-
Biafra Agitation: Any Justification
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 7]
Page 1 of 7
-
-
-
CHAPTER ONE
BIAFRA AS LED BY CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU
1.1 The Remote Causes of the Biafra Declaration
By remote causes we mean those errors committed, mistakes made, events, etc. that in one way or the other contributed to the Nigeria’s political instability, which are often ignored, but form the bedrock of the immediate crises that led to the attempted secession. We need to note, and importantly too, that these remote causes date back to pre-amalgamation era, and equally too, that their negative consequences still persist as freshly as ever till today.
Before the arrival of the colonial masters, the different peoples that make up what we now call Nigeria lived as independent kingdoms, empires, republics, caliphates etc. These peoples had their different socio-political structures, cultures and (sometimes) religion, which in most cases differed greatly from one another’s. In the North, it was a highly centralized socio-political structure, with the caliph at the head possessing an absolute power both in political, judicial and religions matters. It was a theocracy with Arab oriented culture and the official religion was Islam.
In the South the case was different. Here we see diverse political administrative systems and cultural orientations, with some little similarities among some groups. In the Yoruba dominated South-West it was another form of centralized system of government which was more democratic and largely less totalitarian than the one in the North. Their orientation was basically African both in religion and culture. The most prominent among the Yoruba kingdoms was the old Oyo Empire. Moving eastwards from there you meet Benin kingdom in the Mid-West which had some similarities with the Yoruba kingdoms but politically independent of them. There are equally some other smaller independent political entities and kingdoms in places like Bonny, Kalabari, Lagos etc.
Coming to the Igbo dominated East, the system of government was mainly republican. The small political units scattered everywhere independent of one another. The system was totally decentralized and no one had the power to lord it over the other, yet they had leaders who just had the mandate to represent their people the way the people wished. Everybody was involved in the political life of the community and everything was by consensus; thorough republicanism.
When the colonial masters came, they signed treaties of protection with these different peoples and these treaties were most often signed after long wars of resistance1. This means that some of these peoples never for once accepted the colonial masters’ protection, but were rather overpowered. What followed immediately was total exploitation of their resources in the name of protective administration. These different peoples were summarily administered separately but the major dividing line was drawn between the North and the South as separate entities. These peoples were later fused together for the British economic and administrative conveniences without their consent; they were only talked to and not talked with. This is how what we now call Nigeria falsely came to be a country, after the 1914 amalgamation.
After the amalgamation, one would expect the colonial masters to begin to unify the minds of these peoples who had little or nothing in common and more still who never consented to the amalgamation. This never happened; instead the reverse was the case. The British did all they could to plant as much disharmony as possible among these different peoples till they left, that the effects are ever strongly holding the so-called country to ransom till today. Yet they tried their best very cleverly to prevent any section from leaving the fold and granted them independence as a country and still fight for its corporate existence more than any person till today. At this point a normal thinking mind will ask, ‘Why this double standard?’. Alexander Madiebo puts the answer thus:
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 7]
Page 1 of 7
-
