₦airaland Forum

I returned from Kigali a few days ago. The highlight of my trip was a harrowing visit to a museum commemorating the million or so Rwandese people who were slaughtered during a genocide that shocked the world in 1994. Two hundred and fifty thousand victims of that vicious Tutsi/Hutu conflict are buried on the premises, so it’s a cemetery as well as a place of remembrance and learning.

In my 20s, I toured Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, in appalled silence. Situated on a 45-acre campus and comprising museums, exhibitions, monuments, sculptures and memorial sites, it is an impressive tribute to the six million Jews who were murdered during the Nazi era.

On May 30, 1967, the secessionist Republic of Biafra was declared by Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the then governor of Nigeria’s Eastern region, following deadly tensions between Northerners and members of the Igbo ethnic group.
The Igbos were joined by some minorities from the region that is known as the Niger Delta today.

Examples of senior non-Igbos who supported Biafra as a matter of principle include Ojukwu’s Ibibio Deputy, Major General Philip Asuquo Effiong, and my father Ignatius Suage Kogbara, the Biafran ambassador to the United Kingdom and an Ogoni from Rivers State.

I have very clear memories of the civil war. I was seven years old when it started and 10 when it ended on January l5, 1970.

I will never forget my totally stressed mother, Anne, driving my three siblings and me out of Port Harcourt in the family’s grey Ford Cortina as Federal troops (the enemy!) advanced on the city we called home.

I recall an enraged Biafran army officer shooting, one-by-one, panicking policemen who had hopped onto their bicycles and joined the exodus from Port Harcourt, alongside fleeing women and children, instead of staying behind to help our soldiers and able-bodied male civilians fight the invaders to the finish.

By then, my father was in London, representing the rebel government; and I recall being stuck in a long queue of escaping vehicles, taking refuge a Southeastern village where the natives ate lizards to survive and eventually being airlifted out of Biafra in the dead of night on a cargo plane from an airstrip in a town called Uli.

By 1968, we were safely ensconced in Daddy’s residence in a salubrious part of London; and I still feel guilty about the fact that we got out at the height of a massive humanitarian crisis, leaving so many friends, relatives and strangers to suffer the horrors of a war that wasn’t their fault.

Biafra was the world’s first fully televised war and a very big deal. Between one and three million Biafrans died, mostly from starvation.

Images of hollow-eyed youngsters with distended bellies filled TV screens across the globe. Many of us heard, for the first time, about kwashiokor – a form of malnutrition caused by protein deficiency.

According to the distinguished US-based Igbo writer and academic, Chigozie Obioma: “The Biafran War of Independence was an internecine war the scale of which Africa had never seen when it took place. Most of those who died were non-combatants.

“It was the singular reason for the creation of Doctors Without Borders and it is believed that more small weapons (hand grenades, rifles, etc) were used in it than in World War 2.

So why have the Nigerian authorities never erected a memorial to those who lost their lives and endured unspeakable agonies?

helinues:
Toh

Sometimes, the way we do things in Nigeria is always questionable.

How can you be having discussion about increase in minimum wage without involving NGF? The same NGF have said they are not interested in paying anything above N70k

TimeManager:
Punch Newspaper needs to be very careful, Obidents will punchure their decades-long prestige. 105,000 was too much of an ask. Private sector will kill every all of us with the costs of goods.

-Kiss the truth!

Slurity:
He may nothing to you but his name is known among noble names in Nigeria, Africa and the world. Your own family name is not known even in your local street say less your local goverment or state or country. hatred has eaten you up. No famous name without critics. Even Jesus has critics.

coolcharm:
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way this country is set up.

The executive, legislature and judiciary have all gotten pay rise and other emoluments in the last 12 months yo cushion the effect of a careless and badly run government.

But the citizens have to go on industrial action and even shutdown the national grid for government to consider them.

If this is not sheer evil and wickedness... I don't know.

See finish no pass this one abeg

TimeManager:
Jonathan Expressway.. Amazing!. While some people are stuck in bitterness and have refused to move on.

-Kiss the truth!

Kosoco:
Where is Reno...l

reiddecuti:
You see how Tinubu out of his daftness ruin the economy by that simple pronouncement of "subsidy is gone."

Instead of to fight corruption in the subsidy regime, Tinubu went and remove subsidy.

I've never seen a government in the whole wide world so lazy and confused like Nigeria government. A government that cannot do business; a government that cannot protect...

Patrioticman007:
Just like the ibo boys killing their elders for fun & trills of it. May the Almighty Allah deal with thees bad elements in our societies.

anonymous1759:
Rottweiler stop spitting like an imbe’ . Any negative thing about Nigeria you’ll be quick to spread it , forgetting every country is facing one challenge or the other , time of south East , you’re giving scenarios that insecurity is everywhere, it’s not you know abi?
but when Finance minister tells you that Inflation is everywhere due global economic meltdown you’ll be spitting foam from your mouth Ewu Gambia.

anonymous1759:


Rubbish! You guys talk like we don’t know people who live in the East or have friends there. 2-3 years ago the East was something else , kidnapping and UGM doing shege , police stations being vandalized on a stead . Cubana said the truth simple! was a trailer of goods not destroyed on the Eve of Biafra day ?
I experienced shootings in the East 2022 at ifite Awka.
So this is how you want to rule Nigeria, lying and covering things in your region.
Yoruba’s remains the best , they call out wrong doings in their land unlike you people and the North that keep dumb.

Iamgrey5:
if you think the problem in Nigeria is just one man resigning, then you must be kidding.

mightyhaze:
Im so disappointed in okorie Samuel


Your parents sent u to school ,probably struggling to train u in school to be useful to yourself and society but look what u were found doing .. Your parents didn't teach u that when u catch a thief u hand him over to authorities instead of taking laws into your hands..

Thundafireseun:
Rest in peace young prince

22 out of 25 people that killed you are from one particular region…..wickedness lives there

Ezewuzie01:
Bianca Ojukwu. Strong woman who laid curses on Peter Obi for betraying her husband and the curses have been following Peter Obi ever since.

chatinent:
He should stfu.

A man who nearly finished Abia proposing a paltry ₦90k for sb to work for 30 days.

Nonsense and omokri.

Slurity:
HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE AS REASONABLE AS WOLE SOYINKA IN YOUR WHOLE STATE, TOWN OR VILLAGE?

highchief1:
99.9999% of Igbo pll are ritualist hence their money no Dey enter my eyes.

IkeIgboNiile:
Entitlement wan kill this one.😂🤣

Ofunaofu:
Nice one Peter Obi


Reno Omokri will continue to remain a rabble rouser

junketer:
Does umahi use the ebonyi airport when he travels from Abuja or still Enugu airport?

PeterObi4LP:
Fubara 25 : 0 Wike

helinues:
Bro, the current education system globally is another form of modern slavery. We can't just continue shying away from the reality

https://www.nairaland.com/8038722/current-education-system-modern-day

Coolestguy2023:
Wouldn't the world be at peace if Israel finish them Terrorists?
What you people don't know is that if it were to be Hamas that have thesame power Isreal have, Isreal would have been wiped of the surface of the earth a long time ago. Isreal is still lenient abeg.

TechCapon:

There's no civilian in Gaza. Those kids you see are just young jihadists. All it takes to convert them is a little brainwashing and as soon as they're old enough to carry guns they turn terrorists. No sympathy