quote:

---

"From there, we moved towards Ugwu Ogonogo and suddenly, the soldiers moods changed and they started being violent and we became apprehensive, but they assured us that there was no problem. They moved us to Ugwusara, where they separated men from women and children and set up machine guns around the men. That was when we suspected foul play, which was confirmed when one soldier wearing a smile said 'Me I am from Chad, I was born in Adamawa. I hate Ibos and all Ibo should die.'

"He spoke in Hausa that the men should be taken in 10s and shot. Then people started falling down refusing to be taken aside and they started shooting into the heap of men killing them instantly. I raised my head a little from the heap and saw my elder brother dead, my father's face was half torn by bullets. After shooting at the heap for a long time, they packed their guns and left.

---

Now replace Nigeria with Nazi Germany, 1933-1945. Replace the names of those Igbo hills and places with hills and places in Germany and Poland. In the voices of those Nigerian and Chadian war criminals, anyone could clearly hear the hate of Ivan the Terrible, Goebbles, and the murderous guards of the Austwitz and Treblinka death camps. You could also hear the death shrieks and the horrifying sounds of the Jewish victims on their procession to the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

At the very least, Nigeria could have addressed these matters of war crimes many years ago. Instead we have war criminals as Heads of State, defense ministers, and “leaders” of the country. These people have over the years congratulated each other for their crimes, awarded each other medals honor, including Grand Commander of the Federal Republic, Commander of the Order of the Niger, etc. We need a revolution.

You have just began hearing the little bits of your genocidal Holocaust against the Igbos. You never thought that the day would ever come when you all will face up to your genocidal crimes and pay for it?
You still need Igbos in your Nigerian midst for complete extermination?

How dare you barbaric Igbo blood thirsty criminals think that Igbo Biafrans want to remain in same country as you?
You have been cursed to the same backwardness and wretchedness as your Chadian accomplices. Progress, prosperity and peace will elude you.

Our massacred heroes (soldiers, women, children, men, dis-emboweled pregnant women, unborn children) are turning in their graves, our Dieties, rivers, forests, and hills are restive, seeking for justice and appeasement for being exterminated, betrayed, and defiled with the help of "moderates".
So "moderates", be proud and enjoy the blood loots of your betrayals as best as you can. The Sun is Rising for the true Biafrans. We live and are still living the painful cosequences of your selling us out. The day of reckoning is about to dawn upon you from on high, and you shall surely receive your right and just payments.

In one of my posts, I called for the unity of the Igbo.

VANGUARD: Cover Story

FRIDAY, 27TH APRIL, 2001

I Oputa: How Akaluka was beheaded in Kano —FATHER








L

By Emeka Mamah & Ise-Oluwa Ige

ENUGU — THE 1994 beheading of Gideon Akaluka, an Igboman, by Islamic fundamentalists in Kano re-echoed at the Oputa panel sitting in Enugu yesterday as the deceased’s father, Mr. Lovenda Akaluka, 70, gave an account of the incident.

The panel also heard from the Anglican Bishop of Enugu, Emmanuel Chukwumah how 2000 Igbo people in Asaba were murdered by the federal troops in 1967.

Lovenda, and his only surviving son, Samuel held the entire panel members and the audience spell-bound with their account of the beheading of Gideon in the Kano Prisons by fanatics said to have hung the victim’s head on "a long rod, jubilating around the streets of Kano with it."

Gideon’s elder brother, Samuel who gave evidence from the witness box described his experience as "stranger than fiction. Yet, it happened. It is a taboo in Igbo land to bury somebody without his head. Continuing, he said: "Besides Gideon’s head which till now is no where to be found, his other body was not released to us.

"Worse still, while he was in prison, before he was murdered in cold blood, policemen of the Kano Police Command stormed Gideon’s residence in the state and took away all his belongings, including cash. This is unfortunate."

On the circumstances that triggered Gideon’s murder, Samuel said "it all started on November 11, 1994. I was at my shed in Kano when the wife of late Gideon ran to us that some people were looking for Gideon.

"I went to the yard with him. Reaching there, I saw some policemen who had already arrested him and I followed them to their Central Police Station where he was detained, to find out why he was being apprehended, but all to no avail.

"Not until we got the service of a lawyer to either assist us in bailing Gideon or ensure he was charged to the court, we never knew what he was alleged to have done.

"It was at the court where we expected to see him since his arrest that we got to know that it was no longer a simple matter.

"Hundreds of Islamic fundamentalists had thronged the court with threat that they would kill him when he was being taken down from the black maria.

"His matter could not be heard as he was taken back with the black maria for the fear that he could be killed as being threatened," he said. Samuel added: "Our lawyer had earlier filed a motion seeking his unconditional release from detention, but all to no avail. While I felt that Gideon had been taken back to the prison safely, I and his kinsmen went home.

"On December 27, 1994 when I went to the prison to give him food as usual, I was not allowed to enter the prison where he was transferred to.

"But while going back home, along the road, I saw the head of my brother hung up on a long rod by the Islamic fundamentalists, jubilating round the streets with it.

"I later got to know that he was killed the previous day in the prisons by hundreds of the fundamentalists who stormed the prisons, overpowered the security guards at the gate before severing the head of my brother from his body.

"Our lawyer whom I ran to for the purpose of informing him, himself had been chased out of his chambers for representing Gideon in the case," he added.

According to Samuel, despite a release by the Igbo Community Association in Kano, condemning the "barbaric act" and calling for the release of the body, their requests were not harkened to.

Asked what they wanted, Samuel spoke on behalf of the family that they wanted the commission to assist them retrieve Gideon’s body for proper burial and the release of all his belongings. Samuel, however, added that till date, the reasons for the strange murder of his brother was still hazy to him.

It was at this juncture that Justice Oputa directed that the incumbent police commissioner of the state and the state prison authorities be summoned to explain in clear terms what actually happened during the time and know why the policemen had to remove all the property of late Gideon, including cash. The matter was adjourned till May 3, this year. Shortly after, three witnesses including the Anglican Bishop of Enugu, Emmanuel Chukwumah, a Lagos based surgeon, Dr. Emmanuel Ifeanyi Uriah and a serving Justice of the Customary Court of Appeal, Justice Ambrose Boniface Chukwuemeka Egu narrated how federal troops massacred over 2,000 Igbo people in Asaba and scores of market women in Umuohiagu in Ngor Okpala area during the civil war.

Back to top

VANGUARD : Transmitted FRIDAY, 27TH APRIL, 2001

WEEKEND VANGUARD: Cover Story

SATURDAY, 28TH APRIL, 2001

I WOUNDED CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS :You can't discuss Biafra without us! MESSAGE TO OPUTA, OHANAEZE









L

By Tony Edike, Awka

FOR the Igbos, any talk that borders on the Nigerian civil war touches the raw nerves. It arouses deep emotions and recreates the bitter memories of the fratricide.

Amid tears on January 12, 1970, both the Nigerian and Biafran soldiers embraced each other in what signalled the cessation of the 30-month war. It was the day that the Biafran second-in-command, Maj-Gen. Phillip Effiong who had assumed leadership of the secessionist army in the absence of Gen. Emeka Ojukwu had declared among other things that "we (Biafrans) affirm we are loyal Nigerian citizens and accept the authority of the Federal Military Government of Nigeria"...and "that the Republic of Biafra ceases to exist."

Effiong surendered to Lt. Col. Olusegun Obasanjo who was then the General Officer Commanding the Third Marine Commando. The two embraced themselves after the formal documentation.

Three days later, Effiong was at Dodan Barracks, the then seat of power where the formal ceremony of the surrender took place in yet another emotional setting with Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the Head of State at the time.

Again, the Biafran deputy leader passionately requested the government "to give urgent relief" and for the central government "to order their troops to stop all military operations. May God help us." In response, Gowon said: "I accept in good faith Lt. Col. Phillip Effiong’s declaration... We must all welcome, with open arms, the people (Biafrans) now freed."

And so, Biafra ceased to be. But 31 years after, its ghosts would not just go away. The controversy surrounding the abandoned property persists. Cries of marginalisation by the entire South-East are traceable to the war. Worse still, the Biafran soldiers who lost their limbs during the fratricide share space with leprosy victims at Oji River, Enugu State and are the sorry sights on the Enugu-Onitsha highway where they beg for alms to eke a living and ensure a future for their children.

At the Old Parliament Building in Enugu between Wednesday and yesterday, Ndigbo gathered in thousands to hear the proceedings of the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa-led Human Rights Violation Commission as it concerned the civil war. The Igbos were represented by their socio-cultural group, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo in which Prof. Ben Nwabueze, its secretary is the petitioner.

With no less than eight Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) of Igbo extraction appearing for Ohanaeze alongside other lawyers, the people through Comrade Uche Chukwumerije recounted their horrors, grief and grievances of the pogrom that lasted between 1967 and 1970.

Specifically, Chukwumerije enumerated his claims of Igbo disempowerment to include the government’s vindictive enactment of abandoned property law in Rivers State and the consequent dispossession of Igbo property owners of their houses and plots in the state, the impoverishment of the people through the payment of a paltry ten pounds irrespective of individual savings at the end of the war, the deliberate refusal to reconstruct utilities, structures and infrastructure damaged during the pogrom among other atrocities.

The Ohanaeze requested financial compensation for bereaved and humiliated families in respect of the murdered, maimed, the raped and the dehumanized.

But nowhere is the sorry picture of the war more realistically appreciated than at Oji River, the War Disabled Persons Camp of the Veterans of the Nigerian civil war. This is the home of the wounded ex-Biafran soldiers who lost their limbs.

Come rain or sunshine, they journey down daily to the Enugu-Onitsha highway in their wheelchairs to beg for alms under thatched huts. In our refreshingly different style, your soar-away Weekend Vanguard took a trip to Oji River to find out the position of the wounded ex-soldiers in relation to the Igbo claim for reparation at the Oputa panel.

What emerged were tales of woes, lamentations, altercations and revelations that portray the state of mind of the victims. They were all reminders of the earlier vituperations of Joseph Akanu who once told this paper that "we’ve been abandoned by those who should ordinarily take care of us. We have families here; we have our children. What future is there for them? We’re sad, indeed, but we rely on God for our sustenance."

This time, the wounded ex-soldiers took their case for succour to President Olusegun Obasanjo through an appeal sent via the South-East governors in a letter dated January 3, 2001. Titled ‘Healing the last scar of the Nigerian civil war’ in the memo signed by Messrs. Lawrence Akpu and Emeka Oliwe, president and secretary respectively, the wounded ex-Biafran soldiers pleaded: "Now that the job of healing the wound of the civil war is on, we crave the indulgence of Yours Excellency to complete the cycle with the rehabilitation of the wounded ex-Biafran soldiers in the spirit of ‘no victor, no vanquished’ and the three big Rs of reconciliation, reconstruction and rehabilitation.

"We need the attention because while some of us are still nursing our war sores, fractures and artillery shock, the rest of us have been living a life of total confinement for having no wheelchairs, crutches and artificial limbs; not to mention our endless ordeal of starvation and no medical attention, having become too incapacitated to fend for ourselves. This is moreso as it affects those of us with spinal or head injuries... Please, help us to spend the last days of our battered lives in some succour so we can die in some peace."

But why are they not at the Oputa panel sitting in Enugu to present their cases personally? "We had written a memorandum to the Oputa panel sitting in Enugu," Lawrence Akpu, the president told Weekend Vanguard, Wednesday. "But we could not file it before the panel commenced sitting on Wednesday, April 18, 2001.

"On Thursday, April 19, we sent somebody to Enugu to submit our papers but on arrival, he was told that our submissions would not be accepted because the deadline for the submission of memoranda had expired. Another good citizen volunteered to go back there on Friday, April 20 but he too did not succeed because our memo was not accepted," added Akpu.

"We are pleading with the Justice Oputa Panel to consider our plight and hear our case. We are the people who fought the war. Today, we have been confined to wheelchairs for those who could afford such because of that war. We are the casualties that anybody can readily point at. We are suffering greatly and we’ve been in such agonies since the war ended in 1970."

Another war veteran was more blunt. "For 31 years, we’ve been totally neglected not only by our country but by even our leaders. The Oputa Panel is an opportunity for us to bare our minds. It will be too bad if those who fought the war, who can’t walk again because of injuries sustained during the war, who have families and can’t take care of them, who have children that are not in school are denied at the end from saying it the way it is. Did those who appear to be talking about the Igbos and the war fight? Where were they during the war? Are their families facing the same kind of deprivation that our wives and children face?"

For the former Biafran soldiers, the Oputa Panel would have missed its true essence of coming to Igboland if those who fought and were wounded in the battle-front are denied any access to the commission. To them, no leader of Ohanaeze can present their case better because like one of the men said at their Oji River camp, "we wear the shoe; so, we are the ones who know where it pinches. Anybody can claim to talk for the Igbos about the war but when it relates to the victims, there should be those who should paint the exact picture."

Their passionate plea to the panel is that their views must be heard if true reconciliation is to be achieved. They also insist that the Oputa panelists should consider their predicament and have a rethink on their decision not to entertain their case. Or in the alternative, "Justice Oputa and his men should visit us here in Oji River to see things for themselves. If we were as able-bodied, we would have met the deadline. The panel should, please, understand that we are men who have been permanently confined to the wheelchair. We’re not just playing on sentiments; this is a statement of fact."

However, the disabled war veterans made available their seven-point memorandum which they intended to submit to the Human Rights Violations Commission to Weekend Vanguard. "First of all," says the president, "we want to thank Vanguard Newspapers and Weekend Vanguard in particular for showing interest in our case. Also, we thank those Nigerians who stop and offer us some assistance."

In their memo signed by Akpu and Emeka Oliwe, the secretary, the civil war casualties noted among other things that "we are shocked that disabled victims of that war like us, inspite of the anguish of our disability and the fact that we were innocent of the cause of the war, could be abandoned and denied rehabilitation when other victims of the war had long been rehabilitated, some into super luxury."

Also, they prayed the nation "to forgive and rehabilitate us because we are still nursing our war sores, fractures, shell-shock, spinal cord and head injuries, etc... We are too sick and weak to give the gory details of our agonies" even as they promised to unmask more things "if you invite us."

Their greatest anger is that Ohanaeze did not consult them to have their input before heading to the Oputa panel. "And this, you’ll agree with me," said one of them, "is unfair and explains that those who advocate to be speaking for us committed some grave mistakes either due to omission or commission."

Back to top

WEEKEND VANGUARD : Transmitted SATURDAY, 28TH APRIL, 2001