daalu nu.

Umu Nwoke Na Nwanyi,
Biko nu gaa na ebea tunye onu na okwu gbasalu Biafra obodo anyi

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-186168.0.html
Daalu nu.

Also remember that while you have the right to air your opinions, you should also be ready to understand the implications of statements contained in your opinion.
In no way do I intend to deprive you of the right to express yourself. I only expressed my own opinion about your opinion. Can we now rest the case and let others read and express their own opinions about our opinions?

A little talk on Biafra (extracted from an earlier post)

When I think of what Biafra would have been if we had seceded, i really feel like weeping but at the same time it makes me see what we could achieve in the midst of war. It also reminds me that Biafra can and will become that great and independent nation. Biafra would have and has the capacity to be an African Technology Superpower and when I say it I mean it with evidence. It takes the natural gift of being technologically gifted to be able to achieve these in the midst of terrible war:-
[b]"In the three years of the war necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years of heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built rockets, and we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets. We guided them far; we guided them accurately. For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment. Despite the heavy bombardment, we recovered so quickly after each raid that we were able to maintain the record for the busiest airport in the continent of Africa. We spoke to the world through telecommunication system engineered by local ingenuity; the world heard us and spoke back to us! We built armored cars and tanks. We modified aircraft from trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In the three years of freedom we had broken the technological barrier. . . .[/b]
http://www.igbocalgary.ca/aboutus.html
That was the speech delivered towards the end of the war by Ojukwu. It was also on wikipedia.
What the Igbos achieved in the 3 years of turmoil, the failed Nigeria has not been able to achieve even up till her last 48th Anniversary! . . . . at least a functioning refinery!
Why then will the jealous and cunning Yoruba and Unimaginative/backward Hausa people not be afraid of letting Biafra go for fear that Biafra will overtake them in a short while? Do you know that if you speak to any elderly man that was of age during the war, he'll still tell you how the Igbos built bombs locally! My neighbor told me a lot. The locally made bombs were called "ogbunigwe" which means "massive killer" in igbo language. They were made from gunpowder which was in turn made from garri!
I was told the Igbos built a biafra radio station and mounted the antennas on palm trees! The lousy nigerian army must have been busy looking for the MTN-mast-like transmitter from which they were broadcasting to biafrans . . . no knowing we had perfected stealth military techniques. The Uli air strip was simply a road that was converted to an airforce base. . . .not just an ordinary airforce base but a stealth airforce base that was invisible from airspace during the day and used to launch night counter strikes!

Read this too
Further feelings of injustice were caused by Nigeria, during the war, changing its currency so that Biafran supplies of pre-war Nigerian currency were no longer honoured and then, at the end of the war, offering only N£20 to easterners on exchange of their Biafran currency. This was seen as a deliberate policy to hold back the Igbo middle class, leaving them with little wealth to expand their business interests. - wikipedia
Every Igbo man lost all the money he had in banks and was entitled to 20 naira ONLY!!! Today we virtually control the economy of Nigeria in Business, Importation, Automobiles and even in Economic Administration . . . .the likes of Soludos and the Okonjo-Iwealas. What a fast come-back. Has the hausa man been able to meet up even when they have had power for almost as long as i have been on this earth as a child and a youth.
Igbos are destined to be great. The hausa man and the yoruba man are afraid of where they see us going and they are determined that since they may not have the natural inborn gifts that are required to reach there, they must hold us down with them. The God of the Jews is still the God of the Igbos! Like the Jews (of whom we descended) we will get to the promised land of Biafra.
Its simple logic!
When a man is sinking, he tries to hold on to any thing he sees to stay help him stay afloat or to drag it down with himself. Whereas a man who knows that he can stay afloat will always try to let go of any unnecessary weight that will drag him down.
The Igbos know they can stay afloat and are ready to let go of any unnecessary burden. The Yorubas and the Hausas are by their actions telling us that they are sinking! Holding on to the Igbos to stay afloat!

. . .leer y reflexionar

L + G,
in responce to gamine's statement, you may want to follow events to know what may have lead to the whole "blood thirsty" issue

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-176005.128.html#msg2970107

Do not forget to return this thread after you have read and judged for yourself.
Obrigado.

It takes a person who would love to see people die to pass the kind of comments you both have passed.
Rest the case.

@ Gamine,
I get very surprised when i see people making jokes over things that are as serious as the topic in question.
Mrs Gamine, can you stand before an international community an defend the fact that a national bridge was qualified as being on the verge of collapsing by the engineers who serviced it and you said "Christmas don dey reash . . .e nefa collapse?? on an open thread. Do you know that if you were to be in Obama's position tomorrow and this statement which reflects gross negligence and apathy is traced back to you, you can as well forget about holding any public office (talk-less of the presidency) on grounds of signs of in-empathy.
Do you need to wait for a bridge to collapse before it is rebuilt? Hitler is looked upon as a terrible heartless person but you fail to realise that within your possibly cold-blooded heart, hitler may be lurking in the shadows. At the risk of souding absurd, i make the statement because it takes a person who loves to see massive bloodshed in the incident of a massive bridge collapse, to pass the kind of remark you passed on this issue.
In the US, UK and other advanced countries, if a construction engineer makes a statement that a bridge is at the verge of collapsing, irrespective of tribe, or ideological differences everyone will be screaming WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT WAITING FOR!!!!

@ Kobojunkie :
Quote from: Kobojunkie on October 08, 2008, 06:01 PM
The very fact that the Niger bridge, is COLLAPSING, is all the proof you need to understand that the government has not done it’s part in this. That bridge is not old and for a bridge to collapse, like the one that collapsed last year in Minnesota means that government has not been doing its job. KAPISH!!

When i saw this post, I thought an intelligent person who looks beyond tribalism was speaking but a few scrolls further and i realised that people like Kobojunkie may be the reason why Nigeria is still where it is.

Quote from: Gamine on Yesterday at 08:57:57 PM
Christmas don dey reash

e nefa collapse??

Kobojunkie's response
We stilll dey october,  make we wait see.

@Kobojunkie,
If you notice on my threads, i try to maturely and diplomatically make people see what they may not be seeing. However, I may be tempted to say that you may be a person of very low integrity and maturity. In your initial posts on this thread, you talked about looking at the issue "maturely" but the moment Gamine made an immature and irresponsible cajole @ an issue as delicate and serious as this, the Hitler in you involuntarily sprung up and replied by saying that we should wait and watch catastrophe befall innocent motorists who will be on the bridge at the moment your wait is ended. You may not know that blood-thirstiness was manifested in that single 8-word, two clause sentence which you penned down for the whole world to see and read on an open thread like this.
You just gave me an answer to why our leaders travel out of the country, see the way things work and still return and let things happen the way they do. You live in the US. Ohio to be precise. You know what it means for a bridge to collapse. It would have been expected that a civilized, truly matured individual would reply Gamine's blood-thirsty statement by hushing her and correcting her but rather you concurred and re-iterated you inner desires which you had tried earlier to cover up with seemingly mature statements, be it jokingly or not.
Do you know that in that very country you live in, your political opponents can dig up things like this and use it to nail you through the media? You know you are highly traceable with the sales you make on the forum so you can hardly detach yourself from that post you made.

How would Rod Parsely respond to this statement? How would he react seeing this response by you . . . . . .
think before you push those keys on the keyboard or else the bloodthirsty part of you may surface in short lines like these . .

gamine and kobojunkie . . take heed lest ye be consumed by your statements.
Your response will show if you acknowledge that you have made  a mistake or not.

L + G, M+B,
It is no longer word that recent debates on the politics section that the spirit of Biafra lives in so many of us. In order to avoid derailing the topic of this thread, i have set up a thread specially for our Great Nation of Biafra.
All Biafrans on this thread can contribute to the thread. The thread is specially dedicated to the nation of Biafra. It's main aim is to eulogize our great nation that was nearly nipped in the bud - because we Biafrans know it wasn't nipped yet.
The Great Nation of Biafra
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-186168.0.html
The Nation of Biafra will surely come to pass.

L + G,
This thread is specially dedicated to the nation of Biafra. It's main aim is to eulogize our great nation that was nearly nipped in the bud - because we Biafrans know it wasn't.
Great Biafrans, fell free to express your respect, admiration, loyalty and longing for the great Nation of Biafra.

@ Lucabrasi about my references.
QUTOE BY LUCABRASI . . .while i do not mind being educated on stuffs i know nothing about,i can safely say your total references are flawed at best,don't take my word for it but ask anybody even a secondary student and you ll discover wikipedia is not a verifiable source for anything whatsoever neither is it a basis for sound literary reference,please ask anybody if this is true,

Please note that the fact that wikipedia is open source does not mean that its facts lack authenticity.
U have acknowledged liking to be tutored in ares that you do not know much in (like talking about US without knowing the root causes of the American civil war etc.) and I will butress on thet love of yours to be tutored to also tutor you on wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a reference of compiled references. What do i mean? I mean that the contributors to articles on wikipedia are expected to submit references from which the information they added can be verified.
Young man, you obviously appear not to be schooled in the art of public debate. When you are countered/disproved, you quickly shift focus and try to fault the source of the facts that were used to flaw your point. Did you take time to look at the bottom of the articles on Wikipedia to see if you could not trace any of the facts to research works and other older encyclopedias?
How can you come on an open thread like this and say "ask a secondary school child"? Is that factual? Is that how you ewould argue if you were in the UN assembly? You'll tell them to ask a secondary school child? Argue with the charisma of facts and sources.
I hereby challenge you to prove your statement and not to eat your word.
You have told Nairaland that Wikipedia facts are not a basis for sound literary reference. I challenge you before Nairaland to Prove it! DO NOT EAT YOUR WORD! PROVE IT!


Young Man, the person you are talking with has a valid sign-on with which he contributes to articles on wikipedia. While that may not be a big feat, it helps one to understand why wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia on earth. I'll leave the rest for you to find out for yourself . . . why it is the biggest and possibly the most accurate encylopedia on earth.
Just so that you know:-
Any article on wiki that has a disputable neutrality or verifiability issue is flagged openly! There are user teams (of whom i discovered are mostly professors) that watch wiki articles for vandalism. Vandalism is when a contributor tryies to inject false or overtly-biased information into wikipedia.

Since I love to be iinvestigative and read wide i refer to Lucabrasi's quotes
there have been articles written by early white colonialists that calabar/efik were actually the first to be educated in the whole of nigeria if not black africa and a large percentage of the total slaves that left the shores of africa as a whole left from the efik area,i can find links for you if u want or a trip to tinapa museum ll suffice

I need you to find links. There is no knowledge that is a waste.

Meanwhile i wish to point out that your statement that the efiks were the first to be educated and the largest group to leave the shores may be false. From the information i have, the Igbo gene is the most frequent in Black American. Just so that you know, A lot of research has been going into the origin of black americans and they have traced A LOT of them to the Igbo race.
It is speculated the 60% of Black Americans are of Igbo ancestry.

Facts?
Look at these extracts
More and more I'm coming across site in where African-Americans who have taken the time to think and study openly into the ancestral descent of we African-Americans, have come to the blatantly obvious and historically documentively proven conclusion of that we African-Americans are a vastly majority Igbo descended people by about at least a 60% margin.


read further
In the deep south (Georgia, South Carolina) there were massive coastal plantations known as the Gullah Estates in which were maned by upwards of a 80-85% Igbo majority, and in the Chesapeake region of the nation, especially Virgina, the Igbo made up such a large portion of both the free and slave population of the region that it was nicknamed by the blacks in the area New Eboland (Igboland), as mentioned in an unrelated documentary published in the early 1800's.

Igbo accounted for about 1.3 million of the 1.7 million people exported from
the Bight of Biafra during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Out of a total of 37,000 Africans that arrived in Virginia from Calabar in the 1700s, 30,000 were Igbo

You may also want to note that the Gullahs in the US are predominatly igbo and the Black Americans wit Igbo origin are becoming a large community. I'm not talking of people that travelled to the US from Nigeria, i am talking of people like
Bishop T.D Jakes
Ne-Yo the Musician
Forest Whitaker. They have been genetically traced to The Igbo race. They even have the Gullah-Igbos and the GeeChee-Igbos in the US.
In contrast to your post that the majority of the slaves were efik,
if you go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_people
You'll see that there are about 5 Million Black American Igbos. That is about the highest concentration of any African tribe in American Blacks. Remember I am not referring to Immigrants. I'm talking about those that left as slaves far back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_American
http://www.nathanielturner.com/igbosinvirginia.htm
http://africanamerican-igbojewsnet.4t.com/
http://www.saintsimons.com/ebolanding/
http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TNTGIHD5TE7O93KOU

Please give me facts to confirm your point.

shotster50:
@ lucabrasi  and  Ellyptica

can't you see how pointless this arguement is?? Neither of you is willing to give way so leave it at that.

I'm not arguing with anyone. I was just saying that Igbos were heading for technological independence if not the war and Lucabrasi asked me to show him that Igbos were doing well. I was just expressing my view (that staying in Nigeria has done more harm than good to us) and i was asked to prove that we would have done well if we had seceded.

lucabrasi:
@ellyptical
1)yes we know about emeka anyaoku,how r bout bola ajibola who was heading the international court of justice and has been honoured all round the world.

When you want to pull out points, do your research well and make sure that you do not go where it will never favour you. I am telling you that the Igbos developed very far ahead of you guys long time ago and you are arguing by presenting Bola Ajibola who was the ICJ judge from 1991-1994 whereas Charles Onyeama was the First Nigerian Judge @ the ICJ from 1967 to 1976.
You need to read more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judges_of_the_International_Court_of_Justice

Do you also know that the first Nigerian VC of the first Nigerian University was Professor Kenneth Dike, an Igbo guy?
. . . Kenneth Dike (1917-1983) was a Nigerian historian and the first Nigerian Vice Chancellor of the nation's premier college, the University of Ibadan. During the Nigerian civil war, he moved to Harvard University, Boston . . .
As for Odegbami, he was good no doubt. Same for Yekini, etc. But Kanu is the Most Successful Nigerian Footballer.
Mr Lucabrasi. There is a video on youtube that has an insert on it from BBC coverage of the war. It was said by the BBC correspondent that the Igbos were highly educated as far back as during the independence. The bulk of the freedom-fighters were Igbo. I'm not playing down on how good other Nigerians are but I put it to you that if we had seceded, we would have been far far far ahead of where this country is now and where most other fragments of the failed Nigerians would have been. That is what gives us the courage to want to secede.
Are all these coincidences?
Where were other tribes when we were developing our God-given talents far back? When we now wanted to secede they were quick to try to hold us back. . . .lol

The UNIDO (the arm of the UN that is responsible for Industrial development) flagged Nnewi as a potential Industrial city because of their natural swiftness with anything automobile, mechanical stuff, engines, motor spare parts etc . They also flagged Aba for leather works. If we had a working government, they would quickly use those UNIDO reports to solicit for grants (thats if there is not enough money) to build maybe an auto plants or something . . they just need to look to japan, china taiwan and repeat what they did in Nnewi so as to harness the potentials.
The Nigerian Nation is a failure believe it or not.

lucabrasi:
@ellyptical
while i wont go into your table of contents line by line its funny you didnt include the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,united kingdom  . . .

You also refer to US but forget that shortly after the American Civil war, the defeated south was re-integrated into government. Again, the war was caused because lincoln wanted to abolish slavery. the south had a lot of manpower from slaves and wanted it to continue. I see it as a war fought out of selfish motives.
The war is long over. How well has the south-east been re-integrated into government.
As for the United Kingdom. How many times Do you  hear that because a cartoonist drew Mohammed, Scottish people started shooting sporadically at the Brits?

Did you not read this post?

[b]Let me qoute a recent event, saturday 29th February 2006 in maiduguri, Bornu state, hausas attacked the igbos and christians living in the city because of a cartoon printed in Denmark. Many people who died on that day didnt even know where Denmark was but they were killed because they were Igbos and properties worth millions were destroyed and nothing was done to stop the killings. I was in maiduguri then and i survived the killings.
I'm a man of peace, but what i saw that day brought tears to my eyes and hardened my heart that few of us igbos decided to mobilise others and start a counter attack to save others even if it meant dying in the act.
that was when the police decided to come out with teargas to stop us from retaliating. what kind of justice do you call that? hmm?
the attack on igbos started about 9am and we began mobilising for counter offensive around 4pm, the hausas fled and the police showed up to disperse us with tear gas!!!  thats Nigeria for you. why didnt the hausas go to the danish embassy in Abuja instead of attacking Igbos
[/b]
Can you believe that such barbaric and cannibalistic acts still happen in this present day as recent as 2006?
Don't forget that European nations do not need as much as the above occurence for them to  split. They don't take thrash.
You are quick to point peaceful nations to me when Igbos are being killed in the North @ the slightest provocation. Point out previously conflicting nations to me and i will show you how they have seceded.
Does it not occur to you that Hausas have an internal hatred for Igbos that makes them to look for the slightest provocation to start killing Igbos like chickens?
Are we co-existing as peacefully as the Uk and the present day US?
Is Brown Not from scotland and yet he is the PM. Has any Igbo been president since after the war?
I may be tempted to point out that you are not too good in analyzing issues with points to drive your idea home.

All You Niger-Deltans that believe that the Igbo man is your problem (when the Yorubas who have colonized Shell, Mobil, Agip etc in your very eyes are really your problem) should also read about King Jaja of Opobo
You'll see a similarity in King Jaja of Opobo's exploits with that of Olaudah Equiano that i posted above.
It's synonymous with how Jews progress.
They arrive a place as refugees or slaves. They start growing in strength and wealth and in a short while they are controlling the economy. That was what made the Native Germans jealous that they started killing the Jews during the holocaust, similar to what we have in Nigeria. The Jews fled to the US in their numbers as refugees and today they control the economy of the US. At the end they have their own country now and we will have ours too. . . .Biafra.

Read about the Inborn Gift of every Igbo Person . . . .here we are looking at Jaja of Opobo who entered Niger Delta (Bonny) as a slave and became a King!

[b]Jaja of Opobo (1821–1891) (full name: Jubo Jubogha) was a Nigerian merchant prince and the founder of Opobo city-state. Born in Amaigbo in Igboland and sold at about age twelve as a slave in Bonny. Jubo Jubogha later took the name "Jaja" for his dealings with the British.
Jaja proved his aptitude for business at an early age, earning his way out of slavery, was acculturated according to Ijaw (Ibani) rituals and eventually established himself as head of the Anna Pepple House. Under Jaja's leadership, Anna Pepple soon absorbed a number of Bonny's other trade houses until internal divisions forced Jaja to break away as Opobo city-state in 1867.
Opobo soon came to dominate the region's lucrative palm oil trade, and was soon home to fourteen of what were formerly Bonny's eighteen trade houses. Jaja also moved to block the access of British merchants to the interior, giving him an effective monopoly; at times, Opobo even shipped palm oil directly to Liverpool, independent of British middlemen.
At the 1884 Berlin Conference, however, the other European powers designated Opobo as British territory, and the British soon moved to claim it. When Jaja refused to cease taxing British traders, Henry Hamilton Johnston, a British vice consul, invited Jaja to negotiations in 1887. When Jaja arrived, the British arrested him and tried him in Accra in the Gold Coast then exiled him to Saint Vincent in the West Indies.
In 1891, Jaja was granted permission to return to Nigeria, but died en route. Following his exile and death, the power of the Opobo state rapidly declined.[/b]

Kanu Nwankwo i scurrently the only footballer in the premiership to have won
-The Champions League
-Premiership
-UEFA Cup
-FA Cup and
-Carling Cup within his career

He is the only Nigerian that has won the African Footballer of the Year twice.
In The Medals table he is the highest in Nigeria with his olympic medal too.
Factually, he is officially the most successful Nigerian Footballer.

L+G,
In response to lucabrasi's question as per why the Igbos have not won any Nobel Prize in Enginnering, I wish to point out some basic facts, firstly
-There is no Nobel Prize for Engineering.
-In Sciences, We have the brains. The highest scientific award a Nigerian has ever received is The Gordon Bell Prize for SuperComputing by Phillip Emeagwali. To win a nobel prize for Physicsor Chemistry requires a lot of research facilities that our Universities do not have. That factor is not in our control.
As for those who asked why the Igbos are not doing well like the Jews, I wish to point out that in most areas, the highest achievements have been recorded by igbos

1) The (probably) Highest international position held by a Nigerian was held by an Igbo - Emeka Anyaouku (Secretary General of the Commonwealth). Remember that asides the UN, the common wealth may be seen as the largest union of nations across the continents.
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting at Kuala Lumpur in 1989, Anyaoku was elected the third Commonwealth Secretary-General. He was re-elected at the 1993 Limassol CHOGM for a second five-year term, beginning in July 1995 - WIkipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeka_Anyaoku

2)The probably highest position held in the World Bank is also held by an Igbo - Okonjo-Iweala -Managing Director of the World bank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngozi_Okonjo-Iweala

3)The highest scientific award a Nigerian has ever received is The Gordon Bell Prize for SuperComputing by Phillip Emeagwali

4)The probable highest banking (and probably economic) award received by a Nigerian was received by an Igbo - Our one and Only Professor Chukwuma Soludo!
He won the World/African Banker of the Year Award,
Central Bank Governor of the year Award and many others
At the 2005 Annual Meetings of the IMF/World Bank in Washington, DC the publishers of the Annual Meetings Daily and African Economy Magazine awarded him "The Global Central Bank Governor of the Year, 2005" , citing the result of his financial sector reforms as unprecedented anywhere within such a short period of time.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5245825/Soludo-scoops-highest-award-the.html
http://www.cenbank.org/OUT/PUBLICATIONS/PRESSRELEASE/GOV/2006/PR%2012A-1-06.PDF
http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/appointment/article11/120607

5)The Most succesful footballer in Nigerian History is Igbo - Kanu Nwankwo

6)The Only footballer listed on Pele's prestigious list of All-Time football legends was Igbo - Okocha. . . commonly referred to as The Legend of African Football

7)You may also want to know that about Professor Bath Nnaji -  a force in robotics and the first man to build an indigenous energy plant. He was one of the inventors of the concept of e-design.

Finally, if you a deep reader, you may know Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), the first political leader of Britain's black community who was Igbo.
You really need to read about him. He was one of the first people who championed the abolition of the slave trade. There are reports that he may be the first literate Nigerian.  Can anyone produce a written work of any other Nigerian or maybe even a black person before 1800?

Read his history and you will see how an Igbo man in 17th Century was sold as a slave and managed to buy his freedom, travel round the world as far back as the 1700s and end up a multi-millionaire in UK (in todays terms 23 Million Naira) in a time when slave trade was still booming business. Many freed blacks till date may not be as fulfilled as he was back in the days . .
. . .Later, Olaudah Equiano was sold on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean Leeward Islands. Equiano's literacy and seamanship skills made him too valuable for plantation labour. It also made him less desirable to some slave traders. Equiano was too well educated for some and the fact that he knew how to navigate a ship scared many away from him. He was acquired by Robert King, a Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who traded in the Caribbean. King set Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765 King promised that for forty pounds, the price he had paid for Equiano, Equiano could buy his freedom. King taught him to read and write more fluently, educated him in the Christian faith, and allowed Equiano to engage in his own profitable trading as well as on his master's behalf, enabling Equiano to come by the forty pounds honestly. In his early twenties, Equiano succeeded in buying his freedom.
Meaning that he could sail a ship probably even before he was 20.
Read this
. . . . Soon after, the elder daughter died, aged four years old, leaving Joanna to inherit Equiano's estate, which was valued at £950: a considerable sum, worth approximately £100,000 today. . . . . . .23 Million naira in a foreign land where you arrived as a slave and may be the only black man in the neighbourhood. Guess that was why he had to own the estate he lived in.
This is a clear example of how the God-given gift in the Igbos makes them come out of obscurity to build a life and excel beyond their equals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano
Read His Book too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interesting_Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Olaudah_Equiano

Don't forget o[b]ne of the Greatest Black Mathematicians - Professor Chike Obi who solved a 361 mathematical equation by Fermat.[/b]
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/obi-chike-fermat.html

Who else there says that Igbos are not naturally gifted people considering that some of these people's families were given only N20 after the war to start a new life.


yours in the struggle for our freedom ,  Biafra must come to pass!

African Tribes vs. European Nations

Colonial ideologists in Africa did not just hypothesize; they acted on their theories as well. For example, since Africans were deemed incapable of forming nations, it followed that African tribes however large in population, and whether or not they had a common history, culture, occupied a contiguous territory etc. could be amalgamated with other tribes to form new “nations”. These new nations were then expected to embark on the project of nation-building with the expectation that at some unspecified future date, they would become true nations, a stage presumably attained in Europe eon years ago. This was how the Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba, some of the largest true nations of Africa became coerced in one unworkable nation-state called Nigeria.

Of course this was a sharp contrast to what obtained in Europe. As shown in Tables 2 and 3 every European nation however tiny had a right to self-determination, a seat in the UN etc. For example, whereas, Luxemburg with 0.04 million population is a fully independent state, over 40 million Igbo, one of the largest true nations of Africa have been denied these rights and coerced into an uneasy alliance with Mohammedans, feudalists etc. in an unworkable  contraption called the Nigerian state. Within our own lifetime, more tiny European nations-states have emerged (e.g. Croatia, Slovania, Georgia, Bosnia etc.) and the high heavens have not fallen.

Table 2:  European Nations

Group Name Location Population Designation Current Status
Luxemburg Europe 0.04million Nation Independent state
Ireland Europe 3million Nation Independent  state
Sweden Europe 5million Nation Independent state
Denmark Europe 5 million Nation Independent state
Iceland Europe 0.3 million Nation Independent state
Liechtenstein Europe 0.03 million Nation Independent state
Norway Europe 4.million Nation Independent state
Portugal Europe 9 million Nation Independent state
Finland Europe 5 million Nation Independent state

Table 3: African Tribes

Group Name Location Population Designation Current Status
Igbo Africa 45 million Tribe Part of  failed state Nigeria
Yoruba Africa 35 million Tribe Part of  failed state Nigeria
Zulu Africa 4 million Tribe Part of South Africa
Hausa Africa 38 million Tribe Part of  failed state Nigeria

The rise and Collapse of Pseudo-Federations in Africa

@Lucabrasi.
Ok End the story. Just say the words. "Biafrans there is nothing too fascinating about you guys. Go! We do not need you!"
Say it and prove to the world that you guys are not sinking and looking for who to hold on to.
Forget all the long story of how you people are as good as we are. Prove it by challenging me back!
5 Posts after my challenge no Yoruba or Hausa has had the liver to say it!
Na so una need us reach? inferiority.
I'm still watching. . . . . . .

@ Lucabrasi
I did not say drill! I said refine! Moreover drilling is not the money making operation in Oil and Gas. Its refining and exporting that brings the money to a Nation. In Nigeria today don't we drill? We do. Do we refine? You can answer better. We export crude and import refined oil. Thats why we are not profiting as much as we should from oil.
As for the facts . . . read here (Scroll near the bottom to the "Conclusion" )

[b]The Research and Production Directorate (RAP) produced 56% of arms used in Biafra. The "Ojukwu Bunker" in Umuahia also demonstrates that it is possible to build underground tunnels to decongest traffics in Nigerian cities. Biafra also refined crude oil using only local materials. Refineries built at Uzuakoli and Amandugba were capable of refining 50,000 gallons of fuel per day. Yet today, Nigeria imports refined fuel because none of her refineries is working at full capacity. Biafran chemists also produced 10 tons of pure salt per month. It was estimated to increase up to 50 tons if production continued. In the area of consumer goods, items which were usually imported such as toilet soaps, face-creams, Vaseline, biscuits, liquor, dyes, protein extracts and engine oil were all produced by Biafran scientists and engineers. Biafran engineers in the United Kingdom were also able to design plastic housing units for refugees. In fact, with regard to the principle of self-reliance which is what Africa so badly needs today, Biafra was a pace-setter. If this breakthrough were integrated and harnessed by Nigeria after the war, her crushing external debt would have been contained at least to a certain extent.[/b]

http://www.kwenu.com/publications/nnamani/biafra_retrospect2.htm
Great Biafra!

First of all,
thanks ScanLess! You are informed!
L & G,
When I think of what Biafra would have been if we had seceded, i really feel like weeping. Biafra would have at least been an African Technology Superpower and when I say it I mean it with evidence. It takes the natural gift of being technologically gifted to be able to achieve these in the midst of terrible war:-
[b]"In the three years of the war necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years of heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built rockets, and we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets. We guided them far; we guided them accurately. For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment. Despite the heavy bombardment, we recovered so quickly after each raid that we were able to maintain the record for the busiest airport in the continent of Africa. We spoke to the world through telecommunication system engineered by local ingenuity; the world heard us and spoke back to us! We built armored cars and tanks. We modified aircraft from trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In the three years of freedom we had broken the technological barrier. . . .[/b]
http://www.igbocalgary.ca/aboutus.html
That was the speech delivered towards the end of the war by Ojukwu. It was also on wikipedia.
What the Igbos achieved in the 3 years of turmoil, the failed Nigeria has not been able to achieve even up till her last 48th Anniversary! . . . . at least a functioning refinery!
Why then will the jealous and cunning Yoruba and Unimaginative/backward Hausa people not be afraid of letting Biafra go for fear that Biafra will overtake them in a short while? Do you know that if you speak to any elderly man that was of age during the war, he'll still tell you how the Igbos built bombs locally! My neighbor told me a lot. The locally made bombs were called "ogbunigwe" which means "massive killer" in igbo language. They were made from gunpowder which was in turn made from garri!
I was told the Igbos built a biafra radio station and mounted the antennas on palm trees! The lousy nigerian army must have been busy looking for the MTN-mast-like transmitter from which they were broadcasting to biafrans . . . no knowing we had perfected stealth military techniques. The Uli air strip was simply a road that was converted to an airforce base. . . .not just an ordinary airforce base but a stealth airforce base that was invisible from airspace during the day and used to launch night counter strikes!

Need I say more?
Read this too
Further feelings of injustice were caused by Nigeria, during the war, changing its currency so that Biafran supplies of pre-war Nigerian currency were no longer honoured and then, at the end of the war, offering only N£20 to easterners on exchange of their Biafran currency. This was seen as a deliberate policy to hold back the Igbo middle class, leaving them with little wealth to expand their business interests. - wikipedia
Every Igbo man lost all the money he had in banks and was entitled to 20 naira ONLY!!! Today we virtually control the economy of Nigeria in Business, Importation, Automobiles and even in Economic Administration . . . .the likes of Soludos and the Okonjo-Iwealas. What a fast come-back. Has the hausa man been able to meet up even when they have had power for almost as long as i have been on this earth as a child and a youth.
Igbos are destined to be great. The hausa man and the yoruba man are afraid of where they see us going and they are determined that since they may not have the natural inborn gifts that are required to reach there, they must hold us down with them. The God of the Jews is still the God of the Igbos! Like the Jews (of whom we descended) we will get to the promised land of Biafra.
Its simple logic!
When a man is sinking, he tries to hold on to any thing he sees to stay help him stay afloat or to drag it down with himself. Whereas a man who knows that he can stay afloat will always try to let go of any unnecessary weight that will drag him down.
The Igbos know they can stay afloat and are ready to let go of any unnecessary burden. The Yorubas and the Hausas are by their actions telling us that they are sinking! Holding on to the Igbos to stay afloat!
My Dear Yorubas and Hausas in the house please prove me wrong and prove to us that you can stay afloat by saying "These Igbos . . . let them go we do not need them"
I have never had a Yoruba or Hausa Nairalander say that!

@ Quotasyte
I always read your post and you have been very analytical but to see you using such abusive words on someone who just pointed out something that should get you thinking, is NOT mature at all. The guys is telling you this because he does not want that to happen! Why are you attacking him
@ Poster,
Your post makes a lot of sense! I forsee that happening and i foresee Biafra (and maybe also Niger Delta Republic) coming into existence shortly after.
Mark My words.

The Igbos will rise back to being the forces behind Nigeria as we once were.
We gave you guys the independence. The brits acknowledge the the Igbos are good in Technology and business.
Wasn't it indigenous technology that enabled us to build bombs that enabled us to match Nigeria for 30 Months even when our borders were barricaded to prevent any supplies from outside?


Read Chinua Achebe's Speech @ The Guardina Silver Jubilee
What Nigeria is to me, by Achebe

On October 9, The Guardian marked its Silver Jubilee with a lecture and keynote speech at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos by two illustrious sons of Africa. Nigeria's literary giant, Prof. Chinua Achebe delivered the keynote address. He was not 'physically present,' to deliver his address, but for over 30 minutes, the NIIA auditorium resonated with Achebe's voice. The dignitaries on the high table made way for Achebe, as his image, projected on the screen behind the table spoke of "What Nigeria is to me." On the wall behind the screen and Achebe was draped the Kenyan flag. The Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya Rt. Hon Raila Amolo Odinga, soon took the stage with his lecture "Democracy and the challenge of Good Governance in Africa." The two submissions are reproduced here again.

NIGERIAN nationality was for me and my generation an acquired taste like cheese or better still like ballroom dance. Not dancing per se for that came naturally, but this titillating version of slow, slow, quick, quick, slow performed in close body contact with a female in rivalry with an elusive beat. I found however, that once I had overcome my initial awkwardness, I could do it pretty well. Perhaps, these irreverent analogies would only occur to someone like me born into a strongly multi-ethnic, multi-lingual multi-religious somewhat chaotic colonial situation.

The first passport I ever carried described me as a British protected person. An unexciting identity embodied in a phrase that no one was likely to die for. I don't mean it was entirely devoid of emotional meaning. After all, British meant we were located somewhere in the vast flaming red portion of the world map that covered a quarter of the entire globe in those days and was called the British Empire where the sun never set. It had a ring to it in my childhood ears, a magical fraternity, vague but vicariously glorious. But I am jumping ahead of myself. My earliest awareness in the town of Ogidi did not include any of the British stuff, nor indeed the Nigerian stuff. That came with progress in school.

Ogidi is an Igbo town, one of a thousand or more towns that made up the Igbo nation, one of Nigeria's and indeed Africa's largest ethnic groups. But the Igbo numbering over 10 million are a curious nation. They have been called names like stateless, acephalous and such terms by anthropologists, argumentative by others, especially those who were sent to administer them. But what the Igbo are, is not the negative suggested by such descriptions, but strongly positive in favour of small-scale political organisation, so that as they say, every man's eye would reach where things are happening; so every one of the thousand towns was a mini state, with complete jurisdiction over its affairs.

A sense of civic attachment to their numerous towns was more real for pre-colonial Igbo people than any unitary pan-Igbo feeling. This made them, the Igbo people notoriously difficult to govern centrally as the British discovered but never appreciated nor quite forgave. The British dislike was demonstrated during the Biafra tragedy when they accused the Igbo of threatening to break up a nation state they had carefully and laboriously put together.

The paradox of Biafra was that the Igbo themselves had originally championed the Nigerian nation more spiritedly than other Nigerians, perhaps. One proof of this - the British had thrown more of them into jail for sedition than any others during the two decades or so of pre-independence agitation and trouble making. So the Igbo were second to none in the nationalist front when Britain finally conceded independence to Nigeria in 1960; a move that in introspect seems like a masterstroke of tactical withdrawal to achieve a supreme strategic advantage.

At the time we were proud of what we had achieved as Nigerians. True Ghana had beaten us to it by three years. But then Ghana was a tiny affair, easy to manage compared to the huge lumbering giant that is Nigeria. We Nigerians did not have to be vociferous like Ghana, just our presence was enough. Indeed the elephant was our national emblem; our airline was a flying elephant. Nigerian troops soon distinguished themselves in a big way in the United Nations Peace keeping operations in the Congo. Our elephant was defying aerodynamics and flying. Traveling as a Nigerian was exciting. People listened to us; our money was worth more than the dollar. When the driver of a bus in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia in 1961 asked me what I was doing sitting in the front of the bus. I told him nonchalantly that I was going to Victoria Falls. In amazement he stooped lower and asked me where I came from. I replied, even more casually, Nigeria, if you must know. And by the way, in Nigeria, we sit where we like in the bus.

Back home, I took up the rather important position of Director of External broadcasting, an entirely new radio service aimed primarily at our African neighbours. I could do it in those days because our politicians were yet to learn the uses of information control and did not immediately attempt to regiment our output. They were learning fast though. But before I could get enmeshed in that, something much nastier had seized hold of all of us. The six-year old Nigerian federation was falling apart under severe strain of regional animosity and ineffectual central authority. The transparent failure of the electoral process to translate the will of the electorate into recognisable results at the polls led to mass frustration and violence.

While Western Nigeria, one of the four regions, was going up literarily in flames, the quiet and dignified Nigerian Prime Minister was hosting the Commonwealth Conference to extricate Harold Wilson from the mess he got himself into in far away Rhodesia. But so tense was the local situation in Nigeria that the visiting heads of government had to be airlifted by helicopter from the Lagos airport to a secluded suburb to avoid the rampaging crowds.

Nigeria's first military coup took place even as those dignitaries were flying out of Lagos at the end of their conference. One of them, Archbishop Macarios of Cyprus was in fact still in the country when the coup happened. The Prime Minister and two regional Premiers were killed by the coup makers. In the bitter suspicious atmosphere of the time, a naively idealistic coup proved a terrible disaster. It was interpreted with plausibility as a plot by the ambitious Igbo of the East to take control of Nigeria from the Hausa Fulani North.

Six months later, northern officers carried out what was perhaps a revenge coup in which they killed Igbo officers and men in large numbers. If it had ended there, the matter might have been seen as a very tragic, very sad interlude in nation building, a horrendous tit for tat. But the northerners turned on Igbo civilians living in the North and unleashed waves of brutal massacres, which Colin Legum of the Observer first described as a pogrom, the first time many people in Nigeria, heard that word. It was estimated that 30,000 civilians, men, women children died in those massacres. Igbos were fleeing in hundreds of thousands from all parts of Nigeria to their homeland in the East.

I was one of the last to flee from Lagos. I simply could not bring myself at first to accept that I could no longer live in my nation's capital although the facts clearly said so. One Sunday morning, I was telephoned from Broadcasting House and informed that armed soldiers who appeared drunk had come looking for me to test, which was stronger - their gun or my pen. The offence of my pen was that it had written a novel called "A Man of the People" a bitter satire on political corruption in an African country that resembled Nigeria. I wanted the novel to be a denunciation of the kind of independence we were experiencing in post-colonial Nigeria and many other countries in the 1960s. And I intended it to scare my countrymen into good behavior with a freightening cautionary tale. The best monster I could come up with was a military coup d'Ztat, which every sane Nigerian at the time knew was rather farfetched, could never happen in Nigeria. But life and art had got so entangled that the publication of the novel and Nigeria's first military coup happened within two days of each other. Critics abroad called me a prophet. But some of my countrymen saw it differently. They saw my novel as proof of my complicity in the first coup. I was very lucky that Sunday morning. The drunken soldiers, after leaving Broadcasting House, went to a residence I had recently vacated. Meanwhile, I was able to take my wife and my two little children into hiding, from where I finally sent them to my home in Eastern Nigeria. A week or two later, unknown callers asked for me on the telephone in my hideout. My host denied my presence. I knew then it was time for me to leave.

My feeling towards Nigeria was of profound disappointment. Not because mobs were hunting down and killing in the most savage manner innocent civilians in many parts of Nigeria, but because the Federal Government sat back and let it happen. The final consequence of this failure of the state to fulfill its primary obligation to its citizens was the secession of Eastern Nigeria as a Republic of Biafra. The demise of Nigeria at that point was only averted by Britain's spirited diplomatic and military support of its model colony. It was Britain and the Soviet Union, which together crushed the upstart Biafran State. At the end of the 30-month war, Biafra was a vast smoldering rubble; the cost in human lives was a staggering two million souls, making it one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history.

I find it difficult to forgive Nigeria and my country men and women for the political nonchalance and cruelty that unleashed upon us these terrible events, which set us back a whole generation and robbed us of the chance clearly within our grasps to become a medium range developing nation in the 21st Century. My immediate response was to leave Nigeria at the end of the war having honourably, I hope, stayed around long enough to receive any retribution due to me for renouncing Nigeria for 30 months. Fortunately, the Federal Government proclaimed general amnesty and the only punishment I received was the general financial and emotional indemnity that war losers pay and some relatively minor harassment like the denial of passport.

I went abroad to New England, no irony intended, I went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and stayed four years, and then another year at the University of Connecticut. It was by far my longest exile ever from Nigeria and it gave me to reflect and to heal somewhat. Without setting out consciously to do so, I was redefining my relationship to Nigeria. I realised that I could not reject her but neither could it be business as usual. What was Nigeria to me?

Our 1960 national anthem, given to us as a parting gift was a British housewife in England, had called Nigeria 'our sovereign motherland' the Mother image. The current anthem, which changed that first one, was put together by a committee of Nigerian intellectuals, and in my view is actually worse than the first anthem. This second one invoked the Father image. So Mother image in the first one, Father image in the second one.

But it has occurred to me that Nigeria is neither my mother nor my father. Nigeria is a child, gifted enormously talented, prodigiously endowed and incredibly wayward. Being a Nigerian is abysmally frustrating and unbelievably exciting. I have said somewhere that in my next reincarnation, I want to come back as a Nigerian again. But I have also in a rather testy mood in a book called 'A Trouble with Nigeria' I dismissed Nigerian travel advertisements with the suggestion that only a tourist with an addiction to self flagellation pick Nigeria for a holiday. And I mean both. Nigeria needs help; Nigerians have their work cut out for them, to coax this unruly child along the path of useful creative development. We are the parents of Nigeria, not vice versa. A generation will come if we do our work patiently and well and given luck; a generation will come that will call Nigeria Father or Mother, but not yet.

Meanwhile, our present work is not entirely without its blessing and reward. This wayward child can show now and again great intimations of affection. I have seen this affection flow towards me at certain critical times. When I was in America after the Biafran war, an army officer who sat on the council of my university in Nigeria as representative of the Federal Military Government pressured, questioned why I was not back home. And finally, the university had to invite me to return. Now this army officer who campaigned for my return was not known to me in person. In fact he fought against people like me in the Biafran war and he was wounded in the fighting. He had every right to be bitter against me and people like me. I had never met him as I said, but he knew my work and was himself a poet.

More recently after a very serious motor accident that left me with serious injuries, I have witnessed another outflow of affection from Nigerians from every level. I am still totally dumbfounded by it. The hard words Nigeria and I have said to each other begin to look like words of anxious love not hate. Nigeria is a country where nobody can wake up in the morning and ask 'what can I do now?' Nigeria has work for everybody.
Thank you.

One thing is for sure. The lady is terrible!!!
1) She made a married man leave his family.
2) She cheats on him even after that
If it were that the man had already divorced his wife before he met her, it would have been a different thing. In this case she made him leave his family for her! The mere pain that the ex-wife would be feeling due to this is enough to put a spell on her.
I really think you should warn her seriously and if she does not change, ask the man to interrogate his maid and kids well when he returns from his journey so that he can find out for himself how low his wife has fallen . . . dating a 19 year-old.

Kaaz,
First and foremost there are many questions you need to answer on the forum if you must get the best advice. Question like "were you with her in the same room when she gets those calls" etc need to be clarified to know the extent of emotional bonding that has occurred between your wife and this guy.
For your wife to be comfortable enough to tell you that "He Calls @ his own convenient time . . . .not @ a time that is OK by her husband means he may have taken a high position in her heart.
Again did your wife read the love sms? did you confront her with it? There is a lot you need to clarify on the forum. You've kept silent for a while and it may not help.
For me, I really think she's not gone too deep with the guy, like sleeping with him but remember that sexual infidelity usually begins with emotional infidelity.

Again, telling her to tell the guy in front of you to top calling her is not the answer. You need to treat it from the root in such a way that on her own she will be able push the guy violently away even when you are miles away . . .like when you are in another country, not when you are in front of her. Of course she can go back and continue what she's doing.
Also, finally, i must tell you that the text was deep!