₦airaland Forum

Ugwuoke347:
To have a fruitful interaction with you will be a herculean task.
You speak as though you are not conversant with the political developments in Nigeria's history. For the past fifty years, Igbos have shown and proven beyond every strain and tone of doubt their readiness and willingness to embrace Nigeria.
Igbos have shown their total willingness
to put the War behind them and forge ahead. They have however seen with utter dismay and disappointment how the upholders and patrons of the Nigerian State have remained deeply stuck in the moods and psychology of the war time era. It is today more than clear to us that it is the firm belief of the feudalist upholders of the false federation of Nigeria that Igbos are to be tolerated only! For this reason, they strongly believe without any qualms of conscience that Nigeria's presidency is a "no-go area" for the Igbos.

I do not want to believe you are naive.
It is well over fifty years since the end of the war. Isn't it odd that you are lecturing the Igbo on how to build bridges and make efforts in order to be elected into the office of Nigeria's presidency. Don't you see how dishonest it looks. Pray, tell what were we doing for the past fifty years that we supported all kinds of regimes both military and civilian? We were destroying bridges right? So sacrifices are always demanded from us. And by your own logic, we should never come to expect it from others for whom we have made pronounced concessions for well over fifty years. So, it is not Atiku who should step down for Obi, it is Obi who was expected in your own estimation to step down for Atiku. And I ask you now: Upon what grounds was Obi supposed to have stepped down for Atiku? Is it upon the ground that Atiku is more qualified for the job or that he has better ideas for governance and is more intelligent?
So, after supporting others for more than fifty years, you and your likes are not ashamed to see the oddity in expecting that we step down and keep stepping down every time until a time when the feudalist upholders of the false federation of Nigeria get to feel we have stepped down enough and decide to gratuitously allow us a beggarly shot at their presidency.

We are done and dusted already with being part of Nigeria. Nigeria's deceptions, and high-handed treatment of those seeking justice for Biafra has solified our resolve to separate ourselves from the falsehood which the Nigerian State represents. We are going the whole hog to assert our own independence with every means at our disposal, and very firmly even.
You cannot be taller than us, and shorter than us at the same time. It is not possible. You will have to choose one.
And sincerely, things have gone past a point-of-no-return. Lives have been laid down. So much destruction and devastation has been brought upon our land because of our quest to seek out a new system for ourselves. We were never trying to take what isn't ours. We are only seeking to give ourselves a permanent guarantee of a secure and free society built upon the eternal principles of justice, truth and love.
I can beat my chest strongly and tell you that we are determined and completely resolved to restore Biafra to permanent statehood and permanent existence by every means possible and impossible; no matter how long it is going to take us!

mrblessed:
This is not the position of IPOB and it's the greatest albatross to the agitation. Nnamdi Kanu said he rejected such proposal from the government of Nigeria that included only five states in the southeast when he arrested in 2015; what makes you think he is willing to accept it now?
My thinking is that, the government of Nigeria is ready to grant a Biafra that would not include the south-south region.

maticar:
Monaco, although not completely surrounded by france

Morbeta11:
If Biafra breaks out today, in less than two months the middle belt will seek exit from Nigeria too and so will others.

Razgas:
not necessarily and not if people like me are involved

Razgas:
the population of igbos actually living in igboland is not up to 17 million. How do I know? Look at the 2022 voter register (not pvc collection) south east had 11.5 million.
That includes people like me living abroad currently and dead igbos. Plus foreigners living in the east that registered.
If every igbo person came back to the east from all over the world, we would still not be up to 25 million.
UK has the largest population of Nigerians outside Nigeria and it is still less than a million

jackcanfield:
Your point are valid but be kind to remove the military years as that can't be justifiable in the calculations .. I know Oga Obi stepping down for Oga Atiku might not look viable and very uncomfortable for me , but before the election, I didn't see Oga Obi having enough support in the North, and Nigeria election is not always about facts or figure, it is more of rub my back I rub yours. I am at least happy Oga Obi made appreciable progress and I am sure if you keep reaching out as a people while keeping no house in order with no divided tongues, you will get a seat at the table but with a proviso that you key into the Nigeria project accommodating all tongues and tribe , not aggregating all the resources and accolades to yourself.

Funflipper:
Is Monaco a country?

Ugwuoke347:
You are not entirely correct.
The position of IPOB is to have a Biafra confederacy between Igbos and other ethnic nations of the Niger Delta and the lower part of the Middle Belt as the first line of choice.
Where that is not possible, the ultimate line of choice is to have the Biafran State with boundaries coinciding with the natural boundaries of Igboland and Igbo territories which is made up of land of the Igbos and all the Igboid peoples of Southern Nigeria

So far, the position which IPOB has canvassed vigorously is the first position.

Today, simple wisdom as well as accumulated lessons in hindsight is pointing us strongly to the fact that the only feasible choice to make is to push for an Igbo only Biafra. It is an Igbo State of Biafra that we are going to have. We really do not have a choice any more in that respect. Our best interests shall be served the most in a homogeneous nation with common sociocultural bond animating and driving our zeal for intensified efforts at aggressive nation building and progressive strides in all the noble goals and higher pursuits of human civilization. We will never accept anything short of this. Any attempt to grab our land and territories away from us in the name of "South-South" shall be firmly rejected and strategically resisted.
We will never grow weary of making our case!



South-East is not comprehensively Igboland. It is a political creation of Nigeria. Igboland was recognized as "the Eboe territories" in most of the historical accounts and narratives documented on the trading expeditions of the Portuguese in West Africa. That was long before Nigeria was created.

The proposal made to Nnamdi Kanu by the evil government led by Mr Booharry was not an Igbo republic of Biafra. If it were so, he would have embraced it with joy and gladness. He was offered a made-in-Nigeria South-East state of Biafra. I want to believe the difference is clear enough to you. No sane Igbo man will accept to have a Biafran Nation with boundaries defined by that geopolitical zone which Nigeria calls the South-East. Igboland goes far beyond the South-East stretching as far as the fringe parts of Edo State, a great deal of Rivers State and reasonable swathes of land in Cross River State and Akwaibom States, and also the eastern border parts of Benue State.

If Nnamdi Kanu was offered the natural territories of the Igbo people, he would have congratulated himself and every one in Igboland for having obtained a beautiful ending to the Biafra story.
Nigeria hypothetically offered to have a false Biafra Nation come into being; the one where the South-East would be rebranded, baptized and christened "Republic of Biafra," a clever decoy aimed at scoring a useless point in the eyes of the international community. They did what they did knowing quite very well that Kanu was going to reject it in a heartbeat. They did it deliberately to create a symbolic reference point in history that they already accepted to let Biafra go but Igbos rejected it because of their lust for the oil-rich lands of the Niger Delta. This reference point is patently false, and mischievous. It was a game plan originating from Nigeria's long-standing political doctrine of distortion and perversion of truth; a state standing rule of crafts and artifice; powered by a psychology falsehood and false pretenses.

How can you steal my property and offer me half of what you stole from me in exchange for peace and reconciliation. Where on earth does that happen? Only in Nigeria, a land where logic is constantly made to stand on its head as a matter of course, and as a matter of norm.

Biafrans are no fools. We are no simpletons. No strain of lies and subterfuge, no amount devilry from Nigeria's propaganda mill will ever suffice to move us even as little as by a hair's breath into accepting to have a Biafra with boundaries delineated along the artificial lines of the South-East geopolitical zone. That will never happen. It is never in the place of Nigeria to define Igboland for us. There are records with ancient maps clearly showing the stretches and extents of the "Eboe territories." There shall be absolutely no controversy about it. The facts are very clear, crystal clear!

jackcanfield:
Your point are valid but be kind to remove the military years as that can't be justifiable in the calculations .. I know Oga Obi stepping down for Oga Atiku might not look viable and very uncomfortable for me , but before the election, I didn't see Oga Obi having enough support in the North, and Nigeria election is not always about facts or figure, it is more of rub my back I rub yours. I am at least happy Oga Obi made appreciable progress and I am sure if you keep reaching out as a people while keeping no house in order with no divided tongues, you will get a seat at the table but with a proviso that you key into the Nigeria project accommodating all tongues and tribe , not aggregating all the resources and accolades to yourself.

Ugwuoke347:
I like your spirit.
There shall be no conflict.
We will see to that.
Biafra and Nigeria or her surviving nations shall become friends and good neighbours with robust multilateral trading co-operation in place.
Intense efforts shall be made to promote co-operation and friendship.
That there was war does not mean we should remain foes forever.
We should bear in mind that we are primarily Black Africans. Our Blackness loads us with a sacred duty to strongly push for friendship and brotherhood among all Black African Nations.
I personally trust strongly that the right crop of men with the right attitude will take charge; men seasoned by natural wisdom, conciliatory politeness and deliberate diplomacy.
We must deradicalize our people so that they understand that we seek freedom from Nigeria, and not enmity.
The goal is to assert independence from the Nigerian State. We do not seek to become her eternal enemy.
An independent Biafra shall be a big plus to Nigeria and all her surviving states, nay; the whole of Black Africa. This is hinged on the fact that Biafra shall definitely do business with Nigeria and all the post-Nigeria states that will emerge from her. There shall be mutual relations, intense co-operation and robust exchanges. We are clearly geographically well-knitted and carefully positioned by nature to co-operate intensely with one another.
Enough of the bitterness and scare-mongering. We will definitely do mightily good as friends and good neighbours. We have all the capacity to do so. That is exactly what we are meant to do judging from all that has happened right from the dawn of the 1914 amalgamation till date.

Ugwuoke347:
How can I remove the military regimes?
It was a military regime that waged a genocidal war against us. The rest of the Nigerian federation supported that regime very staunchly despite the fact that it was a military regime. So what are you driving at? That our support for Nigeria's military regimes after the war could not be justified? Coming from the devastation of the war, we needed to use every channel available to prove to the people and the successive governments of Nigeria of the fact that we had become enthusiastically pan-Nigeria. We gave solid support to all the military regimes including that of General Abacha. In fact, we embraced Abacha very warmly so much so that NADECO never made an in-road into our lands. While the Yoruba intelligentsia which included Mr Tinubu was vigorously agitating against General Sani Abacha on the platform of the NADECO, we gave Abacha massive support. The solidarity was condensed and concentrated. We did all that to make it clear that coming from the ruins of the war we were resolved to never pit ourselves again in outright opposition against the Nigerian State and any government which happened to be in charge of her affairs. We shunned NADECO. In fact, we were victims of the pro-Abiola riots which happened in major cities of the West especially Lagos. For the first time after the War, many of our kith and kin had to run away from Lagos back to the East in search of safety.

Look, we have borne the heavy brunts of the madness of "One-Nigeria." We have known of and bitterly tasted enough quantums of Nigeria's innumerable feats of madness and outbursts of wickedness coming in different forms and guises throughout the trajectory of her sociopolitical existence right from 1945 when the first anti-Igbo riots were recorded in the Northern City of Jos, down to the Kano riots of 1953, then to the Pogrom of 1966 leading up to that unfortunate Genocidal War that lasted about three years, not to even mention the very numerous anti-Christian riots in the cities of the North claiming lives and property of many Igbos. There was also another Kano riots in 1991 it was caused by a protest by Muslims against Reinhardt Bonke, a popular German evangelist. There was yet another Kano riots in 1980 led by the Maitatsine sect. Then there was the Zango-Kataf violence in 1987. Many people were murdered in cold blood. We recall with sorrow the horrors of the pro-Sharia violence that swept across the Core North in the 2000 leading to a massacre of many Igbos and destruction of their means of livelihood. I personally know a man who returned home with just his skin. He came back with nothing. He lost his wife and children in the conflagration. He was a school proprietor. His beautiful school in Kaduna was burnt to ashes. Some of his students were killed. His entire family was brutally murdered. We also remember the riots in some parts of the North sparked off by a protest against the Miss World Beauty Pageantry. And so many others eruptions of violence in the Northern parts of Nigeria including the one attributed to a protest by Muslims against a journalist in far away Denmark who made a cartoon of the Holy Prophet of Islam. Our people were killed for something that happened in far away Denmark. Can you beat that? We have been killed, harassed, beaten, tortured, humiliated, hounded and hunted like wild beasts, dehumanized and cast away from real avenues of strategic decision-making. What exactly was Nigeria and Nigerians planning to make of us? To make us into eternal punching bags and whetting stone of Nigeria and all her forces of madness and wickedness including the wickedness of the terrorist Fulani Herdsmen who come all the way from Chad and Niger Republic to assist their cousins in Nigeria to conquer new territories for themselves through unconscionable acts of bloody violence and blood-chilling brutal cruelties against indigenous peoples.
Biafrans want to be finally rid of these ungodly connections. We want peace and progress for ourselves and our children. We want to build and have a society where we can take our destinies in our own hands and decide for ourselves how best to secure a great future for ourselves and our descendants. We reject the false federation of Nigeria with all our heart because it is a false entity. She is a concentration camp without physical walls! A nation which runs itself on the fuel of injustice and subjugation against us, and at the same time violently demanding unquestioning allegiance from us is completely unfit to have us as integral unit and component. We are not deluded.

GerogeI:
And if it is only Igbo areas, then our country shall be called Alaigbo not Biafra. Her people called Igbos.

Further why would we need to steal oil from Ijaws or Ibibios when our Anambra Basin is full of oil which the British avoided carefully knowing they sponsored and funded the civil war for 220 million pounds they invested in Ijaw land. They were afraid of investing in our lands. Imo Basin is full of natural gas. While the rest of the land between Anambra and Enugu is full of source rocks for shale gas, proof is the abundance of coal in Enugu and lignite in Anambra.
Ebonyi is the only state without oil, but they make up for it with every other mineral from cameroon volcanoes- limestone, granite, salt deposites, clay- very high quality refractory clay.

plaindealer:
If you give them Biafra today, it won't survive beyond 24 hours because I see different terrorist factions dividing and controlling the whole of Igbo land with bloodshed and deadly sit at home every day.

mdimefields:
Igboland is big enough to stand as a country. I mean from Agbor down to Nnsuka, to Isobo and then mapped to Ndoki, we can thrive as a separate nation. However, why not seek for regionalism, as it was before. I'm sure even the South West are committed to regionalism that will favor every party involve.

Ezeama400:
@ the bolded
.Igbos are not Muslims..

The bolded is reserved for particular group of people..

Meanwhile , no country on earth see IPOBS as terrorist except a failed country like Nigeria..

GerogeI:
An Idealization that is not possible and leads to no where except elites sharing oil earning. Igbo culture has no accomodation for any ideology that does not seek to achieve the best. We will alway strive for better, so mediocre life in the name of a table is not for us. We understand well since 1969 that this is the British design in Nigeria, a self limting aggregation and we want out at all cost.

Razgas:
Yes. Igboland and Israel are similar in that aspect. a lot of isreali diaspora that brought money back when it became independent developed the country faster than it would have otherwise

GerogeI:
You are wrong. About 30% of the population Adult are not even registered to vote. I know my two grandmothers are not. So many others. So move that your 11.5 M to 14 M Adults who can Vote.
Then start counting the Minors who are not on the register. Statistics says 40% for kids under 14 years. Thats another 11.2M. Making 22.2M. You have not counted those 15-18 years, so 27M is on track. Noting that 40 to 50% of igbos reside outside Igboland, multiply that figure by 2- 40-50M will be the Population of Igbos in Biafra. OfCourse Biafra goes well beyond Igboland, including Port Harcourt- minus Ijaw speaking parts, so nothing like being land locked.

colonelwealth:
Nice article by O.P.....however I have some suggestions or corrections.


Population should be around 35-43 million people
GDP nominal should be around $55 - $95 billion
PPP should be around $150-300 billion
Actual Landmass should be around 35km square.

AwkaFinest:
Fixed!

Ugwuoke347:
You are not entirely correct.
The position of IPOB is to have a Biafra confederacy between Igbos and other ethnic nations of the Niger Delta and the lower part of the Middle Belt as the first line of choice.
Where that is not possible, the ultimate line of choice is to have the Biafran State with boundaries coinciding with the natural boundaries of Igboland and Igbo territories which is made up of land of the Igbos and all the Igboid peoples of Southern Nigeria

So far, the position which IPOB has canvassed vigorously is the first position.

Today, simple wisdom as well as accumulated lessons in hindsight is pointing us strongly to the fact that the only feasible choice to make is to push for an Igbo only Biafra. It is an Igbo State of Biafra that we are going to have. We really do not have a choice any more in that respect. Our best interests shall be served the most in a homogeneous nation with common sociocultural bond animating and driving our zeal for intensified efforts at aggressive nation building and progressive strides in all the noble goals and higher pursuits of human civilization. We will never accept anything short of this. Any attempt to grab our land and territories away from us in the name of "South-South" shall be firmly rejected and strategically resisted.
We will never grow weary of making our case!



South-East is not comprehensively Igboland. It is a political creation of Nigeria. Igboland was recognized as "the Eboe territories" in most of the historical accounts and narratives documented on the trading expeditions of the Portuguese in West Africa. That was long before Nigeria was created.

The proposal made to Nnamdi Kanu by the evil government led by Mr Booharry was not an Igbo republic of Biafra. If it were so, he would have embraced it with joy and gladness. He was offered a made-in-Nigeria South-East state of Biafra. I want to believe the difference is clear enough to you. No sane Igbo man will accept to have a Biafran Nation with boundaries defined by that geopolitical zone which Nigeria calls the South-East. Igboland goes far beyond the South-East stretching as far as the fringe parts of Edo State, a great deal of Rivers State and reasonable swathes of land in Cross River State and Akwaibom States, and also the eastern border parts of Benue State.

If Nnamdi Kanu was offered the natural territories of the Igbo people, he would have congratulated himself and every one in Igboland for having obtained a beautiful ending to the Biafra story.
Nigeria hypothetically offered to have a false Biafra Nation come into being; the one where the South-East would be rebranded, baptized and christened "Republic of Biafra," a clever decoy aimed at scoring a useless point in the eyes of the international community. They did what they did knowing quite very well that Kanu was going to reject it in a heartbeat. They did it deliberately to create a symbolic reference point in history that they already accepted to let Biafra go but Igbos rejected it because of their lust for the oil-rich lands of the Niger Delta. This reference point is patently false, and mischievous. It was a game plan originating from Nigeria's long-standing political doctrine of distortion and perversion of truth; a state standing rule of crafts and artifice; powered by a psychology falsehood and false pretenses.

How can you steal my property and offer me half of what you stole from me in exchange for peace and reconciliation. Where on earth does that happen? Only in Nigeria, a land where logic is constantly made to stand on its head as a matter of course, and as a matter of norm.

Biafrans are no fools. We are no simpletons. No strain of lies and subterfuge, no amount devilry from Nigeria's propaganda mill will ever suffice to move us even as little as by a hair's breath into accepting to have a Biafra with boundaries delineated along the artificial lines of the South-East geopolitical zone. That will never happen. It is never in the place of Nigeria to define Igboland for us. There are records with ancient maps clearly showing the stretches and extents of the "Eboe territories." There shall be absolutely no controversy about it. The facts are very clear, crystal clear!

Razgas:
we defer in the bolded bro.
I will accept a south east only Biafra. My reasoning are;
1. It is better than nothing.
2. At 29,525km² it comprises 72% of Igboland's approximately 41000km² which is good enough.
3. Apart from Port Harcourt (which is ikwereland) the other places left behind do not really offer us any strategic importance but demanding for them will slow us down.
4. An independent south east will have its own passport, its a blank canvas of goodwill. We can have more countries to visit visa-free than Nigeria if we utilise it properly.
5. An independent SE will have military and local laws to tackle Fulani menace without interference from Nigeria.
6. I will sacrifice Asaba if in exchange, we can get assurances and assistance from Nigeria to keep rivers flowing into Biafra free and navigable.
7. It is better than nothing again..we can get those lost territories back over time like Cameroon got south Cameroon back.

TemplarLandry:
Funny. What concerns embittered Biaffrans with International ethics?? They will enslave South-south and discriminate against them. They even see their fellow Abakaliki people as inferior.

Razgas:
if south Africa has issues with Eswatini and lobbies Mozambique to act against them, do you think Mozambique will refuse?
When Nigeria had issues with Biafra in 1967 and asked Cameroon to blockade Biafra, did Cameroon refuse? Even though France supported Biafra and Southern Cameroon used to be part of Biafra.
So yes, Eswatini is inside South Africa....in a manner of speaking

AwkaFinest:
Take the correction and move on. Eswatini aka Swaziland is not totally inside SA as you claim.

You think Mozambique will just bow to SA wishes just like that? Ask yourself why does MOZ prefer dealing with EAC instead of SAFA that they are a member?

Ugwuoke347:
It shall be Biafra. And Biafra it shall remain. We are not going to change the name. Biafra is the state. Igbo is the people. It serves a higher purpose to retain the name Biafra which has earned a notable place in world history. So many works have been written on the Biafra War; a whole body of literatures have been churned out by both African and Western writers on the Biafra War which now already constitutes a separate course of research in the study of wars and political crisis in post-colonial Africa. There is a body of water known all over the world by sea men as "the Bight of Biafra." It is very rich in history. We do not want to throw away all that. Biafra is a unique brand; a brand that speaks volumes for itself. We must uphold it and hold it out as our sacred identity. We must be broad-minded enough to transcend the primordial identities of nature and ascend to higher intuitions and higher levels of contemplations of ideals which are not ready-made in our natural reality. Nature has made us Igbos, let us happily transcend our Igboness, and by ourselves proudly make ourselves Biafrans as our own unique way of demonstrating our advancement in sociopolitical engineering in expression of that useful creativity which is naturally inherent in us as a raw gift of nature. We become what we decide to become. God has given us that charge. We should be unfolding triumphantly, appropriating, assimilating and integrating into our existence every concepts and constructs; notions and thoughts; impressions and images; marks and character; designations and epithets which rightly speak the truth about us and our evolution as a people.
We are Biafrans by trademark. We are Igbos by forename. Biafra is the surname. Igbo is the first name. We are Biafrans by choice. It is nature which has made us Igbos. We will utilize our Igboness to give vent to and fervently dramatize, proudly affirm and intensely register our Biafran identity before the eyes and reckoning of the peoples of the world. Igbo is what we are; Biafra is our tool of collective self expression. Igbo is who we are; Biafra is the beautiful uniform by which we are known.

Razgas:
There is nothing like correction. I posted the map and I can see where Eswatini is. But I know that the South Africans have enough soft power over Mozambique to make things difficult for Eswatini.
Any way, there is a precedence to a country being inside a country

Razgas:
there are at least 1 million people on that register who are dead. 1 million people who are not igbo, 2 million people who are registered to vote in the east but live outside the east.
But another way of knowing population is by comparing historic figures and looking at trends.
The entire eastern region was 6.5 million in 1953 when British did census. The figure was similar to Ghana and Malaysia's population at the time.
Malaysia is currently 30 million. Ghana is 27 million. But in your opinion, only 60% of the Eastern region is 40-50 million? Lol bruh 🤣