Kramermarktumzug 2018 in Oldenburg ,Igbo King ,Ghana King,Southern Cameroon King with all African people in Oldenburg,
Kramermarktumzug 2018
Kramermarktumzug 2018
Kramermarktumzug 2018
Kramermarktumzug 2018
Kramermarktumzug 
Kramermarktumzug 2018
It was nice and lovely,in Kramermarktumzug in Oldenburg 2018,,2019 will be greater,Igbo culture,Ghana Culture,Camerron culture,African Culture,European culture,World Culture,together We will move on together,
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As Dr. Nina Nwodo, others, fought back tears.
According to Princess Naja Chinyere Njoku, the founder, DNA Tested African Descendants, a total of 27000 black families in the Caribbeans have through DNA traced their roots to Africa, a good number of them to Nigeria and a greater number to Igbo ancestry.
At this year’s Council of Igbo States in Americas (CISA) event held at Igbo village, Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton of Virginia, a total of 21 Caribbean families were able to reconnect with their Igbo root and were admitted into their Igbo ancestry in emotional but dream fulfilling ceremony.
On ground to receive these brave Igbo sons and daughters were His Majesty, Eze Chukwuemeka Eri (Eze Aka Ji Ovo Igbo, Ezeora 34th), Dr. Nwachukwu Anikwenze (Onowu Abagana) and Dr. Nina Nwodo (Ike Ukeh, the President General of Ohaneze Ndigbo) among others.
One after the other, their citations were read out by the President of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Dr. Nnia Nwodo, while His Majesty, Eze Chukwuemeka Eri, blessed them and admitted them into the Igbo family. The exercise which was deeply emotional saw ancestral naming certificate issued to everyone of them reflecting their new identity as many fought back tears while others rejoiced that a 400 year old shackles have been broken.
In attendance were people of Igbo ancestry from around the world that include; Prof. Akuma Kalu Njoku, (popularly called Ticha, meaning: Teaching Igbo Cultural Heritage in the Americas. He is the man behind the establishment of Igbo village in Virginia); Prof. Anthony Ejiofor, President of World Igbo Congress (WIC); Dr. Ignatius Ukpabi, the People’s Mayor; Rev. Dr. Stanislaus Maduabrochukwu Ogbonna (a Rev. Fr. with traditional building expertise that assisted with the construction of the Igbo village in Virginia); Chief Chude Asidianya (Agbanwodikeizu na Abagana, the planning committee chairman); Comrade Arinzechukwu Awogu, (guest of CISA and the Chairman of Ogbaru local government, Anambra state, Nigeria); Dr. Ruben Okorie ; Chief Ogbuehi Nwachukwu Okafor (President of Ohaneze Ndigbo North Carolina chapter); Barr. Jeff Azubuike (Ohaneze Ndigbo, South Africa), representatives of Yoruba diaspora and many others.
Black comm
unities in Haiti, St Lucia, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela were all in attendance with exhibitions depicting their Igbo origin.
Miss Nnedi, formally known as Tiffany Green, from Trinidad, one of those whose Igbo ancestry was established by DNA said she will be visiting Anambra state as she strongly believes that she will find her family in areas around Onitsha and Ogbaru/Abor. She showed pictures of her great-great grand-parents and believed they were taken away around the lower belt of the river Niger. Hon. Awogu, who was on ground, and the closest person in the gathering from the area she mentioned offered to help in making her search a lot easier.
The Igbo village in Staunton, Virginia, the venue of the historical event is a tangible recognition of the contribution of the Igbo victims of the Atlantic slave trade to the development of Virginia and the greater American frontier culture. Enslaved Igbo men, women, and children who traveled by force from many specific locations in the hinterland of Igboland to North America, helped to build what is now known as the United States. A great majority of those who came to Virginia boarded slave ships in the coastal towns, of Calabar, Bonny and Brass. Evidently, one of the starting points of Igbo slave journeys is the ancient Cave Temple Complex in Arochukwu. Arochukwu traders supplied slaves to the market in Bende (later Uzuakoli) which became the source of slaves traveling directly from Bonny to Virginia and were mostly Igbos.
EFFORTS AT ESTABLISHING IGBO VILLAGE IN VIRGINIA, MANY THANKS TO PROF. AKUMA KALU NJOKU
In 2002, after retracing the hinterland routes of Igbo slave journeys in Abia State, Prof. Akuma Kalu Njoku, established a direct link between major markets and the points of embarkation. He realized the tourism potential of his research and approached the government of Abia State. The governor at the time provided some financial support and he worked with the staff of the Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism. The research team documented the cave in Arochukwu and other sites and monuments in Abia State. In 2007 a team of cavers from the Hoffman Institute from Western Kentucky University and Prof. Akuma Kalu Njoku went to explore how to protect the cave and nominated it for listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Working with the Nigerian National Commission on Museums and Monuments, the Arochukwu Cave is now on the preliminary list of the UNESCO World Heritage sites.
John Vlach, after hearing Prof. Akuma Kalu Njoku’s paper at an annual conference of the American Folklore Association in 2003, recommended him to American Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia. At that time, the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton of Virginia was planning a West African exhibit to complement the English Farm, Irish Farm, German Farm, and American Farm already in existence. Prof. Akuma Kalu Njoku became a member of the advisory board and later as the principal consultant for the Igbo Farm Village project.
WHY WAS IGBO CHOSEN INSTEAD OF ANY OTHER RACE IN AFRICA?
Let me quote from the Frontier Culture website:
“An Igbo Farmstead will represent the architectural patterns representing the areas from which the most number of slaves came to Virginia”. The Igbo were greater in number than all the other enslaved Africans put together in Virginia in the 1700s when tobacco was the mainstay of the colony’s economy. Some estimates put the number of Igbo imported from the Bight of Biafra at 40% of all the import to Virginia by 1775. “Their number continued to increase to the point that tobacco planters on the valley west of the Blue Ridge replaced their white indentured servants with Igbo slave workers”. The Igbo were among the first settlers, they were among those to cross the Cumberland Gap and open the gateway to the west.
In addition to making the tobacco the mainstay of the Virginian economy, they also provided the labor in the Black Belt that made cotton king. They have continued to contribute to nation building and culture in the United States. The Igbo Farmstead (Uno Ubi Igbo) in Staunton is, like the English, German, and Irish Farmsteads, “a tangible tribute to the Igbo settlers who helped to develop the frontier culture in America as well as in the territorial expansion of the United States.”
In March 2006, Museum staff and Prof. Akuma Kalu Njoku traveled to Nigeria to document examples of Igbo architecture. While in Nigeria, the staff of the National Commission of Museum and Monuments joined the research team and they traveled to many villages, compounds, and remote farm villages documenting house-types and building traditions. Mrs. Umebe Onyejekwe of the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments became their primary contact and consultant in Nigeria for the collection of building materials. By June 2008, the building materials, along with objects for furnishing the completed exhibit were on site.
Prof. Akuma Kalu Njoku opened discussions in the Igbo community in the United States and recruited Reverend Dr. Stanislaus Maduawuchi Ogbonna, a man with traditional building expertise to assist with the construction of the buildings and Dr. Kanayo Odeluga to mobilize and coordinate volunteers. The response was tremendous. Volunteers came from the greater Washington, D.C. area, Florida, Texas, Atlanta, Chicago, the Carolinas, Nashville, Bowling Green, Kentucky, California, and New Jersey. Today, the Igbo village stands tall with rich history as the white museum volunteer guide that takes people round the village will joyfully tell you the Igbo story as though he is one. In the final analysis, when all is taken away from Ndigbo, their place in the making of the new America is embedded in the history of the United States of America as demonstrated in Virginia where America of today began.
USTENBURG – Lawyers representing 19 Nigerian men, accused of dealing and possession of drugs as well as contravening of the Sexual Offences Act, on Monday, pulled out of the case at the Rustenburg Magistrate’s Court.
The two lawyers told the court they feared for their personal safety and that of their families.
This was the second case in Rustenburg, where lawyers pulled out of case were Nigerian nationals are accused of a crime. Another lawyer representing 14 Nigerian men accused of public violence, pulled out of the case in February, citing safety reasons.
This was after eight houses occupied by Nigerians were set alight on January 10, following allegations that the houses were operating as brothels and drug houses.
The 14 Nigerian men were expected to appear in the Rustenburg Magistrate’s Court on April 4, for trial. They were denied bail after they told the court it would not be safe for them if they were released on bail.
The 19 men were found in possession of cocaine with an estimated street value of R400 000, and cash amounting to R53 000 during operation Kolomaka (sweep clean) in Rustenburg.
Four vehicles valued at R550 000 — allegedly used for these crimes — were confiscated by the police.
North West police said the arrests came after an intensive investigation which started at the beginning of February to deal with alleged illicit drug dealings and brothels at various residences in Rustenburg and Tlhabane.
The men were remanded in custody and their case postponed to March 15, for bail application and legal representation.
African News Agency/ANA
Hahaha they said that there is nothing like spiritual manipulation that it is all in the head. I have seen somethings unexplainable in real life. Science have not come up with any reasonable explanation for them. Each part of the world have a different way of developing themselves. I have once study a course called comparative administration. It teaches that no matter how beautiful and efficiency the administration of other nations may seen to be that it doesn’t mean that it wil work perfectly in other climes. After my experience in disappearing and appearing with one old man from Ondo, i concluded that we allowed ourselves to be fooled and underdeveloped. This man was able to teleport us from Delta state to his sitting room in Ondo and teleported me back right into my bedroom while my partner was teleported to his place. My people called it evil. They said we can’t use what we have to develop ourselves. They argued that those who created aeroplanes didn’t use their spiritual powers to do it but we are here doing all kind of primitive practice and expect the new generation to buy into it. Why won’t they call it primitive practice if they didn’t understand that nke fa ji ka (that what they have is more advanced and beautiful than the one they are seeing now).
Can we keep records of those who have died through all kind of transportation accident? How many minutes did they think that it will take the fastest jet to travel from Delta State to Ondo state? This man transported us from Delta to Ondo and from Ondo to our destinations within seconds and we say is primitive practices. What would have happened if the younger generation learned this practice and put it in good use. Which of the scientific technology can beat these mode of traveling? What would have happened if we invested just a quarter of the money we use in procuring bulletroof vest in developing our own odeshi?
Review the operations of local vigilantes in south east and south west, they hardly wear bullet proof when they have a face off with arm robbers yet you will see them fight bravely even with Dane guns and matchets against those with AKs. Do you know that kidnappers and arm robbers fear local vigilantees more than our police? These vigilantees mostly make use of odeshi than bulletproof. Let not go into health sector, Do you know that there are some ailments that medical doctors can’t treat but refers you to the indigenous herbalists? What of construction sector? Our engineers built towers even before the white man start even conceiving the idea of mongo parking themselves into Africa in search of food. Did you know that we have been plying on waters before they brought their Jesus’s ship. If we hadn’t allowed ourselves to be distorted, we wouldn’t have been the dumping ground for all these inferior materials in our back yard. Let us close borders and look inward to develop according to our clime. ~Anyaka Obinna
From Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, 1979
THERE is a “Kingdom of Biafra” on some old maps which were made by early white explorers of the west coast of Africa. Nobody is now sure what that kingdom was, what its laws and arts and tools were like. No tales survive of the kings and queens.
As for the “Republic of Biafra” we know a great deal. It was a nation with more citizens than Ireland and Norway combined. It proclaimed itself an independent republic on May 30, 1967. On January 17 of 1970, it surrendered unconditionally to Nigeria, the nation from which it had tried to secede. It had few friends in this world, and among its active enemies were Russia and Great Britain. Its enemies were pleased to call it a “tribe.”
Some tribe.
The Biafrans were mainly Christians and they spoke English melodiously, and their economy was this one: small-town free enterprise. The worthless Biafran currency was gravely honored to the end.
The tune of Biafra’s national anthem was Finlandia, by Jan Sibelius. The equatorial Biafrans admired the arctic Finns because the Finns won and kept their freedom in spite of ghastly odds.
Biafra lost its freedom, of course, and I was in the middle of it as all its fronts were collapsing. I flew in from Gabon on the night of January 3, with bags of corn, beans, and powdered milk, aboard a blacked out DC6 chartered by Caritas, the Roman Catholic relief organization. I flew out six nights later on an empty DC4 chartered by the French Red Cross. It was the last plane to leave Biafra that was not fired upon.
While in Biafra, I saw a play which expressed the spiritual condition of the Biafrans at the end. It was set in ancient times, in the home of a medicine man. The moon had not been seen for many months, and the crops had failed. There was nothing to eat anymore. A sacrifice was made to a goddess of fertility, and the sacrifice was refused. The goddess gave the reason: The people were not sufficiently unselfish and brave.
Before the drama began, the national anthem was played on an ancient marimba. It seems likely that similar marimbas were heard in the court of the Kingdom of Biafra. The black man who played the marimba was naked to the waist. He squatted on the stage. He was a composer. He also held a doctor’s degree from the London School of Economics.
Some tribe.
I went to Biafra with another novelist, my old friend Vance Bourjaily, and with Miss Miriam Reik, who would be our guide. She was head of a pro-Biafran committee that had already flown several American writers into Biafra. She would pay our way.
I met her for the first time at Kennedy Airport. We were about to take off for Paris together. It was New Year’s Day. I bought her a drink, though she protested that her committee should pay, and I learned that she had a doctor’s degree in English literature. She was also a pianist and a daughter of Theodor Reik, the famous psychoanalyst.
Her father had died three days before.
I told Miriam how sorry I was about her father, said how much I’d liked the one book of his I had read, which was Listening with the Third Ear.
He was a gentle Jew, who got out of Austria while the getting was good. Another well-known book of his was Masochism in Modern Man.
And I asked her to tell me more about her committee, whose beneficiary I was, and she confessed that she was it: It was a committee of one. She is a tall, good-looking woman, by the way, thirty-two years old. She said she founded her own committee because she grew sick of other American organizations that were helping Biafra. Those organizations teemed with people ‘who were kinky with guilt’, she said. They were trying to dump some of that guilt by being maudlinly charitable. As for herself; she said, it was the greatness of the Biafran people, not their pitifulness that turned her on.
She hoped the Biafrans would get more weapons from somebody, the very latest in killing machines. She was going into Biafra for the third time in a year. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Some committee.
I admire Miriam, though I am not grateful for the trip she gave me. It was like a free trip to Auschwitz when the ovens were still going full blast. I now feel lousy all the time.
I will follow Miriam’s example as best I can. My main aim will not be to move readers to voluptuous tears with tales about innocent black children dying like flies, about rape and looting and murder and all that. I will tell instead about an admirable nation that lived for less than three years.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Say nothing but good of the dead.
I asked a Biafran how long his nation had existed so far, and he replied, “Three Christmases, and a little bit more.” He wasn’t a hungry baby. He was a hungry man. He was a living skeleton, but he walked like a man.
Miriam Reik and I picked up Vance Bouijaily in Paris, and we flew down to Gabon and then into Biafra. The only way to get into Biafra was at night by air. There were only eight passenger seats at the rear of the cabin. The rest of the cabin was heaped with bags of food. The food was from America.
We flew over water, there were Russian trawlers below. They were monitoring every plane that came into Biafra. The Russians were helpful in a lot of ways: They gave the Nigerians Ilyushin bombers and MIGs and heavy artillery. And the British gave the Nigerians artillery too and advisers, and tanks and armored cars, and machine guns and mortars and all that, and endless ammunition.
America was neutral.
When we got close to the one remaining Biafran airport, which was a stretch of highway, its lights came on. It was a secret. Its lights resembled two rows of glowworms. The moment our wheels touched the runway, the runway lights went out and our plane’s headlights came on. Our plane slowed down, pulled off the runway, killed its lights, and then everything was pitch black again. There were only two white faces in the crowd around our plane. One was a Holy Ghost Father. The other was a doctor from the French Red Cross. The doctor ran a hospital for the children who were suffering from kwashiorkor, the pitiful children who had no protein.
Father.
Doctor.
As I write, Nigeria has arrested all the Holy Ghost Fathers, who stayed to the end with their people in Biafra.
The priests were mostly Irishmen. They were beloved. Whenever they built a church, they also built a school. Children and simple men and women thought all white men were priests, so they would often beam at Vance or me and say, “Hello, Father.” The Fathers are now being deported forever. Their crime: compassion in time of war. We were taken to the Frenchman’s hospital the next morning, in a chauffeur-driven Peugeot. The name of the village itself sounded like the wail of a child: AwoOmama.
I said to an educated Biafran, “Americans may not know much about Biafra, but they know about the children.”‘ We’re grateful,” he replied, “but I wish they knew more than that. They think we’re a dying nation. We aren’t. We’re an energetic, modern nation that is being born! We have doctors. We have hospitals. We have public-health programs. If we have so much sickness, it is because our enemies have designed every diplomatic and military move with one end in mind — that we starve to death.”
About kwashiorkor: It is a rare disease, caused by a lack of protein. Its cure has been easy, until the blockading of Biafra.
The worst sufferers there were the children of refugees, driven from their homes, then driven off the roads and into the bush by MIGs and armored columns. The Biafrans weren’t jungle people. They were village people—farmers and professionals and clerks and businessmen. They had no weapons to hunt with. Back in the bush, they fed their children whatever roots and fruit they were lucky enough to find. At the end, a very common diet was water and thin air. So the children came down with kwashiorkor, no longer a rare disease. The child’s hair turned red. His skin split like the skin of a ripe tomato. His rectum protruded. His arms and legs were like lollipop sticks.
Vance and Miriam and I waded through shoals of children like those at Awo-Omama. We discovered that if we let our hands dangle down among the children, a child would grasp each finger or thumb—five children to a hand. A finger from a stranger, miraculously, would allow a child to stop crying for a while.
A MIG came over, fired a few rounds, didn’t hit anything this time, though the hospital had been hit often before. Our guide guessed that the pilot was an Egyptian or an East German.
I asked a Biafran nurse what sort of supplies the hospital was most in need of.
Her answer: “Food.”
Biafra had a George Washington — for three Christmases and a little bit more. He was and is Odumegwu Ojukwu. Like George Washington, General Ojukwu was one of the most prosperous men of his place and time. He was a graduate of Sandhurst, Britain’s West Point. The three of us spent an hour with him. He shook our hands at the end. He thanked us for coming. “If we go forward, we die,” he said. “If we go backward, we die. So we go forward.” He was ten years younger than Vance and me. I found him perfectly enchanting. Many people mock him now. They think he should have died with his troops.
Maybe so.
If he had died, he would have been one more corpse in millions.
He was a calm, heavy man when we met him. He chainsmoked. Cigarettes were worth a blue million in Biafra. He wore a camouflage jacket, though he was sitting in a cool living room in a velveteen easy chair. “I should warn you,” he said, “we are in range of their artillery.” His humor was gallows humor, since everything was falling apart around his charisma and air of quiet confidence. His humor was superb. Later, when we met his second-in-command, General Philip Effiong, he, too, turned out to be a gallows humorist. Vance said this: “Effiong should be the Number two man. He’s the second funniest man in Biafra.”
Jokes.
Miriam was annoyed by my conversation at one point, and she said scornfully, “You won’t open your mouth unless you can make a joke.” It was true. Joking was my response to misery I couldn’t do anything about. The jokes of Ojukwu and Effiong had to do with the crime for which the Biafrans were being punished so hideously by so many nations. The crime: They were attempting to become a nation themselves. “They call us a dot on the map,” said General Ojukwu, “and nobody’s sure quite where.” Inside that dot were 700 lawyers, 500 physicians, 300 engineers, 8 million poets, 2 novelists of the first rank, and God only knows what else — about one-third of all the black intellectuals in Africa. Some dot. Those intellectuals had once fanned out all over Nigeria, where they had been envied and lynched and massacred. So they retreated to their homeland, to the dot. The dot has now vanished. Hey, presto.
When we met General Ojukwu, his soldiers were going into battle with thirty-five rounds of rifle ammunition. There was no more where that came from. For weeks before that, they had been living on one cup of gari a day. The recipe for gari is this: Add water to pulverized cassava root. Now the soldiers didn’t even have gari anymore. General Ojukwu described a typical Nigerian attack for us: “They pound a position with artillery for twenty-four hours, then they send forward one armored car. If anybody shoots at it, it retreats, and another twenty-four hours of bombardment begins. When the infantry moves forward, they drive a screen of refugees before them.”
We asked him what was becoming of the refugees now in Nigerian hands. He had no jokes on this subject. He said leadenly that the men, women, and children were formed into three groups, which were led away separately. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said, “as to what happens after that,” and he paused. Then he finished the sentence: “To the men and the women and the children.” We were given private rooms and baths in what had been a teachers’ college in Owerri, the capital of Biafra. The town had been captured by the Nigerians, and then, in the one great Biafran victory of the war, recaptured by the Biafrans. We were taken to a training camp near Owerri. The soldiers had no live ammunition. In mock attacks, the riflemen shouted, “Bang!” The machine gunners shouted, “Bup-bup-bup!”And the officer who showed us around, also a graduate of Sandhurst, said, “There wouldn’t be all this fuss, you know, if it weren’t for the petroleum.” He was speaking of the vast oil field beneath our feet. We asked him who owned the oil, and I expected him to say ringingly that it was the property of the Biafran people now. But he didn’t.
“We never nationalized it,” he said. “It still belongs to British Petroleum and Shell.” He wasn’t bitter. I never met a bitter Biafran. General Ojukwu gave us a clue, I think, as to why the Biafrans were able to endure so much so long without bitterness: They all had the emotional and spiritual strength that an enormous family can give. We asked the general to tell us about his family, and he answered that it was three thousand members strong. He knew every member of it by face, by name, and by reputation. A more typical Biafran family might consist of a few hundred souls. And there were no orphanages, no old people’s homes, no public charities and, early in the war, there weren’t even schemes for taking care of refugees. The families took care of their own, perfectly naturally. The families were rooted in land. There was no Biafran so poor that he did not own a garden.
Lovely.
Families met often, men and women alike, to vote on family matters. When war came, there was no conscription. The families decided who should go. In happier times, the families voted on who should go to college to study what and where. Then everybody chipped in for clothes and transportation and tuition. The first person from the area to be sponsored by his family all the way through graduate school was a physician, who received his doctor’s degree in 1938. Thus began a mania for higher education of all kinds. This mania probably did more to doom the Biafrans than any quantity of petroleum. When Nigeria became a nation in 1960, formed from two British colonies, Biafra was part of it—-and Biafrans got the best jobs in industry and the civil service and the hospitals and the schools, because they were so well educated. They were hated for that—perfectly naturally. It was peaceful in Owerri at first. It took us a few days to catch on: Not only Owerri but all of Biafra was about to fall. Even as we arrived, government offices nearby were preparing to move. I learned something: Capitals can fall almost silently. Nobody warned us. Everybody we talked to smiled. And the smile we saw most frequently belonged to Dr. B. N. Unachukwu, the chief of protocol in the Ministry of Affairs. Think of that: Biafra was so poor in allies at the end that the chief of protocol had nothing better to do than woo two novelists and an English teacher, He made lists of appointments we had with ministers and writers and educators and so on. He sent around a car each morning, with a chauffeur and guide. And then we caught on: His smile and everybody’s smile was becoming slightly sicker with each passing day. On our fifth day in Biafra, there was no Dr. Unachukwu, no chauffeur, and no guide.
We waited and waited on our porches. Chinua Achebe, the young novelist, came by. We asked him if he had any news. He said he didn’t listen to news anymore. He didn’t smile. He seemed to be listening to something melancholy and maybe beautiful, far far away. I had a novel of his, Things Fall Apart He autographed it for me. “I would invite you to my house,” he said, “but we don’t have anything.” A truck went by, loaded with office furniture. All the trucks had names painted on their sides. The name of that one was Slow to Anger. “There must be some news,” I insisted.
“News?” he echoed. He thought. Then he said dreamily, “They have just found a mass grave outside the prison wall.” There had been a rumor, he explained, that the Nigerians had shot a lot of civilians while they’d held Owerri. Now the graves had been found. “Graves,” said Chinua Achebe. He found them uninteresting.
“What are you writing now?” said Miriam.
“Writing?” he said. It was obvious that he wasn’t writing anything, that he was simply waiting for the end. “A dirge in Ibo,” he said. Ibo was his native tongue.
An extraordinarily pretty girl named Rosemary Egonsu Ezirim came over to introduce herself. She was a zoologist. She had been working on a project that hoped to turn the streams into fish hatcheries. “The project has been suspended temporarily,” she said, “so I am writing poems.”
“All projects have been suspended temporarily,” said Chinua, “so we are all writing poems.”
Leonard Hall, of the Manchester Guardian, stopped by. He said, “You know, the closest parallel to what Biafra is going through was the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto.” He was right. The Jews of Warsaw understood that they were going to get killed, no matter what they did, so they died fighting.
The Biafrans kept telling the outside world that Nigeria wanted to kill them all, but the outside world was unimpressed.
“It’s hard to prove genocide,” said Hall. “If some Biafrans survive, then genocide hasn’t been committed. If no Biafrans survive, who will complain?”
A male refugee came up to us, rubbed his belly with one hand, begged with the other. He rolled his eyes.
“No chop,” we said. That meant, “No food.” That was what one said to beggars. Then a healthy girl offered us a quart of honey for three pounds., As I’ve already said, the economy was free enterprise to the end.
It was a lazy day.
We asked Rosemary about a round, bright-orange button she was wearing. “Daughters of Biafra,” it said. “Wake! March!” In the middle was a picture of a rifle.
Rosemary explained that Daughters of Biafra supported the troops in various ways, comforted the wounded, and practiced guerrilla warfare. “We go up into the front lines when we can,” she said. “We bring the men small presents. If they haven’t been doing well, we scold them, and they promise to do better. We tell them that they will know when things are really bad, because the women will come into the trenches to fight. Women are much stronger and braver than men.”
Maybe so.
“Chinua, what can we send you when we get back home?” said Vance.
And Chinua said, “Books.”
“Rosemary,” I said, “where do you live?”
“In a dormitory room not far from here. Would you like to see it?” she said.
So Vance and I walked over there with her, to stretch our legs. On the way, we marveled at a squash court built of cement block—built, no doubt, in colonial times. It had been turned into a Swiss cheese by armor-piercing cannon shells. There was a naked child in the doorway, and her hair was red. She seemed very sleepy, and the light hurt her eyes.
“Hello, Father,” she said.
All of Owerri seemed out for a walk on either side of the street in single file. The files moved in opposite directions and circulated about the town. There was no place in particular for most of us to go. We were simply the restless center of the dot on the map called Biafra, and the dot, was growing smaller all the time.
We strolled past a row of neat bungalows. Civil servants lived there. Each house had a car out front, a VW, an Opel, a Peugeot.
There was plenty of gasoline, because the Biafrans had built cunning refineries in the bush. There weren’t many storage batteries, though. Most private cars had to be started by pushing.
Outside one bungalow was an Opel station wagon with its back full of parcels and with a bed and a baby carriage tied on top. The man of the house was testing the knots he’d tied, while his wife stood by with the baby in her arms. They were going on a family trip to nowhere. We gave them a push.
A soldier awarded Vance and me a salute and a dazzling smile. “Comment ça pa?” he said. He supposed we were Frenchmen. He liked us for that. France had slipped a few weapons to Biafra. So had Rhodesia and South Africa, and so had Israel, I suspect.
“We will accept help from anyone,” General Ojukwu told us, “no matter what their reasons are for giving it. Wouldn’t you?”
Rosemary lived in a twelve-by-twelve dormitory room with her five younger brothers and sisters, who had come to see her over the Christmas holidays. Rosemary and her seventeen-year-old sister had the bed. The rest slept on mats on the floor, and everybody was having an awfully good time.
There was plenty to eat. There were about twenty pounds of yams piled on the windowsill. There was a quart of palm oil for frying yams. Palm oil, incidentally, was one of two commodities that had induced white men to colonize the area so long ago. The other commodity was even more valuable than palm oil. It was human slaves.
Think of that: slaves.
We asked Rosemary’s sister how long it took her to fix her hair and whether she could do it without assistance. She had about fourteen pigtails sticking straight out from her head. Not only that, but her scalp was crisscrossed by bare strips, which formed diamonds—strips around the hair in the pigtails. Her head was splendidly complicated, like a Russian Easter egg.
“Oh, no, I could never do it alone,” she said. Her relatives did it for her every morning. It took them an hour, she said.
Relatives.
She was an innocent, pretty dumpling in a metropolis for the first time. Her village hadn’t been overrun yet. Her big, cozy family hadn’t been scattered to the winds. There were peace and plenty there.
“I think we must be the luckiest people in Biafra,” she said.
Rosemary’s sister still had her baby fat.
And now, as I write, I hear from my radio that there was a lot of raping when the Nigerian army came through, that one woman who resisted was drenched with gasoline and then set on fire.
I have cried only once about Biafra. I did it three days after I got home, at two o’clock in the morning. I made grotesque little barking sounds for about a minute and a half, and that was that.
Miriam tells me that she hasn’t cried yet. She’s tough about the ways of the world.
Vance cried at least once, while we were still in Biafra. When little children took hold of his fingers and stopped crying, Vance burst into tears.
Wounded soldiers were living in Rosemary’s dormitory, too. As I left her room, I tripped on her doorsill, and a wounded soldier in the corridor said brightly, “Sorry, sah” This was a form of politeness I had never encountered outside Biafra. Whenever I did something clumsy or unlucky, a Biafran was sure to say that: “Sorry, sah!” He would be genuinely sorry. He was on my side, and against a bloody trapped universe.
Vance came into the corridor, dropped the lens cap of his camera. “Sorry, sah! said the soldier again, We asked him if life has been terrible at the front. “Yes, sah!”he said. “But you remind yourself that you are a brave Biafran soldier, sah, and you stay.”
A dinner party was given in our honor that night by Dr. Ifegwu Eke, the commissioner for education, and his wife. They had been married four days. He had a doctor’s degree from Harvard. She had a doctor’s degree from Columbia. There were five other guests. They all had doctor’ degrees. We were inside a bungalow. The draperies were drawn.
There was a Danish modern sideboard on which primitive African carvings were displayed. There was a stereo phonic phonograph as big as a boxcar. It was playing the music of Mantovani. One of the syrupy melodies, remember, was “Born Free.”
There were canapes. There was a sip of brandy to loosen our tongues. There was a buffet dinner, which included bits of meat from a small native antelope. It was dreadful in the way so many parties are dreadful: Everybody talked about everything except what was really on his mind.
The guest to my right was Dr. S. I. S. Cookey, who had taken his degree at Oxford and who was now provincial administrator for Opobo Province. He was exhausted. His eyes were red. Opobo Province had fallen to the Nigerians months ago. Others were chatting prettily, so I ransacked my mind for items that might encourage Dr. Cookey and me to bubble, too. But all I could think of were gruesome realities of the most immediate sort. It occurred to me to ask him, for instance, if there was a chance that one thing that had killed so many Biafrans was the arrogance of Biafra’s intellectuals. My mind was eager to ask him, too, if I had been a fool to be charmed by General Ojukwu. Was he yet another great leader who would never surrender, who became holier and more radiant as his people died for him?
So I turned to cement. I remained cement through the rest of the evening, and so did Dr. Cookey; Vance and Miriam and I had a drink in Miriam’s room after the party. Owerri’s diesel generator had gone off for the night, so we lit a candle.
Miriam commented on my behavior at the party.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t come to Biafra for canapes.
What did we eat in Biafra? As guests of the government, we had meat and yams and soups and fruit. It was embarrassing. Whenever we told a cadaverous beggar “No chop,” it wasn’t really true. We had plenty of chop, but it was all m our bellies. There was a knock on Miriam’s door that night. Three men came in. We were astonished. One of them was General Philip Effiong, the second funniest man in Biafra. He had a tremblingly devoted aide with him, who saluted him ten times a minute, though the general begged him not to. The third man was a suave and dapper civilian in white pants and sandals and a crimson dashiki. He was Mike Ikenze, personal press secretary to General Ojukwu.
The young general was boisterous, wry, swashbuckling, high as a kite on incredibly awful news from the fronts. Why did he come to see us? Here is my guess: He couldn’t tell his own people how bad things were, and he had somebody. We were the only foreigners around. He talked for three hours. The Nigerians had broken through everywhere. They were fanning out fast, slicing the Biafran dot into dozens of littler ones. Inside some of these littler dots, hiding in the bush, were tens of sands of Biafrans who had not eaten anything for weeks and more. What had become of the brave Biafran soldiers? They were woozy with hunger. They were palsied by shock. They had left their holes. They were wandering.
General Effiong threw up his hands. “It’s over!” he cried, and he gave a laugh that was ghoulish and broken.
He was wrong, of course. The world is about as un-shockable as a self-sealing gas tank.
We didn’t hear guns until the next afternoon. At five o’clock sharp there were four quick peals of thunder to the south. The thunder was manmade. No shells came our way.
The birds stopped talking. Five minutes went by, and they began talking again.’
The government offices were all empty. So were the bungalows. We were waiting for Dr. Unachukwu to take us to Uli Airport, the only way out. The common people had stayed to the last, buying and selling and begging— doing each other’s hair.
They, too, stopped talking when they heard the guns. We could see many of them from our porches. They did not start talking again. They gathered together their property, which they put on their heads. They walked out of Owerri wordlessly, away from the guns.
Dr. Unachukwu, our official host, did not come, and did not call. It was spooky in Owerri. We were now the only people there. We didn’t hear the guns again. Their words to the wise were sufficient.
Owerri’s diesel generator was still running. That was another thing I learned about a city falling silently: To fool the enemy for a little while, you leave the lights on.
Dr. Unachukwu came. He was frantic to be on his way, but he smiled and smiled. He was at the wheel of his own Mercedes. The back of it was crammed with boxes and suitcases. On top of the freight lay his eight year-old son.
I have written all this quickly. I find that I have betrayed my promise to speak of the greatness rather than the pitifulness of the Biafran people. I have mourned the children copiously. I have told of a woman who was drenched in gasoline.
As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death.
The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again.
They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again.
Peace.
My neighbors ask me what they can do for Biafra at this late date, or what they should have done for Biafra at some earlier date.
I tell them this: “Nothing. It was and is an internal Nigerian matter, which you can merely deplore.”
Some wonder whether they, in order to be up to date, should hate Nigerians now.
I tell them, “no.”
EKWULOBIA BORN PASTOR,CONDEMNED TO DEATH BY HANGING CRIES OUT FROM THE PRISON.
Rev.Chibuike Ezeokeke,the self acclaimed pastor of the Holy Junction Prayer Ministry Okpo Ekwulobia who is now on the death row cell of the Enugu medium prison has cried out,asking for God’s divine intervention in his ordeal.
Pastor Ezeokeke was found guilty of murder and condemned to death by hanging by the Court 1of the Anambra State High,Ekwulobia presided over by His Lordship, Justice P.Obiora on June 21 last year for killing his cousin, Mr Emmanuel Ezeokeke.
As it is today,Pastor Chibuike is only waiting for the hangman’s appointment, having lost 90 days of appeal grace on September 2017.
The Ekwulobia UrbanNews,learnt that the pastor’s travails began on May 6,2009 when he stabbed late Emmanuel,son of his sister,Rita Okonkwor, new Ezeokeke during a fight over the family’s land.
The family’s patriarch, late Mr Ezeokeke Ezeume of Umuezenani kindred OKPO Ekwulobia had decided to remarry his first daughter, Abigail after the woman has given birth to Pastor Chibuike and his only sibling Rita during the Nigerian/Biafran war..The reason being that he,Ezeokeke Ezeume had only one male child named Louis and two females,Abigail and the sister.
Rita,who is Chibuike’s only sister equally got pregnant in his father’s house and gave birth to Emmanuel in 1980.
Since the death of Ezeokeke Ezeume,the head of the family in 1986,it has been a family of commotion,the bone of contention being the family’s property.
Pastor Chibuike had built on a land the late Emmanuel and her mother Rita who has since married to an Umuchi man,Marcel Okonkwor believed was their share of the family’s lands,but the pastor was disproving that asking his sister and his son to meet the first son of their father,Louis,whom the pastor accused of selling the very land apportioned to Emmanuel.
Before the gruesome murder of Emmanuel on May 6,2009,this issue has been a recurring decimal in the chequered history of the family’s feud.
Pastor Chibuike after stabbing Emmanuel to death,absconded with his family of six to an unknown destination resulting in the police putting a tag on him and declaring him wanted.
Nobody knew his where about until November 2010,sixteen months after killing his cousin when he was sighted in a town called Akpugoeze in Enugu state.Akpugoeze shares border with Awa town and not too far from Ufuma in Orumba North local government area of Anambra.
Someone who knew him while he was doing commercial bike business had alerted the neighborhood and told them about the pastor’s case in Ekwulobia.And that was how he was almost lynched at the scene of his capture before the arrival of detectives of the homicide division of the Aguata Divisional Police headquarters Ekwulobia.One account said that Pastor Chibuike was caught while organizing a church crusade in Akpugoeze.
Since his arrest,Pastor Chibuike’s case followed diligent prosecution in the the State High Court 1 Ekwulobia with his defence counsel, one Barrister Ike from Agba village throwing all legal punches to save him.
On June 21,2017,the presiding judge found Pastor Chibuike guilty as charged and sentenced him to death by hanging without option of fine.
PastorPastor Chibuike had 90 days grace to appeal against the judgement, starting from the date it was delivered, but he never did.
He is now from the death row inmate cell of the Enugu medium prison hoping for a divine intervention to escape from the hangman’s appointment.
Ekwulobia UrbanNews exclusively learnt that Pastor Chibuike has equally began evangelical works among his fellow condemned inmates of the prison with a view to turning a new leaf and be part of any prerogative of mercy measures anytime by the Anambra state governor, Sir Willie Obiano.Ekwulobia Urban-News
18th of November is called Ofensara Day,this is one of the great history and We have many 
fotos of Ofe Nsala Historical day, Everywhere in Biafra Land is Celebration of Nsara Soup,
An Igbo Man Eating Nsara Soup with Beer ,it is called Ofe Nsara Day,I wish I was there,lol
In every corner on 18th of November in Biafra Land is Eating and drinking ,but it is called Nsara Day,
No Election everywhere,It is a day that IPOB are showing to the World that they Owned the Land,and they control the land not by gun,
but respect truth and honesty,Aba youths turn their streets into playgrounds in honor to “No Election day” aka “Ofe Nsala day” in Anambra.
Wishing u all happy Ofensala… Oya join Biafrans to boycott every elections…
Ofe Nsala girl celebrates Ofe Nsala in grand style.Ofe nsala eyego
The soup is done.
Am enjoying ofe nsala sit at home with my fellow comrades here..
Nothing like election out side 
Enjoyment continues all thanks to you sister for this wonderful ofe nsala.Ofe Nsala Day 18th November ‘17 is fast approaching.. 
please send in pictures videos of your Soup of the Day with hashtag #YourTown #OfeNasala 
,Enjoying my ofe nsala, ,,can’t afford to miss this,,,,,,,,Thanks You Nnamdi Kanu,IPOB members eating their ofe nsala.
And with no care in the world about the election.Bring ur plate come ooooo our sister Rose Mary Ogechukwu Okagbue Ada di oramma si anyi ribe ofensala onye na abiarooo mere onwe ya.
We are winning the war.like and share ,this is great history day in Biafra land and Africa and the World,
this is amazing,everyone if at home eating Ofe Nsala.some voters decided to vote for Ofe Nsala ,
this is amazing,like and share,follow our Page,like and share,
By
Okoro Mark Ogbonnaya (Maazị Ogbonnaya)
We are still discussing rules for writing standard Igbo. I noticed through my research that a large number of Igbo native speakers find it so difficult to place the second person singular pronouns /ị/ and /gị/ in their rightful positions in a sentence (written or spoken).
Being a native speaker of Igbo is not enough to justify one’s Igbo grammatical and communicative competence. You cannot speak English formally anyhow you wish, be you an English native speaker or non-native speaker. The same thing goes for Igbo. You cannot speak or write it anyhow you wish. The following sentences have something to tell us regarding this:
*Nye m mmiri ka m taa
* Nye m mmanya ka m rie
* Nye m nri ka m ńụọ
You will agree with me that when you make the above sentences, the grandmother in your village who didn’t attend any formal education will call you a mad man. Formal education has nothing to do with one’s language. The point I want to make. Some always say: “because Maazi is an Igbo linguist that is why he always want to shove the rules they formed in school down one’s throat”. Which rules? Just go to the village and tell an elderly person, “nye m akara ka m ńụọ”, you will be ostracised and tagged a mad man. The rules are linguistically genetic. The truth is that the aforementioned expressions are morphologically and syntactically correct but semantically and grammatically wrong. Even the speaker will spit on his face for committing such grammatical blunder. What point am I making?
You cannot speak or write Igbo anyhow you wish. It is a rule-based language. Being an Igbo is not enough.
Coming to the topic of today, /ị/ and /gị/ have the same grammatical function but their usage differs. Both are used to refer to the second person singular pronoun. But they cannot be used interchangeably. Let us see the rules:
FIRST RULE:
“Ị” cannot end a sentence in Igbo or appear in the middle of a sentence (except in some conditions) to function as second person singular pronoun. Eg:
* Nwanne ị ahụ na-abịa
* Ndị ahụ niile bụ ndị be ị
These sentences are constructively wrong.
SECOND RULE: (conditions under which “ị” comes in the middle)
“ị” appears in the middle of a sentence when an auxiliary verb comes after it. Eg:
*Mgbe ị na-abịa
*Oge ahụ ị na-agba egwu
*Ọ kwa ị ga-agba ọsọ?
“na” and “ga” that come after “ị” are all auxiliary verbs in the context.
Another condition is when a complete verb comes after “ị” eg:
*Mgbe ị nyụrụ nsị
* Oge ahụ ị tara anụ
* Ọ kwa ị kọrọ ọnụ?
THIRD RULE:
“ị” functioning as the second person singular pronoun generally appears in the initial stage of a sentence. Eg:
*ị ga-anwụ
* ị ga-ata ahụhụ
* ị na-achị ọchị ka ewu a na-ahụ n’ọkụ
* ị jọrọ njọ ka udele isi nkwọcha.
In these sentences if you initialise them with “ga”, you will notice that their underlined grammatical ingredients have been zapped. While though, some dialects of Igbo use “ị” and “gị” as regard to these cited examples, interchangeably. But this piece of research is focusing on the standard Igbo.
FOURTH RULE:
“gị” is used in the beginning, middle and the end of Igbo sentence depending on the grammatical rules it play.
Before “gị” initialise a sentence there must be a connection between the person you are addressing and another party. Eg:
*Gị na nwanne gị na-agba mbọ
*Gị na nwoke ahụ na-akọ ọnụ
* Gị na nwagbọghọ ahụ na-ayị.
No dialect of Igbo initialise these sentences with “ị”. Impossible. Rather you will get variations like: “gụ”, “ge”, “gọ” etc. If you doubt this, name the dialect.
When “gị” appears in the middle of a sentence. Eg:
*Nwanne gị ahụ bụ atụrụ
* Anụrụ m na ọ bụ gị nyụrụ nsị ahụ
* I zuzuchaa uche gị apịawa gị ụtarị.
When “gị” appears in the end of a sentence. Eg:
* O nweghị ihe m ga-eme gị
* Onye ga-anyụ gị anya bụ nwunye gị
* Ihe ga-eme gị ka ga-eme gị.
From our today’s discussion borne out of my personal rigorous research, I come up with these challenging rules of writing and speaking Igbo as regard to the second person singular pronoun. Any question? Feel free to ask. Let me pause here for now and keep thinking my thinkings. Daalụ nu!
TRANSCRIPT OF PROF. INNOCENT ODENIGBO’S SPEECH.
About Nigeria Genocidal War Against Biafra.
Right now, I feel it is important to draw the attention of all Biafrans and in fact the international community as well to what the Biafrans are fighting for i.e the restoration of the Republic of Biafra. The series of injustice perpetuated against the people of Biafra was initiated by a mercenary soldier working on behalf of the British government. His name was Fredrick Lugard.
In the year 1914, Lugard as colonial administrator and friend of the Hausa-Fulani using his connections with the British colonial office committed the most outrageous fraud in human history by unilaterally declaring the amalgamation of northern and southern protectorate in our part of Africa and naming these territories NIGERIA.
This British mercenary did not consult the people before forcing them into an unholy union of his dreams. The name Nigeria was really a coinage from two words, Niger i.e the river Niger and area meaning the area of land around the river Niger. It does not require a rocket scientist or a wordsmith to forge this name. I understand that the name was in fact suggested by Lugard’s wife (Flora Shaw).
For Lugard to choose the name Nigeria for his contraption, it’s clear evident that he was only interested in the land and its resources not in the well being of people of diverse cultures inhabiting the land. So ab-initio, the name Nigeria was only a geographical description without any cultural or historical content and has remained so up till today. For even Lugard himself described the north and the south as oil and water that can never mix.
About 30years into Lugard’s experiment in 1945 to be exact. The first catastrophe struck. Biafrans were slaughtered in northern Nigeria by the Hausa-Fulani as the clear expression of their resentment of the amalgamation.
In 1953, the northerners struck again. One small Biafrans were the victims. The Nigerian census of 1956 was rigged in favor of the northerners by their British friends who inflated the population figures for the north to the detriment of the south.
The pre-independent federal elections were similarly rigged by the departing British colonial administrators to benefit the north against the south. It was not therefore surprising that a few years after independence, Nigeria descended into anarchy and chaos. This time again, Biafrans were the target. Chased away from all over Nigeria as hundredths of thousands of them were murdered in the northern Nigeria.
In May-October 1966, Biafrans were hounded and massacred all over northern Nigeria by the Hausa-Fulani shouting ”ARABA ARABA”meaning SECESSION. The bruised and battered Biafrans returned to the safety of their homeland to nurse their wounds. Abandoned by the federal government of the country to which they were supposed to belong.
A national conference was held in Aburi, Ghana under the chairmanship of Gen. Ankra the Ghanaian head of state. Far reaching agreements aimed at keeping Nigeria together were concluded between Gen. Yakubu Gowon representing Nigeria and Gen. Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu representing the people of Biafra.
But in a most arrogant display of power, Nigeria unilaterally annulled those agreements. The Biafrans had no other choice than to declare their independence on May 30th, 1967.
Instead of allowing Biafrans to nurse their wounds in the peace of their homeland, Nigeria propelled by share hatred and arrogance of power declared a war of aggression against the beleaguered Biafrans. Nigeria wanted the land of Biafra without the people of Biafra and conducted a three year genocidal war to achieve that purpose.
At the end of it all, about 3.5 million Biafra men, women and children were killed in their homeland. I have never read anywhere that people of different cultures and religions have been forced to unite by share military means.
The American civil war was a unique case. Prior to that war, all the states had voluntarily consented to join the union after a gruesome war of independence against the British. But when the southern states refused to give up slavery and decided instead to secede from the union, the northern states led by Abraham Lincoln took up arms against the south as a matter of principle. The north believed that since all men were created equal, it was unjust for people to own slaves at private property. The American civil war was not in reality to unite the country, but a war in defense of human right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
In its genocidal enterprise, Nigeria obtained the ready military and diplomatic assistance of Britain, the formal soviet union, Spain, the then Organization of African Unity led by the formal Ethiopian head of state Emperor Haile Selassie, non-alliance nations led by President Tito of formal Yugoslavia and the United Nations Organization led by U Thant.
The lie being bandit about by Britain and Nigeria was that if Biafra was allowed to secede from Nigeria, the whole of Africa would be afflicted by the disease of secession. Shamelessly, the so called civilized world colluded with Nigeria in the massacre of millions of Biafran men, women and children. The principle of human rights was thrown to the winds.
Biafra was strangled by overwhelming military force, diplomatic frauds and starvation. Even, christian charity organizations and the International Red Cross were dissuaded and frustrated by Britain and Nigeria from delivering urgently needed food material and medicine which would have saved lives.
Whether we believe it or not, there is a great being who is in control of events on earth. Some refers to him as Karma, we call him God. Nigeria thought that once Biafra was defeated in battle, everything would be alright and she will live happily ever after. There is no way you can spill the blood of 3.5 million people and expect that there would not be some retributions. We all know what is happening to Nigeria today.
What of the greatest ally of Nigeria during that war against Biafrans; Britain? One quiet afternoon early this year (2014), two machete wielding Nigerian extremists attacked a British soldier and killed him in broad day light and bragged about it. That event was one of the worst greatest insults inflicted on a world power such as Britain.
Right now, Scotland is in the process of seceding from Britain after about 400years of marriage voluntarily entered into by England and Scotland. Yet, it was the same Britain that scared the world stiff about the impending vulcanization of Africa should Biafra go its way and let the chorus of the sanctity of the territorial integrity of Nigeria as the Biafran war of independence raged on. I do not know what will happen to the territorial integrity of Britain when Scotland eventually secedes.
The truth is that a territory can never be more important than the people who live in it. That is the basic principle of human rights. But the British government under the leadership of Harold Wilson did not believe that the Biafran people were entitled to the same human rights which British people enjoyed. That is why Harold Wilson is one of the list respected world leaders today.
As leader of the Organization of African Unity, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, campaigned against the existence of Biafra because he believed that if Biafra was allowed to exist, the province of Eritrea which was then part of Ethiopia would secede. But in spite of Haile Selassie, Eritrea is now an independent nation.
What about President Tito of Yugoslavia, as leader of the non-aligned nations, President Tito campaigned against Biafra because he feared that his country would break if Biafra were allowed to exist. Where is Yugoslavia today? In the dustbin of history. Out of the ashes of Yugoslavia emerged four or five countries in spite of President Tito.
Now, the formal Soviet union supplied Nigeria with all the mig-fighter planes with which it terrorized, killed and maimed Biafran men, women and children in their homes, in market places, in schools, in churches, in hospitals and in refugee camps. Where is the great soviet union today? In the dustbin of history. From the ashes of the formal soviet union emerged 15 independence countries including Russia.
What of Egypt? While it was not clear whether the Egyptian government cooperated with Nigeria during its war against Biafra, it was common knowledge that Egyptian pilots were responsible for the indiscriminate bombing and stacking of civilian targets that accounted for the loss of thousands of lives. They were probably the mercenaries who did not want to risk their lives and therefore avoided raiding the war fronts. Since they did not discharge their bombs and kill some people, they frequently went for soft targets such as; markets, schools and hospitals. After all, they knew they were engaged in a war of extermination anyway and the civilized world was behind them.
See what is happening in Egypt today, not so good.
By contrast, the five countries that recognized Biafra namely: Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Haiti have enjoyed peace and stability till today. Their heads of state at the time of Biafran saga namely: Dr. Warimu Julius Nyerere, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, Mr. Omar Bongo, Mr. Houphouet-boigny and ”Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier were some of the most respected statesmen in the world. Tanzania has not disintegrated even-though it is a union between mainland Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar off the coast of east Africa. A union voluntarily agreed by the two entities without a land border but with strong cultural and historical ties.
Where was the United Nations Organization on the bight that was Biafra? Mixing in action! The world body never for once heard testimonies from the Biafran people. It listened only to Nigerian because Britain as a permanent member of the Security Council thwarted all effort by Biafra to present her case to the world and by implication deceived the United States on the issue of Biafra. It is now time for Nigeria to pay its debt to history.
It is the wish of everybody concerned that Nigeria should disappear peacefully, letting the component parts go their way after 100years of unholy marriage that has refused to work or Nigeria may choose to die a violent death. This will make no sense since too many lives have already been lost and the land is soaked in blood. Since all things made by mortal man perish, so shall Nigeria made by Fredrick Lugard and his wife seize to exist and from its ashes the republic of Biafra shall emerge. The case of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is one worthy of emulation. So also are the cases of formal Czechoslovakia, formal Yugoslavia, Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as Sudan and Southern Sudan.
Thomas Jefferson writing the American declaration of independence said and I quote ”When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
This idea goes back to Athens of the 5th century BC when Socrates spoke of a law of God respected by all Barbarian and Greek alike or in the Antigone of Sophocles from the 5th century BC when Antigone appealed to a law of God that is the same for all, all over the world and justify any actions that might break the law of men. Cicero defines natural law in his works of moral values as ”the law of God revealed in the reason of His universe” It is one law valid in all places and in all times. It will be the same in Athens and in Rome and in every future nation to come for that law rest with God and there are consequences for breaking the law of God.
I hope the United Nations will be alive to its responsibilities this time around and that the international communities will stop playing games with African lives. The lost of 3.5 million Biafran lives can never be in vain. That will run counter to the principle of natural justice; laws of nature and nature’s God. The people of Biafra have waited all these years for reason and common sense to prevail; for justice to be done so that old and current wounds can start to heal and the spirits of 3.5 million Biafran men, women and children can start to rest in peace. It is time for the restoration of the Republic of Biafra. God bless people of goodwill around the world and God bless Biafra.
Thank you.
THE DANGER OF FOLLY
Many have come out for a singular purpose, to restore the dignity of our people. They understand the dangers we face as a people and have come to discover that, as we try to shy away from confronting these dangers and their fears, we become donkeys of labour and playthings to everything that breathes. Many have realized that this is not the way to live and have given up so much to stand and defend the rights of the indigenous people of Biafra to freedom and the rights to their own State, sovereign, separate and independent from Nigeria.
However, there still are millions amongst us Biafrans whose folly have blinded. Although these lot contribute to a larger part of the listenership in Radio Biafra, they seem not to have grasped that their ineptitude, nonchalance and indifference to our plight and cause amount to folly, and they have not considered the danger thereof. For this reason, I will now make it clearer:
1. We lack the ability to continue to live like slaves in a free world
2. We have lost all patience to remaining in the position of slaves in our own land.
3. We are tired of running away and seeking solace in foreign lands because, there, we still bear the stigma of slavery.
4. We have committed everything to restore our dignity, our land and the sovereignty of Biafra.
5. We understand that there are dangers ahead but we have faced dangers untold and many are still standing. We will willingly withstand every danger in our march to return home and regain our gain.
6. We understand that many have died and many may still die in this quest.
7. We have resolved that life without freedom is worse than death and that we would give everything to free ourselves and posterity from this further stigma of shame.
8. We understand that we need to get every logistics ready for eventualities in order to avert a repeat of the 60s genocide against our people.
9. We have sworn to God, to the spirit of our land, Biafra, and to ourselves that the pains and loss of the genocidal years and effects will not deter us.
10. We appeal to the conscience of ALL Biafranas wherever they may reside to understand that we will neither back down nor will we back out; therefore, we ask ALL Biafrans to FULLY support this restoration drive by every means possible.
11. To the folly, to the jesters and cynics and to all who sit on the fence, we say: Your positions will do you more harm than the good you anticipate in selfishness. Whether or not you support this move financially and otherwise, we will still march on relentlessly towards a restored Biafra. But if you still choose to remain seated on the face, know this:
A. When our enemies approach again, we shall do everything to defend ourselves.
B. We would rather die than run away or capitulate this time.
C. While we may stand to defend ourselves and your fathers and mothers and siblings and children, without your support, our defence may not guarantee their total safety.
D. If you still choose not to support us financially, your fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, children and family members will all die – owing to your folly. And we would gladly die with them in valiant defence of our God-given rights.
E. If, for anything, we all die because of your indifference to our calls for support, know ye that your case will be worse than it is for many Biafrans now. And you can be sure that another generation will rise up to claim back our freedom. So, it’s to the interest of all Biafrans to rise en masse and surrender every support needed to ensure that our enemies do not ever gain a foothold against us again. Either way and whatever your decision and stand becomes from now, Biafra will still stand because we will never cease to advance to possess itTRANSCRIPT OF PROF. INNOCENT ODENIGBO’S SPEECH.
About Nigeria Genocidal War Against Biafra.
Right now, I feel it is important to draw the attention of all Biafrans and in fact the international community as well to what the Biafrans are fighting for i.e the restoration of the Republic of Biafra. The series of injustice perpetuated against the people of Biafra was initiated by a mercenary soldier working on behalf of the British government. His name was Fredrick Lugard.
In the year 1914, Lugard as colonial administrator and friend of the Hausa-Fulani using his connections with the British colonial office committed the most outrageous fraud in human history by unilaterally declaring the amalgamation of northern and southern protectorate in our part of Africa and naming these territories NIGERIA.
This British mercenary did not consult the people before forcing them into an unholy union of his dreams. The name Nigeria was really a coinage from two words, Niger i.e the river Niger and area meaning the area of land around the river Niger. It does not require a rocket scientist or a wordsmith to forge this name. I understand that the name was in fact suggested by Lugard’s wife (Flora Shaw).
For Lugard to choose the name Nigeria for his contraption, it’s clear evident that he was only interested in the land and its resources not in the well being of people of diverse cultures inhabiting the land. So ab-initio, the name Nigeria was only a geographical description without any cultural or historical content and has remained so up till today. For even Lugard himself described the north and the south as oil and water that can never mix.
About 30years into Lugard’s experiment in 1945 to be exact. The first catastrophe struck. Biafrans were slaughtered in northern Nigeria by the Hausa-Fulani as the clear expression of their resentment of the amalgamation.
In 1953, the northerners struck again. One small Biafrans were the victims. The Nigerian census of 1956 was rigged in favor of the northerners by their British friends who inflated the population figures for the north to the detriment of the south.
The pre-independent federal elections were similarly rigged by the departing British colonial administrators to benefit the north against the south. It was not therefore surprising that a few years after independence, Nigeria descended into anarchy and chaos. This time again, Biafrans were the target. Chased away from all over Nigeria as hundredths of thousands of them were murdered in the northern Nigeria.
In May-October 1966, Biafrans were hounded and massacred all over northern Nigeria by the Hausa-Fulani shouting ”ARABA ARABA”meaning SECESSION. The bruised and battered Biafrans returned to the safety of their homeland to nurse their wounds. Abandoned by the federal government of the country to which they were supposed to belong.
A national conference was held in Aburi, Ghana under the chairmanship of Gen. Ankra the Ghanaian head of state. Far reaching agreements aimed at keeping Nigeria together were concluded between Gen. Yakubu Gowon representing Nigeria and Gen. Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu representing the people of Biafra.But in a most arrogant display of power, Nigeria unilaterally annulled those agreements. The Biafrans had no other choice than to declare their independence on May 30th, 1967.
Instead of allowing Biafrans to nurse their wounds in the peace of their homeland, Nigeria propelled by share hatred and arrogance of power declared a war of aggression against the beleaguered Biafrans. Nigeria wanted the land of Biafra without the people of Biafra and conducted a three year genocidal war to achieve that purpose.
At the end of it all, about 3.5 million Biafra men, women and children were killed in their homeland. I have never read anywhere that people of different cultures and religions have been forced to unite by share military means.
The American civil war was a unique case. Prior to that war, all the states had voluntarily consented to join the union after a gruesome war of independence against the British. But when the southern states refused to give up slavery and decided instead to secede from the union, the northern states led by Abraham Lincoln took up arms against the south as a matter of principle. The north believed that since all men were created equal, it was unjust for people to own slaves at private property. The American civil war was not in reality to unite the country, but a war in defense of human right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
In its genocidal enterprise, Nigeria obtained the ready military and diplomatic assistance of Britain, the formal soviet union, Spain, the then Organization of African Unity led by the formal Ethiopian head of state Emperor Haile Selassie, non-alliance nations led by President Tito of formal Yugoslavia and the United Nations Organization led by U Thant.
The lie being bandit about by Britain and Nigeria was that if Biafra was allowed to secede from Nigeria, the whole of Africa would be afflicted by the disease of secession. Shamelessly, the so called civilized world colluded with Nigeria in the massacre of millions of Biafran men, women and children. The principle of human rights was thrown to the winds.
Biafra was strangled by overwhelming military force, diplomatic frauds and starvation. Even, christian charity organizations and the International Red Cross were dissuaded and frustrated by Britain and Nigeria from delivering urgently needed food material and medicine which would have saved lives.
Whether we believe it or not, there is a great being who is in control of events on earth. Some refers to him as Karma, we call him God. Nigeria thought that once Biafra was defeated in battle, everything would be alright and she will live happily ever after. There is no way you can spill the blood of 3.5 million people and expect that there would not be some retributions. We all know what is happening to Nigeria today.
What of the greatest ally of Nigeria during that war against Biafrans; Britain? One quiet afternoon early this year (2014), two machete wielding Nigerian extremists attacked a British soldier and killed him in broad day light and bragged about it. That event was one of the worst greatest insults inflicted on a world power such as Britain.
Right now, Scotland is in the process of seceding from Britain after about 400years of marriage voluntarily entered into by England and Scotland. Yet, it was the same Britain that scared the world stiff about the impending vulcanization of Africa should Biafra go its way and let the chorus of the sanctity of the territorial integrity of Nigeria as the Biafran war of independence raged on. I do not know what will happen to the territorial integrity of Britain when Scotland eventually secedes.
The truth is that a territory can never be more important than the people who live in it. That is the basic principle of human rights. But the British government under the leadership of Harold Wilson did not believe that the Biafran people were entitled to the same human rights which British people enjoyed. That is why Harold Wilson is one of the list respected world leaders today.
As leader of the Organization of African Unity, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, campaigned against the existence of Biafra because he believed that if Biafra was allowed to exist, the province of Eritrea which was then part of Ethiopia would secede. But in spite of Haile Selassie, Eritrea is now an independent nation.
What about President Tito of Yugoslavia, as leader of the non-aligned nations, President Tito campaigned against Biafra because he feared that his country would break if Biafra were allowed to exist. Where is Yugoslavia today? In the dustbin of history. Out of the ashes of Yugoslavia emerged four or five countries in spite of President Tito.
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Now, the formal Soviet union supplied Nigeria with all the mig-fighter planes with which it terrorized, killed and maimed Biafran men, women and children in their homes, in market places, in schools, in churches, in hospitals and in refugee camps. Where is the great soviet union today? In the dustbin of history. From the ashes of the formal soviet union emerged 15 independence countries including Russia.
What of Egypt? While it was not clear whether the Egyptian government cooperated with Nigeria during its war against Biafra, it was common knowledge that Egyptian pilots were responsible for the indiscriminate bombing and stacking of civilian targets that accounted for the loss of thousands of lives. They were probably the mercenaries who did not want to risk their lives and therefore avoided raiding the war fronts. Since they did not discharge their bombs and kill some people, they frequently went for soft targets such as; markets, schools and hospitals. After all, they knew they were engaged in a war of extermination anyway and the civilized world was behind them.
See what is happening in Egypt today, not so good.
By contrast, the five countries that recognized Biafra namely: Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Haiti have enjoyed peace and stability till today. Their heads of state at the time of Biafran saga namely: Dr. Warimu Julius Nyerere, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, Mr. Omar Bongo, Mr. Houphouet-boigny and ”Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier were some of the most respected statesmen in the world. Tanzania has not disintegrated even-though it is a union between mainland Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar off the coast of east Africa. A union voluntarily agreed by the two entities without a land border but with strong cultural and historical ties.
Where was the United Nations Organization on the bight that was Biafra? Mixing in action! The world body never for once heard testimonies from the Biafran people. It listened only to Nigerian because Britain as a permanent member of the Security Council thwarted all effort by Biafra to present her case to the world and by implication deceived the United States on the issue of Biafra. It is now time for Nigeria to pay its debt to history.
It is the wish of everybody concerned that Nigeria should disappear peacefully, letting the component parts go their way after 100years of unholy marriage that has refused to work or Nigeria may choose to die a violent death. This will make no sense since too many lives have already been lost and the land is soaked in blood. Since all things made by mortal man perish, so shall Nigeria made by Fredrick Lugard and his wife seize to exist and from its ashes the republic of Biafra shall emerge. The case of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh is one worthy of emulation. So also are the cases of formal Czechoslovakia, formal Yugoslavia, Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as Sudan and Southern Sudan.
Thomas Jefferson writing the American declaration of independence said and I quote ”When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
This idea goes back to Athens of the 5th century BC when Socrates spoke of a law of God respected by all Barbarian and Greek alike or in the Antigone of Sophocles from the 5th century BC when Antigone appealed to a law of God that is the same for all, all over the world and justify any actions that might break the law of men. Cicero defines natural law in his works of moral values as ”the law of God revealed in the reason of His universe” It is one law valid in all places and in all times. It will be the same in Athens and in Rome and in every future nation to come for that law rest with God and there are consequences for breaking the law of God.
I hope the United Nations will be alive to its responsibilities this time around and that the international communities will stop playing games with African lives. The lost of 3.5 million Biafran lives can never be in vain. That will run counter to the principle of natural justice; laws of nature and nature’s God. The people of Biafra have waited all these years for reason and common sense to prevail; for justice to be done so that old and current wounds can start to heal and the spirits of 3.5 million Biafran men, women and children can start to rest in peace. It is time for the restoration of the Republic of Biafra. God bless people of goodwill around the world and God bless Biafra.
Thank you.
THE DANGER OF FOLLY
Many have come out for a singular purpose, to restore the dignity of our people. They understand the dangers we face as a people and have come to discover that, as we try to shy away from confronting these dangers and their fears, we become donkeys of labour and playthings to everything that breathes. Many have realized that this is not the way to live and have given up so much to stand and defend the rights of the indigenous people of Biafra to freedom and the rights to their own State, sovereign, separate and independent from Nigeria.
However, there still are millions amongst us Biafrans whose folly have blinded. Although these lot contribute to a larger part of the listenership in Radio Biafra, they seem not to have grasped that their ineptitude, nonchalance and indifference to our plight and cause amount to folly, and they have not considered the danger thereof. For this reason, I will now make it clearer:
1. We lack the ability to continue to live like slaves in a free world
2. We have lost all patience to remaining in the position of slaves in our own land.
3. We are tired of running away and seeking solace in foreign lands because, there, we still bear the stigma of slavery.
4. We have committed everything to restore our dignity, our land and the sovereignty of Biafra.
5. We understand that there are dangers ahead but we have faced dangers untold and many are still standing. We will willingly withstand every danger in our march to return home and regain our gain.
6. We understand that many have died and many may still die in this quest.
7. We have resolved that life without freedom is worse than death and that we would give everything to free ourselves and posterity from this further stigma of shame.
8. We understand that we need to get every logistics ready for eventualities in order to avert a repeat of the 60s genocide against our people.
9. We have sworn to God, to the spirit of our land, Biafra, and to ourselves that the pains and loss of the genocidal years and effects will not deter us.
10. We appeal to the conscience of ALL Biafranas wherever they may reside to understand that we will neither back down nor will we back out; therefore, we ask ALL Biafrans to FULLY support this restoration drive by every means possible.
11. To the folly, to the jesters and cynics and to all who sit on the fence, we say: Your positions will do you more harm than the good you anticipate in selfishness. Whether or not you support this move financially and otherwise, we will still march on relentlessly towards a restored Biafra. But if you still choose to remain seated on the face, know this:
A. When our enemies approach again, we shall do everything to defend ourselves.
B. We would rather die than run away or capitulate this time.
Igbo Culture and Tradition 