₦airaland Forum

amingafar:
northerners are tired of hearing about this senseless war move on.

Have the Jews forgotten about the holocaust?

Have the Armenians forgotten about the Armenian genocide?

Have the Tutsi forgotten about the genocide in Rwanda?

Have Black Americans forgotten about the horrors of slavery?

Biafra: The Forgotten Genocide, Written By Osita Ebiem

New York [RR] New York—in the past fifty years Africa, just like other parts of the world has experienced many social and political upheavals of earth-shaking magnitude.  Of all the wars that have happened within this period both in Africa and elsewhere none has had so much devastating and of a far-reaching effect in terms of human death tolls and collateral property damage like the Biafra War. Yet in spite of this fact it is about the least remembered and talked of wars of recent history.  Why?

Forty years have gone by since the so-called end of the war that produced the worst haunting war pictures of all time; pictures of dead and dying children and their mothers. And despite the fact that these gory pictures of children with oversized heads, bloated stomachs grotesquely distending from nightmarish skeletal frames, cannot possibly be erased from the mind of anybody who has seen them, nobody seems to remember again. These sepulchral pictures have this quality of burning effect that gets them permanently etched into the mental plate of the person who looks at them. So the question is has the world really forgotten or it is just suppressing the memory with all the strength which it could use in facing them? Can a present successfully erase the past and expect a bright and glorious future? The truth is that the future must always be an inextricable part of the past. And every anticipated successes or failures of tomorrow will always be tied up with what we did or did not do and even how we did it yesterday. Our past is the shadow of our future and try all we can we can never escape this specter as we journey toward the light of a future.

Nigeria of Yakubu Gowon and Britain of Harold Wilson from 1966 on set out to completely rid Nigeria of Biafrans for daring to assert that they had a right to life after they were persecuted and first massacred in their hundreds of thousands all across Nigeria. The method these two men employed was to use every means possible to exterminate and cleanse Nigeria of all traces of Igbo and all Easterners once and for all.

So on the 15th of January 1970 when Biafra surrendered to Nigeria, there was no definite conclusion or resolution of the conflict. Nigerian government’s announced position was that there was no victor or a vanquished side. But the truth is that nothing could be more deceitful than that. On the Biafran side they asked for nothing and got nothing, it was very timid, clumsy and hasty, a shortsighted and an unrealistic way of ending such a colossal devastation. On the Biafran side it was naïve and like under duress it was a timid patchwork of a defeated people anxious to get it over with without thinking of the implications of its effect on the future generations of their people. How to bury their dead or concretely prevent a future occurrence was never properly and comprehensively addressed by either side. They should have done better and it must be addressed no matter how long it has taken. On the Nigerian side it was such a calculated deceit and a clever way of hiding from the world their actual intentions. Because they were still anxious to complete the “Final Solution”, the Machiavellian style, on the Biafrans, they still wanted to make sure that the Biafrans will never again attempt any kind of self-assertion. So the project continued unabated after the 15th of January but now the rest of the world had been successfully hoodwinked, they would see nothing and say nothing since now it had to be, what does the Nigerian government policy say, instead of what actually went on and what is still going on in Biafra Land till this date.

[b]The British government under Wilson lobbied and convinced the rest of the world that the Biafrans were “worthless” and deserved nothing less than extermination. They backed up these claims by supplying Nigeria with war tacticians, combat personnel, weapons of mass destruction, mortars, tanks, war planes, chemical weapons, etc. The Biafrans were defenseless and it would have been easy for the combined forces of Nigeria and Britain to accomplish the mission but Wilson wanted some form of legitimacy to assuage his frayed conscience, he invited others to join. They convinced the others that there will be lots of gains; much resource to fuel their domestic economies and feed fat their very “valuable” citizens at the expense of the extermination of the “worthless” Biafrans.  So the Russians came, the East Germans came, the Egyptians came. They came with men and arms and supplies. They came to test the effectiveness of their latest weapons on the “worthless” Biafrans who were fit only for annihilation.[/b]

The United States of Lyndon Johnson had their head in the sand as the ostrich and claimed neutrality and noticed nothing. (Yet at the so-called end of the war United States never remained neutral and pretended that there was no oil to be exploited. That would have been good enough. But no they are all in the forefront with all their big time harvesters mopping up both the oil and the blood of the 3.1 million Igbo/Biafrans and having a good time). U Thant’s United Nations were roundly incompetent and did not seem to know the difference between an international conflict and an internal national conflict. The war was between two sovereign states, Republic of Biafra and Republic of Nigeria but U Thant and his United Nations adjudged it an internal matter and let 3.1 million people be massacred and their homeland pillaged. The Organization of African Unity which now goes by African Union was as it still is an Arabs’ affair so it was only short of an open declaration of support with materials and arms supply to their Fulani brothers of Nigeria, similar to what is going on in Sudan’s Khartoum today.

(But we need to commend the efforts of private citizens of United States and a few other nations who were bold enough to believe otherwise because they heard the news, read the papers, saw the pictures, knew the truth and had their conscience. They believed in their private capacities that the Biafrans could worth something better than extermination. So as Red Cross personnel, Caritas International of the Vatican, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) of France, World Council of Churches, Irish Church organizations, and other helping hands, came to help).  The Biafrans will never forget.

Ever since the so-called end of the war, Nigeria as a country has remained a genocide and terrorist country both inside and outside its borders. The Christmas day of 2009 attempted terrorist attack on the Detroit bound Northwest Airlines of flight 253 is just an export sample from the sinister terror factories of the Nigerian state. When the Nigerian state unleashed the horrible genocide against the Biafrans, the United States and the majority part of the world pretended that nothing was going on or at best it was happening far away and should be none of their business as it was an internal affairs of another “sovereign state”. Very well, but they forgot that we are living in a one-world society and what that means is that we should show concern when a part is being bullied. When we do not, the tendency is always that it will spill over and sometimes touch those who were very far away from the original place of birth of the monster. Nigeria like all other failed states has become a breeding ground for terrorists of all shapes and colors but what is worse about its own case is that it is state sponsored unlike in the other places. In other places the states at least overtly distance themselves from the terror organizations, here the state sponsors and equips the terror outfits.

Nothing emboldens like success, so with their near-success at annihilating the Biafran people with Britain and many others cheering them along, Nigerian state has now come to believe they can confidently take on the world and terrorize everybody everywhere. While the world is harvesting the blood-oil from the Niger Delta/Biafra region to energize their domestic economies and provide the good life for their citizens to the total devastation of the indigenous peoples of Biafra let them also be ready to take the terror exports from the Nigerian Arab North.  When the Arab North of Nigeria with Wilson’s Britain, Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, Gamal Nasser’s Egypt ganged up and nearly exterminated the entire Igbo/Biafran race, it was a non-issue. But today the Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of the 25 December 2009 was born and raised in Nigeria, schooled and trained in Britain and Yemen and was recruited by the al Qaeda terror group in Nigeria and was headed for the US to explode his terror devise. That is how it is today, one-world society, inter-connected. So it teaches us that no one can anymore afford to ignore the murder and mistreatment of another no matter how remote and far removed it might be from where you are, it might come back to haunt us some day. The world of today cannot afford to forget the Biafran genocide because the victims can never forget and some day maybe very soon they will demand for justice in a violent manner and no force can stop the move of the second coming of the Republic of Biafra. The wound is too deep to be glossed over and the pain is eternal and too incessant to be wished away. If the world is willing they can do the right thing now. They can cub this impending catastrophe before it begins because it will begin. Injustice cannot be bottled up and hidden away forever.

“Genocide” as defined in Article II of the United Nations convention “is a crime of intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial and religious group, in whole or in part”. With all the copious evidences that are available to the United Nations and other organizations on the Biafran catastrophe can anyone sincerely argue that the Biafran genocide does not fall within this definition. Or is it that by virtue of color, race, religion, geography or politics the definition has acquired some sort of discriminatory application. The time is now for the deafening silence to this question to end. Let the world listen, let them remember, if they had forgotten, the victims with this overweighing burden have not and can never forget.

Any attempt at forgetting is delusional and a postponement of the evil day. Millions of lives have been lost in the most gruesome manner and they died for just one reason – an independent sovereign homeland. A time comes when men and women are called to give account of what they did or did not do and that time is now. And we need to be reminded that the days of an irresponsible world have since passed, the world of today thinks differently. The world of today is more responsible and accountable and wants to do the right thing. It wants to right the wrongs of yesterday’s world. And we believe it will do the right thing now in the case of the genocide in Biafra.

For anyone who still doubts what genocide means please follow this link, check it out with a number of other pictures of the Biafra war. Cut and paste if the link does not work. http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=biafran+war+pictures&rlz=1R2GGLL_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=E6VwTPaeKIP58AbHuJibDQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCYQsAQwAA&biw=1419&bih=633

What you see in these pictures are the way millions and millions of Biafran children, women and men died. They died a slow and painful agonizing death. For the others who were lucky, they were tortured to death in a matter of a few days, hours and minutes. And the luckiest ones were those massacred and bombed into smithereens in a matter of seconds.

Some other lucky ones dug their own graves and were buried alive in them. They were skinned alive with broken bottles and left to die slowly. They were thrown into wells till the deep wells were filled then stones cast over the mouths. They were despoiled and beheaded with knives and machetes.

They were disemboweled and their unborn babies smashed to the ground and the mothers killed. They were fed with feces and urines and mauled down, their heads were spiked and their unburied bodies left to rot and feed the animals and birds of the air. Now, how can anyone forget?

~Bluetooth:
Ibo was enemy of nigeria and he had to do what he deemed fit to protect the sovereignity of the nigerian-state.you guys should blame ojukwu who ran away dressed up in skirt and spaghetti top.hmm,gallant soldier indeed !

My nemesis, I thought you were steering clear of topics such as these?

Why would anyone want to protect the sovereignty of the Nigerian State? You all already hate the Igbo so why would you want us to stay in the union?

alj harem:
do i look like a cattle rearer to u

why can u people admit the truth for ones in your bloody lifes INYAMIRIAS WHY

You know Northerners hate Awolowo with a passion as well Mr. Closet Yoruba.

Beaf:
I didn't even mention east. I am from Delta state which is not in the east. Wetin east do you?
You will generally find that Awo was loathed for intense tribalism everywhere outside Yoruba land.

Beaf you spoke the truth on this issue.

Onlytruth:
A devil spoke about the immorality of fighting against a seceding Eastern region.
Guess what he did when the war started, we schemed to kill innocent children by starving them to death.

Combatant war casuality in Biafra was about 110,000 Biafran soldiers. On the Nigerian side it was over 250,000 Nigerian soldiers dead.

In Biafran side nearly 2 million children, old people and women STARVED TO DEATH.

This boy actually wants us to believe that those people posting on threads are actually "northerners." I find it funny.

Northerners do not concern themselves with southern squabble. They are more concerned with GEJ right now.

I hope he rots in hell that SOB. . .

The Final Legacy of Obafemi Awolowo


Nigeria had launched a blockade on Biafra and Chief Obafemi Awolowo declared "All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don't see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight us harder" (Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Financial Times London, 6/26/1969; Daily Telegraph, 6/27/69). Awolowo was the Vice Chairman of the Federal Military Executive Council of the Nigerian state when he made this statement.

Obafemi Awolowo fanatically championed Nigeria's notorious[b] "Starvation as a legitimate weapon/quick kill" war strategy on Biafra, which resulted in a huge percent of the total Biafran casualty, especially the death of children in their millions.[/b]

Obafemi Awolowo's legacy remains one of those top Nigerian government officials (following in the footstep of Nazi Adolf Hitler), which stated categorically as official Nigeria government policy that starvation is a legitimate instrument of warfare. Nigeria committed the worst genocide since World War II, second only to the Jewish holocaust in its brutality, horror, inhumanity, and brazen barbarism.

It was the "post-war" policies of Awolowo that inflicted the most lasting pain during the time, on those who managed to survive his starvation policy. After Nigeria's genocidal war on Biafra supposed to have ended,the Biafran currency, which was the only legal tender of the survivors of the Biafran siege, was overnight declared worthless  Obafemi Awolowo [Commissioner of Finance], instituted a Nigerian Government policy that confiscated Biafran accounts and gave the Biafrans 20 pounds in exchange for whatever money they had (regardless of balance plus interest) to start life anew on their own. This was deliberate financial/economic strangulation.

The "Indigenisation Decree" which followed soon after the arbitrary award of 20 Pounds  completed the routing of Igbo/Biafrans from the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy.In that indigenization process, penury did not allow Igbo (and other occupied Biafrans) to participate as the collective wealth of Nigeria was handed out only to those who had the cash in hand.Only two years after the war supposed to have ended, when Igbo (Biafrans) were still in their economic doldrums, Chief Obafemi Awolowo contrived to auction off the Nigerian economy to the "indigenes" via the Enterprises Promotion Decree 1974, so-called.

The timing of the policy ensured the effective exclusion of Igbo (Biafrans) from ownership in Nigeria's industrial sector, as they lacked the financial muscle to participate. As "the vanquished" were dispossessed of what they had, "the victors" were deliberately empowered through the banks to purchase the Nigerian "national"[illusion ary that is] patrimony. It could be said that Chief Awolowo was not only a proven bedfellow of the Nigerian military establishment, but he also sanctioned the tacit gang-up by the North and West to use authoritarian military rule to keep the occupied Biafrans marginalized for the next decades.

Worse, to add insult to injury on Biafrans, Awolowo's portrait is on the Nigerian Naira, and the people of former Eastern Region of Nigeria, especially the Igbo (Biafrans) were supposed to celebrate Awolowo as a National hero. Whose Nation? Awolowo is MONUMENTAL for Economic/Financial strangualtion of Igbo (Biafrans), yet he is celebrated on the Nigerian Naira. Why not put him on the 20 Naira note?

jason12345:
abegi jor! don't start today with this your conspiracy theory!

Abagworo and now Afam4eva. . .

Hush up "Itsekiri" man. . .

She said she speaks Urhobo on CNN. . . Not Igbo. . . lol

And she did say she is from Warri.

We Igbos are about to start claiming Warri. lol

Mods are taking an heavy hand to posters.

However, I have noticed more Igbos are being banned. Hmmmmmm

I hope the conflict doesn't spread.

It only takes one ember to ignite oil and this ember can engulf the entire region.

Don't people see the irony. A native son is telling the army to attack his brethren.

Militants are fighting back. This is crazy!

Ileke-IdI:
Very ironic, because a typical Christian believes [b]you [/b]are going to hell, because of your sexuality. 

That is true,

Chineke you are well endowed! God has bless u o!

Oh my mistake. I really need to watch very closely.