Biafra Is All About The Generation X

We do our best to make plain to all what Biafra agitation is about. As we do that we also try to let everyone know that we are not apologetic about Biafra; her name, people and everything she stands for. Our aim is simply to make the message of Biafra clear for the benefit of the people who are genuinely interested in learning about our story. As a people we have endured so much injustice, pain, deprivation, destruction and death, and unanimously we have decided that we have had enough. Biafra is the story of 3.1 million people who were murdered in the most horrific manner for no other reason than they were Igbo or Biafrans. Biafra is who we are; survivors of several deliberate genocides, ethnic/religious cleansing and pogroms. Biafra and Biafrans are the victims of decades of injustice, unwarranted hatred, bigotry, religious/cultural intolerance and imperial greed. No one should apologize to anyone for telling the story of a people who have been so mistreated. We solicit for sympathetic audiences and the understanding of the world community of which we are a part but we are not going to be sorry for being who we are.

Over the years the enemy has used many overt and covert means to try and make us accept and live with an image that is alien to who we are. He has tried in the past many years to make us believe that we cannot have it differently and that whatever we are getting is all we should get. They succeeded in making some of us lose faith in ourselves by denying our identities. The scandal became so overbearing for some of us that they became ashamed to be identified with the words Igbo or Biafra. Some even went to the extent of changing or distorting their Igbo family, given and town names to sound anything but Igbo. The Nigerian state in a ridiculous and futile effort said it "renamed" the Atlantic Bight of Biafra to God-knows-what. The enemy would go to any length to falsify history just to disparage and ridicule the name Biafra.

Every effort we make today is geared toward reversing the damages of self-doubt the enemy has injected into our ranks. And we are serious about this business. We are working to put back confidence and pride in the belief of who we are. And we hope that by the time we are done everyone will once again become proud to identify with Igbo and Biafra because that is who we are and no one has any reason to be sorry or ashamed of their identity. We are partnering with all well-meaning people around the world who detest injustice and uphold the sacred principles of human rights and we are confident we shall win because good has always overcome evil. From history we know that truth has always defeated falsehood. The story of Biafra is the story of the prevention of genocide. It is the story of Self Determination. Biafra is the story of a people anywhere who are faced with the danger of extermination and they stand their ground and fight back. If this is Biafra then it should be a source of inspiration, the message of hope to the oppressed and a source of genuine fear to all oppressors.

We are proud to fight for Biafra's freedom through the principles of Self Determination. Agitating for Biafra's independence from Nigeria is an effort that has at its core the concern for the well-being of the future generations of Igbo/Biafra people. No generation should live as if the world comes to an end after them. Every new generation of people must conduct their affairs with the understanding that whatever prestige, respect and infrastructure they enjoy currently as a people or society was worked for by the people in their past. And each generation must be constantly reminded that if they currently enjoy none or little of those that the people in their past have not worked hard enough. The amount and quality of these amenities that the people enjoy today is proportionate to how much work the past generations put in. Hence we in this generation are working at freeing Biafra and her people from the traumatic and unfortunate union of one-Nigeria and will help lay a sound and solid foundation on which coming generations can proudly build. We are investing time, energy and resources in the effort because we know that this and next generations of Igbo/Biafra people can never be secure, thrive or prosper in the context of any one-Nigeria.

It will be the greatest wrong done by this generation of Igbo/Biafrans to the next ones if they should depart the stage without separating their people and land from Nigeria. It will bear repeating here that when we talk about Biafra's freedom and independence, we do not mean anything like what some people call "confederacy", "true federalism", "Aburi Accord" or any such phrasal half-truths. For us we only know about and insist on a clear separation from the others for the simple reason that: Igbo/Biafrans do not share any core values with the peoples in the other sections of the country of Nigeria. Everyone of Nigeria's problem comes from the lack of these shared values by the various sections of the current one-Nigeria. And it in this light that today's generation of Igbo/Biafrans understands very clearly that Nigeria's problem has nothing to do with bad leadership, corruption or poverty as some people from the outside have come to wrongly believe. Igbo/Biafrans of today know that since the various peoples who are presently forced to remain in one-Nigeria have nothing in common; cultural affinity, language, etc., with one another then it will never come a time when such a system will produce leaders with any purposeful visions. With all things considered, it is the conclusion of the present Igbo/Biafrans that this and coming generations of their people can only be better off as neighbors in a separate country rather than fellow citizens of the same country with the other Nigerians.

The Biafran incident has turned out to have a universal application in the sense that it has become the story of all those fighting to be free from oppression. Biafra has become synonymous with Self-Determination and the struggle of those who must defeat the forces that would exterminate them from the face of the Earth for no other reason than hatred. Yes, Biafra is survival against all odds.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Osita_Ebiem/1291

There Was A Country (A Personal History of Biafra) - By Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe is one of the most celebrated African writers. The reverence for his books has been in part due to excellence of his writings, but mostly for being an excellent narrator and poet of his beliefs.
Chinua Achebe begins the story with his early years, and lovingly describes the parents who raised him, and the society that nurtured him. He describes his schooling, and the inherent conflicts between his traditions and Christianity.

His views on African education are illustrated by an incident that occurred at his school where his teacher, with drawings on the blackboard, was giving a lesson on the geography of Great Britain.
Then the village 'madman', from nowhere, snatched the chalk from the teacher and proceeded to give an extended lesson on Ogidi, Achebe's hometown. It was the 'madman', according to Chinua Achebe, who had the 'clarity of perspective' that Nigerian children would not only benefit from colonial education but also from 'instruction in their own history and civilisation'.

However the focus of the book is his first-hand observation of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970, 
otherwise known as the Biafran War. The prelude to the Civil War was Nigeria's march to Independence, and the great promise of a young country recently freed from the yoke of colonial rule. But within six years of independence, Nigeria had become of a 'cesspool of corruption and misrule.'
The climax was the coup, led by an Igbo senior army officer, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu. This was followed by a counter-coup staged by Northern Nigerian soldiers, leading to the brutal slaughter of one hundred and eighty five Igbo army officers, and in the next four months the massacre of over thirty thousand Igbos.

The Biafran War had started in earnest, with many Igbos terrified and fleeing home to Eastern Nigeria, a territory that would, with secession, be called Biafra.
With failed peace talks between the Biafran and Nigerian leaders, the civil war that flared left, in the end, over three million dead Nigerians. The vast majority of these casualties were sadly children.
The major Nigerian actors in the conflict were British trained soldiers Odumegwa Ojukwu (an Igbo from a highly priviledged background), and the head of state of Nigeria, Yakubu Gowon. The rivalry and the intense hatred between the two were to become a subplot in the fighting that followed.
With neither side prepared to compromise a Biafran state was declared with its own capital, government, constitution, provinces, flag, anthem, national bank and currency. The new country took its name from the Bight of Biafra, an expanse of water into which the Niger River empties.

With the Nigerian government intent on restoring its authority over all of its territory, the army was mobilised and quickly the capital of Biafra, Enugu, fell. The odds were heavily stacked against the new state, with only two thousand trained soldiers arrayed against the overwhelming might of the state army.
This was no just war between two armies. According to some Biafrans, the Nigerian army wasn't just fighting a war; they wanted to wipe out all Igbos from the face of the earth. The Biafrans were soon completely outgunned, and in no time completely surrounded. The net then slowly closed in on the infant state.

With humanitarian aid to the civilian victims blocked, death by hunger and disease quickly became the symbol of the Biafran War. The brief and courageous resistance of the Biafrans soon crumbled, and was supplanted by a desperate struggle for survival.
In 1970, with Ojukwu having fled the country, the inevitable fall came, and Biafra was reduced to smouldering rubble. 'The cost in human lives made it one of the bloodiest wars in human history.'
Chinua Achebe was no innocent bystander in this conflict but unashamedly served the Biafran, cause. Throughout the book are his scattered confessions of missed opportunities for peace by both sides. The horror and the pain he endured during the thirty months of bloody conflict were both profound and personal. He spent the next forty years of his life living and teaching abroad.
It seems he spent most of those years pondering the dashed expectations that many had for the new Nigerian state. All the optimism they once shared, he states, had to be re-thought. Also, as former Biafrans they had to contend and adjust to realities of a country that no longer appealed to them.

As with a dying parent talking to his children, THERE WAS A COUNTRY is Chinua Achebe's last word to his country and continent. Corruption and the roguery of African leaders, according to him, have turned Africa into a pit of despair. He significantly concludes that we can no longer pass of the continent's 'problems to our complicated past and the cold war, however significant these factors are'.
THERE WAS A COUNTRY is his swansong, a memoir, and his disappointment with the political problems of his country. Perhaps in time, it will be regarded as Chinua Achebe's finest literary achievement.
For me, it towers even above Things Fall Apart. Far from being polemical, it is a book written with prudence, skill and dignity. Chinua Achebe's immense wisdom is stamped on every sentence and chapter. His style cannot be compared to any of the past great writers. He always depicts human experience in simple human language.

The book is an opportunity to conference with a unique writer of singular skill. If there is any lamentation on his part, it is from leaving this world without seeing any diminution of human misery, in a continent where the most abundant riches and most delirious possibilities still exist.
In all his works, Chinua Achebe's mode of writing was the same. Though he gladdened and depressed us at same time, he never failed to instruct and to steer us. Even from his valedictory words one can still hear hope, despite the mangled remains of our societies, of a continent not only rising but soaring from the abyss.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Mtutuzeli_Nyoka/1284358