₦airaland Forum

Ericaikince:
Who cares

enemyofprogress:
no wonder I always see a very big wound in between Ngosi's legs

Dumaknesset:
WS only stated obvious, Biafran is based on a brash and deadly foundation. It is a concept steep ed in blood, needless deaths on both side of the divide.Biafra has been further denatured and sullied with opportunistic upstart and mentally marauded morons. Biafra is concept and philosophy screwed up to self-stultify. Igbo's can give a pristine version of Biafra, one created with essentials replete with respect for others, respect for the rule of law, other dissenting views with rendition of cerebral superior arguments not lumpen laden travesty of intelligence been propagated by dim witted iPods. Are there no deep and robust intellectuals in Igbo nation that can take the gauntlet.

NwaAmaikpe:



Point of correction Prof,
It's not Biafra has not been defeated

But

Biafra can not be defeated.

This ideology is ingrained in the mind and souls of toddlers and babies unborn,
The cry for liberation echoes from the anthills of Nsugbe to the mountains of Ngwo,
The cry of injustice is heard from the lakes of Oguta to the beaches of Buguma.

Never again,
Never again shall we see the Hausa-Fulani and call him brother.
We are not genetically identical
We are not psychologically identical
We are not spiritually identical
Those are no brothers of ours,
At best, they are neighbors but not our brothers

Our brothers don't mate with animals
Our brothers don't marry underage girls
A neighbor is not a brother.

Our lands are ravaged,
Our resources are exploited,
Our tomorrow is raped,
Our hands are tied,
Our mouths are gagged
They've made us believe all we can do is mumur
We can't shout or fight because we are powerless.
But our resolve is unflinching.

One day,
The sun will rise again,
Power will return to the people

Viva Biafra.

Paulpaulpaul:
It's either you are too young to know the meaning of war or you are an old simpleton. Your type will be shouting MY MUMMY when war starts or start wearing skirt like a loose who.re just to escape to Niger.



War indeed


Quote me and get

ipob1:
what is the need of all these redundant grammer? Nd yet ended up without making any articulat point, better go see ur doc bf it gets out of hand

Artorius:
It's time to have an intelligent, enlightened idea of Biafra and its consequences.

It's a shame that many of the comments here do not understand a single thing prof. Soyinka says SMH

NwaAmaikpe:



Point of correction Prof,
It's not Biafra has not been defeated

But

Biafra can not be defeated.

This ideology is ingrained in the mind and souls of toddlers and babies unborn,
The cry for liberation echoes from the anthills of Nsugbe to the mountains of Ngwo,
The cry of injustice is heard from the lakes of Oguta to the beaches of Buguma.

Never again,
Never again shall we see the Hausa-Fulani and call him brother.
We are not genetically identical
We are not psychologically identical
We are not spiritually identical
Those are no brothers of ours,
At best, they are neighbors but not our brothers

Our brothers don't mate with animals
Our brothers don't marry underage girls
A neighbor is not a brother.

Our lands are ravaged,
Our resources are exploited,
Our tomorrow is raped,
Our hands are tied,
Our mouths are gagged
They've made us believe all we can do is mumur
We can't shout or fight because we are powerless.
But our resolve is unflinching.

One day,
The sun will rise again,
Power will return to the people

Viva Biafra.

Cooly100:
On July 6, 1967, civil war broke out in Nigeria between the country’s military and the forces of Biafra, an independent republic proclaimed by ex-Nigerian military officer Odumegwu Ojukwu on May 30 of that year. The war killed more than 1 million people, many of whom died from starvation. It ended in January 1970 with the reintegration of Biafra into Nigeria. Malnutrition, Red Cross, kwashiorkor, relief flights, genocide, the Uli airstrip used by Biafran planes to elude the Nigerian blockade, mercenaries, the Aburi accord that broke down and led to war—these are some of the memory triggers of the Nigerian civil war of secession that we would like to re-assign.


Over a million lives perished—a shameful proportion of them children—mostly through starvation and aerial bombardment. The Nigerian federal government, committed to the doctrine of oneness, had boasted that the conflict would last no longer than three weeks of “police action.” We had learnt much from the politics of other nations, but apparently not from history; the war lasted more than two years. Noble Laureate, Prof Wole Soyika Tormented by the image of a herd of human lemmings rushing to their doom, as a young writer, I made the “treasonable” statement warning that the secessionist state, Biafra, could never be defeated. The simplistic rendition of that conviction in most minds—certainly in the minds of the then-ruling military and its elite support—was that this applied merely to the physical field of combat. Thus it was regarded as a psychological offensive against the federal side, an attempt to demoralize its soldiers while boosting the war spirit of the enemy. That “enemy” had also boasted that no force in black Africa could defeat them. My visit to the Biafran enclave in October 1966 resulted in arrest and detention.

During interrogation, I insisted that my statement was meant as a counter to the surge of emotive nationalism and a slavish sanctification of colonial boundaries. Biafra was therefore an expression of that rejection and its replacement with a people’s self-constitutive rights. This specific challenge owed its genesis to memory at its rawest, the memory of ethnic cleansing, whose remedy could not be sought rationally in a campaign of subjugation against an already traumatized community. One question, rhetorical in tone, stuck in my mind for long afterwards. It went thus: “Why should you take it on yourself to make such a statement? Is it because you’re a writer? Who are you to take a contrary stance to the government?” I replied to myself that I had learned to listen. The young man countered that he was on the side of history, and Biafra would be crushed. Not quite, as it turned out.

The Biafrans were indeed defeated on the battlefield, but crushed? Today, most Nigerians know better. Biafra has not been defeated. If anyone was left in any doubt about this, the last work of my late colleague, Chinua Achebe’s There Was A Country, has left us re-thinking. New generation writers, born long after that brutal war, have inherited and continue to propagate the Biafran doctrine, an article of faith among the Igbo populace, even among those who pay lip-service to a united nation. Millions remain sworn to uphold it. Many have died at the hands of the police and the military as succeeding guardians of that legacy troop out to reclaim it in defiant manifestations. Amnesty International estimated that at least 150 pro-Biafra activists have been killed since August 2015. Some of their leaders, including the director of their official mouthpiece, Radio Biafra, remain on trial for alleged subversion and treason. Others have gone underground. The war is not over, only the tactics have changed. One could claim that a project of internal secession is unfolding, one that skirts the peripheries of Nigerian laws, testing what they permit, and daring what they do not.


As for the victorious side, analysts continue to cite the lingering consequences of the war of secession among the main causes of the nation’s instability, alongside contemporary factors such as mismanagement of petroleum resources, corruption, visionless leadership, etc. Today, secession simmers openly, and is moving steadily beyond rhetoric. It has already taken on a dangerous complement—ejection. A number of combative youth organizations in the northern part of Nigeria recently called for the expulsion of the Igbo from their lands for daring once again to talk about secession. Mainstream leaders have disowned them, but some support has been voiced by individuals within the same adult cadre, including its intelligentsia. Debate is intense, often acrimonious. Sadly however, one is left with a feeling that most participants in this discourse shy away from a fundamental component of nation being, one that transcends the Biafran will to corporate existence. That principle virtually gasps for air under the wishfully terminal mantra that goes:

“The unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable.” I have never understood how this is supposed to differ from the dogma of certain religious strains that declare conversion from faith to be an act of apostasy, punishable by death. Nationality, like religion, is only another construct into which one is either born, or acquires by accident or indoctrination. Those who insist on the divine right of nation over a people’s choice seem unaware that they box themselves into the same doctrinaire mould of mere habit, just like religion. In the Nigerian instance, however, the matter is even more troubling. Since the absolutists of nation indivisibility are not ignorant of the histories of other nations and are immersed daily under evidence of the assertive factor of negotiation—be it in the language of arms and violence or the conference table—since they know full well that this process straddles pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial histories, such speakers unconsciously imply that Africans are sub-citizens of the real world and are not entitled to make their own choices, even in this modern age. This smacks of an inferiority complex, if not of a slavish indoctrination, when we additionally consider how today’s Africa came to be, a land mass of constitutive units that were largely determined by alien interests, and thus, hold possibilities of fatal flaws.


Also requiring contestation is the implicit equation of supreme sacrifice with supreme entitlement: Those who say, “We have shed our blood for Nigerian unity, and will not stand by and watch it dismantled.” My observation is that in civil warfare—indeed in most kinds of warfare—civilians pay the higher price in lives, possessions and dignity. We need therefore to eliminate the distracting lament of professionals of violence and confront, in its own right, the issue of the collective volition of any human grouping. This leaves us with the other line of approach, the line of frankly subjective or reasoned, pragmatic preferences. It is a positioning that admits, quite simply, I am a creature of habit and prefer things as they are. Or: I like to be a big frog in a small pond, and allied determinants. Such individual and collective preferences for nation validation offer sincere basis for negotiation and resolution. Once conceded, we proceed to invoke the positives of cohabitation that render fragmentation mostly adventurist and potentially destructive. Habit is a great motivator, but it should not be permitted to transform itself into categorical controls that make any existing condition “non-negotiable.”

Should Biafra stay in, or opt out of Nigeria? That is the latent question. Even after years of turbulent co-tenancy, it seems unreal to conceive of a Nigeria without Biafra. My preference for “in” goes beyond objective assessment of economic, cultural and social advantages for Biafra and the rest of us....


Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/07/biafra-has-not-been-defeated-wole-soyinka/

cumbak60:
What about the bigger and fresh wound in between Folake's leg?

Koolking:
Well written, Prof

My preference for 'in' goes beyond ethnic and tribal differences, it's more of nationalistic oneness of purpose. We can achieve more than we can imagine with our varieties if we agree to work together as Nigerians.

Am certain, the crop of despicable leaders we have in Nigeria and among the seeming Biafran elements can never guarantee respite and succour in the much dreamt Biafran state.

Biafra agitation is a passing phase. Forerunners come and go. Nigeria will stand at the end of the day.

Long live Nigeria

Peace!

omohayek:
Are you incapable of basic reading comprehension, totally ignorant of history, insane, or a combination of all three? This man has just offered the most eloquent defense of pro-Biafran agitation to be made in recent Nigerian history, and his is the most prominent voice to step forward to do so, with no living Igbo intellectuals of similar stature having done the same; he actually went to prison in defense of Biafran independence, which is more than you can claim to have done! How dare you insult the man after all that, and who are the 40 other imbeciles who have given your ridiculous statements "likes"?

Abusive ignoramuses like you are your own worst enemies, abusing even those who stick their necks out to support you, only to turn around and whine endlessly about how "everybody" hates you while calling the very people you drove away "backstabbers".

obikirinoni:
Gen. Effiong the alleged first Vice President and the second President of the now defunct Republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970, has said that Nigeria should ” Treat the surrendering Biafrans well or risk their children rising again”

Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/07/treat-the-surrendering-biafrans-well-or-risk-their-children-rising-gen-effiong826855/

Mcowubaba:
This is what many people have failed to understand.

It's not even forefathers, what the did to our Fathers...
My father was affected, forefathers is farfetched.
Some wounds can't easily heal, impossible.

Up till today, African Americans and blacks in USA and other western countries still scorn and remind white people of slave trade and their human right abuses on Blacks.
My white friends usually complain that the had nothing to do with this, it was their ancestors, but the don't understand that such events can't just be wished away.
The must live with it.

myhotbrain:
Most of these IPOB members are stark illiterates... At the end of his epistle, Wole Soyinka clearly stated his preference for Nigeria's Unity by actually conceding to rational reasoning of the great implications of IPOB's wishes.

Prof. Soyinka, sir with all due respect, these current IPOB agitators are mostly simpletons, who lacks the ability to think critically of the pros and cons of their actions.

If my last statement were to be true, then you, our erudite professor has also failed in your primary obligation as teacher, a scholar and an activist cum social crusader! There is no doubt that the greatest affliction on the youths of this nation is the miseducation, and rot in the educational system. Not only were you reputed to have been the co-founder of confraternities in Tertiary Institutions, you have not a, so done enough in your unique capacity as a scholar of repute, to arrest the ugly situation by, exposing your colleques or even an open campaign against them.

If most of Nigerian youths are well educated all roundly, our society, in general, would have been better for it and we would have been saved from this unnecessary bickering and threat of doom.

Now, sir if you wish prosperity to judge you aright, please dont add fuel to fire: its time you come down from your high horse and boldly and frankly inform the secessionist in plain and clear understandable grammar: IPOB's dont campaign for secession again. It will be painful and destructive and remotely possible to achieve even a semblance of Biafra, if at all.

I rest my case. For now, at least!

modik:
You can never win 21st century war with 20th century tactics .

The tactics have changed.

Sadly, you did not read that piece as penned by Prof.



God bless NK

God bless lovers of freedom

God bless lovers of equity, fairness, fair play, justice and peace.

God bless Biafra.

Roland17:
Up until now, I have remained silent about IPOB and Biafra issues but your post resurrected my true feelings. Those who were not personally affected have absolutely no idea.

While i was not born during the war, my father lost his mother during the war, he recounts how she died from a bomb dropped inside "Afu Umuohiagu" on a market day. he tells stories of how he lost numerous family members on that day, he recounts the mass burial and the sight of "white" red cross missionaries waving white flags hoping the bombers stop. The effects of the bomb dropped on that day would have been more devastating save for the "white missionaries" and people wonder why catholism holds a strong ground in IGBOLAND.

Me and my siblings were denied the experience of a paternal grandmother because of that day, he remembers how she was charred afterwards. These are lingering memories that never die, and you want to convince him and his brothers that everything is fine and life should just move on?

I am not an IPOB apologist, neither have i aligned my thoughts with the quest for Biafra, however, those ridiculing the disdain against Nigeria by igbo's have no understanding about their personal story. I hold dual citizenship and American history tells more about the civil war than history classes in Nigeria, it is that bad.

I remain a proud IGBO man.

RIP Grandma, even though we never met.

This is what many people don't understand, people like Mynd44 nd his tribesmen, up till today still says/believes Igbos are suffering from persecution complex, I just laugh.
Some Commenters, call Igbo people cry babies, or Oliver twist, many say we are hate-filled, I guess the are loved filled.
Hypocrites
Because their people weren't wiped out from earth.
It's always convenient for people to oppose and speak big English Grammer in issues that are not really valuable to them.

The will analyze it to suit their own ideologies and political affiliation.

As I earlier mentioned, just like you, I'm not an IPOB member, neither do I subscribe to all the ideologies of Nnamdi Kanu - but anyone downplaying the feelings of an average Igbo man on Biafra is insane and ignorant.

My father lost almost his entire family, same with many others, the useless Nigerian Army killed women and children, the scars of the wars are still visible in many Families today.
Biafra is not what you just wish away, or you just Press a button everything about Biafra will disappear .
It can't work like that
It's in our hearts and souls.

Black Americans in USA till today still play the Race card and remind Caucasian/Whites that the humiliated them and made them slaves in ancient Times. These events happened many years ago ahead of Biafra war, but the haven't forgotten, some haven't even forgiven the whites..
And some Lunatics just think, Igbos will be so happy with Nigeria for all the genocide. Nigerian army left Biafra soliders and started attacking women and children.
Rick Ross said "God forgive, I don't"

myhotbrain:
Most of these IPOB members are stark illiterates... At the end of his epistle, Wole Soyinka clearly stated his preference for Nigeria's Unity by actually conceding to rational reasoning of the great implications of IPOB's wishes.

Prof. Soyinka, sir with all due respect, these current IPOB agitators are mostly simpletons, who lacks the ability to think critically of the pros and cons of their actions.

If my last statement were to be true, then you, our erudite professor has also failed in your primary obligation as teacher, a scholar and an activist cum social crusader! There is no doubt that the greatest affliction on the youths of this nation is the miseducation, and rot in the educational system. Not only were you reputed to have been the co-founder of confraternities in Tertiary Institutions, you have not a, so done enough in your unique capacity as a scholar of repute, to arrest the ugly situation by, exposing your colleques or even an open campaign against them.

If most of Nigerian youths are well educated all roundly, our society, in general, would have been better for it and we would have been saved from this unnecessary bickering and threat of doom.

Now, sir if you wish prosperity to judge you aright, please dont add fuel to fire: its time you come down from your high horse and boldly and frankly inform the secessionist in plain and clear understandable grammar: IPOB's dont campaign for secession again. It will be painful and destructive and remotely possible to achieve even a semblance of Biafra, if at all.

I rest my case. For now, at least!

lionness:
Shameless useless IPOBS, so the same Shoyinka you all ridiculed because he criticized your Messiah and Bloda GEJ is suddenly the same person you are quoting. The Biafran folks are desperately seeking for validating and appeal. If Biafra is something you truly believe in, you dont need to care what Trump, or the UN, or the same person you all abused and shamed during the GEJ's government think. Its a matter of time before a baboon is quoted as a staunch supporter and lover of Biafra. Hopeless and insincere cause sponsored by criminals who are afraid of been investigated after looting the GEJ administration into tandem. Kanu is definitely collecting his pay check from Ekweremandu, Ubah, Odua, Obi, and the likes. A silly puppet dancing to the tune of this pay master, and half of the entire SE youths cant see this fraud for his insincerity. Just please give them the Biafra, and see these people self-destruct like ticking timebomb in less than a decade.

Mcowubaba:
This is what many people don't understand, people like Mynd44 nd his tribesmen, up till today still says/believes Igbos are suffering from persecution complex, I just laugh.
Some Commenters, call Igbo people cry babies, or Oliver twist, many say we are hate-filled, I guess the are loved filled.
Hypocrites
Because their people weren't wiped out from earth.
It's always convenient for people to oppose and speak big English Grammer in issues that are not really valuable to them.

The will analyze it to suit their own ideologies and political affiliation.

As I earlier mentioned, just like you, I'm not an IPOB member, neither do I subscribe to all the ideologies of Nnamdi Kanu - but anyone downplaying the feelings of an average Igbo man on Biafra is insane and ignorant.

My father lost almost his entire family, same with many others, the useless Nigerian Army killed women and children, the scars of the wars are still visible in many Families today.
Biafra is not what you just wish away, or you just Press a button everything about Biafra will disappear .
It can't work like that
It's in our hearts and souls.

Black Americans in USA till today still play the Race card and remind Caucasian/Whites that the humiliated them and made them slaves in ancient Times. These events happened many years ago ahead of Biafra war, but the haven't forgotten, some haven't even forgiven the whites..
And some Lunatics just think, Igbos will be so happy with Nigeria for all the genocide. Nigerian army left soliders and start attacking women and children.
Rick Ross said "God forgive, I don't"

maxiuc:
Have you heard of israel being defeated in a battle

No way

Biafra is a must

God is good

ripbubu:
dont mind them north are not ashamed they can not do without igbos.. .they can not stand on their own that is why i support Boko Haram.. .boko Haram want them to stand on their own