posted                      

quote:

---

Fellow countrymen and women, you, the people of Eastern Nigeria:

Conscious of the supreme authority of Almighty God over all mankind, of your duty to yourselves and posterity; aware that you can no longer be protected in your lives and in your property by any Government based outside Eastern Nigeria;

Believing that you are born free and have certain inalienable rights which can best be preserved by yourselves; Unwilling to be free partners in any association of a political or economical nature;

Rejecting the authority of any person or persons other than the Military Government of Eastern Nigeria to make any imposition of whatever kind or nature upon you;

Determined to dissolve all political and other ties between you and the former Federal Republic of Nigeria;

Prepared to enter into such association, treaty or alliance with any sovereign state within the former Federal Republic of Nigeria and elsewhere on such terms and conditions as best to sub serve your common good;

Affirming your trust and confidence in me; Having mandated me to proclaim on your behalf, and in your name, that Eastern Nigeria be a sovereign independent Republic,

Now, therefore, I, Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles, recited above, do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters shall henceforth be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of "The Republic of Biafra". And I do declare that

i. all political ties between us and the Federal Republic of Nigeria are hereby totally dissolved;

ii. all subsisting contractual obligations entered into by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria or by any person, authority or organization or government acting on its behalf, with any person, authority or organization operating, or relating to any matter or thing, within the Republic of Biafra, shall henceforth be deemed to be entered into with the Military Governor of the Republic of Biafra for and on behalf of the Government and people of the republic of Biafra, and the covenants thereof shall, subject to this Declaration, be performed by the parties according to their tenor;

iii. all subsisting international treaties and obligations made on behalf of eastern Nigeria by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, shall be honored and respected;

iv. Eastern Nigeria's due share of all subsisting international debits and obligations entered into by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on behalf of the Federation of Nigeria shall be honored
and respected;

v. steps will be taken to open discussions of the question of Eastern Nigeria's due share of the assets of the Federation of Nigeria and personal properties of the citizens of Biafra throughout the Federation of Nigeria;

vi. the rights, privileges, pensions, etc. of all personnel of the Public Services, the Armed Forces and the Police now serving in any capacity within the Republic of Biafra, are hereby guaranteed;

vii. we shall keep the door open for association with, and would welcome, any sovereign unit or units in the former Federation of Nigeria or in any other parts of Africa desirous of association with us for the purposes of running a common services organization and for the establishment of economic ties;

viii. we shall protect the lives and property of all foreigners residing in Biafra; we shall extend the hand of friendship to those nations who respect our sovereignty, and shall repel any interference in our internal affairs;

ix. we shall faithfully adhere to the charter of the Organization of African Unity and of the United Nations Organization;

x. It is our intention to remain a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations in our right as a sovereign, independent nation.

Long live the Republic of Biafra!
And may God protect all who live in her!

---

posted                         

quote:

---

Fellow Biafrans, these are the evil and titanic forces with which we are engaged in a life and death struggle. These are the obstacles to the Negro's efforts to realize himself. Thugs rag the forces, which the Biafran revolution must sweep aside to succeed.... We do not claim that the Biafran revolution is the first attempt in history by the Negro to assert his identity, to claim his right and proper place as a human being on a basic of equality with the white and yellow races. We are aware of the Negro's past and present efforts to prove his ability at home and abroad. We are familiar with his achievements in pre-history; we are familiar with his achievements in political organizations; we are familiar with his contributions to the world store of art and culture. The Negro's white oppressors are not unaware of all these. But instead of their awareness they are not prepared to admit that the Negro is a man and a brother. From this derives our deep conviction that the Biafran revolution is not just a movement of Igbos, Ibibios, Ijaws, and Ogojas. It is a movement of true and patriotic Africans. It is African nationalism conscious of itself and fully aware of the powers with which it is contending....

We have indeed come a long way. We were once Nigerians, today we are Biafrans. We are Biafrans because on May 30, 1967, we finally said 'no' to the evils and injustices in which Nigeria was steeped. Nigeria was made up of peoples and groups with very little in common. As everyone knows, Biafrans were in the forefront among those who tried to make Nigeria a nation. It is ironic that some ill-informed and mischievous people today will accuse us of breaking up a united African country. Only those who do not know the facts or deliberately ignore them can hold such an opinion. We know the facts because we were there and the things that happened, happened to us.

Nigeria was indeed a very wicked and corrupt country in spite of the glorious image given her in the European press We know why Nigeria was given that image. It was her reward for serving the economic and political interests of her European masters. Nigeria is a stooge of Europe. Her independence was and is a lie. Even her Prime Minister was a Knight of the British Empire; but worse than her total subservience to foreign political and economic interests, Nigeria committed many crimes against her nationals, which in the end made complete nonsense of her claim to unity. Nigeria persecuted and slaughtered her minorities; Nigerian justice was a farce, her elections, her politics her everything was corrupt. Qualification, merit and experience were dislocated in public service. In one area of Nigeria, for instance, they preferred to turn a nurse who had worked for five years into a doctor rather than employ a qualified doctor from another part of Nigeria. Barely literate clerks were made Permanent Secretaries. A university Vice Chancellor was sacked because he belonged to the wrong tribe. Bribery, corruption and nepotism were so widespread that people began to wonder openly whether any country in the world could compare with Nigeria in corruption and abuse of power. All the modern institutions the legislature the civil service, the army, the police, the judiciary, the universities, the trade unions and the organs of mass information were devalued and made the tools of corrupt political power. There was complete neglect and impoverishment of the people. Whatever prosperity there was, was deceptive. There was despair in many hearts, and the number of suicides was growing every day. The farmers were very hard- hit. Their standards of living had fallen steeply. The soil was perishing from over-farming and lack of scientific husbandry. The towns, like the soil, were wastelands into which people put in too much exertion for too little reward. There were crime waves and people lived in fear of their lives. Business speculation, rack-renting, worship of money and share:) practices left a few people extremely rich at the expense of the many, and those few flaunted their wealth before the many and talked about sharing the national cake. Foreign interests did roaring business spreading consumer goods and wares among a people who had not developed a habit of thrift and well fell prey to lying advertisements. Inequality of the sexes was actively promoted in Nigeria. Rather than aspire to equality with men, women were encouraged to accept the status of inferiority and to become the mistresses of successful politicians and business executive, or they were married off at the age of fourteen as the fifteenth wives of the new rich. That was the glorious Nigeria, the mythical Nigeria, celebrated in the European press.

Then worst of all came the genocide in which over 50,000 of our kith and kin were slaughtered in cold blood all over Nigeria and nobody asked questions; nobody showed regret; nobody showed remorse. Thus, Nigeria had become a jungle with no safety, no justice and no hope for our people. We decided then to found a new place, a human habitation away from the Nigerian jungle. That was the origin of our revolution. From the moment we assumed the illustrious name of the ancient kingdom of Biafra, we were rediscovering the original independence of a great African people. We accepted by this revolutionary act the glory, as well as the sacrifice, of true independence and freedom. We knew that we had challenged the many forces and interests, which had conspired to keep Africa and the black race in subjection forever. We knew they were going to be ruthless and implacable in defence of their age-old imposition on us and exploitation of our people. But we were prepared, and remain prepared, to pay any price for our freedom and dignity....

Our revolution is a historic opportunity given to us to establish a just society; to revive the dignity of our people at home and the dignity of the black man in the world. We realize that in order to achieve those ends we must remove those weaknesses in our institutions and organizations and those disabilities in foreign relations which have tended to degrade this dignity. This means that we must reject Nigerianism in all its guises....

The Biafran revolution is the people's revolution. 'Who are the people?' you ask. The farmer, the trader, the clerk, the businessman, the housewife, the student, the civil servant, the soldier you and I arc the people. Is there anyone here who is not of the people? Is there anyone here afraid of the people anyone suspicious of the people? Is there anyone despising the people? Such a man has no place in our revolution. If he is a leader, he has no right to leadership, because all power, all sovereignty, belongs to the people. In Biafra the people are supreme; the people are master the leader is the servant. You see, you make a mistake when you greet me with shouts of 'power, power'. I am not power you are. My name is Emeka, I am your servant, that is all.

---

posted                      

quote:

---

SUNDAY VANGUARD : Heroes of the 20th Century SUNDAY, 15th APRIL, 2001
Chief Emeka Ojukwu— Eze Ndigbo
By Dele Sobowale
"One crowded hour of glorious life; Is worth an age without a name" — Major Thomas Osbert
Mordannt 1769

HE was an unlikely rebel because he was born to wealth and privilege, on November 4, 1933 and he attended all the best schools the world had to offer from CMS Grammar School to Kings College and
Oxford University taking B.A and M.A in history. Usually, people with that background drift into the Civil Service and given his connections and father’s wealth, young Chukwu-Emeka might have gone anywhere -Foreign Service, or UAC of Nigeria. Instead he did the unthinkable for his generation; he went into the army where he was probably one of a handful of graduates then in uniform. That’s the stuff rebels are made of and that maverick streak in him was to propel him to fame which frequently lasts longer than fortune later in life. Ojukwu led the boring life of an army officer unaccustomed to conflict because the Nigerian army of the 1950s and 1960s up to the first coup of 1966 was engaged in nothing more than parade drills and mock battles.

It was all beer, suya and women. Its most memorable action centred around its peace-keeping role during the Congo crisis in the early 1960s. Otherwise, Nigeria was at peace with its neighbours; none of whom at any rate had the capacity to threaten the nation’s security given Nigeria’s population and relative might.
Emeka might have risen to the rank of brigadier and even general without ever firing a shot in anger like most of Nigeria’s armchair generals if the first coup spearheaded by Major Nzeogwu Chukwumah Nzeogwu had not succeeded in 1966. That event changed the direction of Nigeria's history forever and the chain of reactions that followed propelled Ojukwu from obscurity to the global stage, ending, even if briefly, as a head of state for a few heady months. Nigeria’s civil war history is a familiar one.

Major Nzeogwu’s coup was neutralised by the top military brass and General Ironsi, an Igbo, emerged as the first military head of state in a coup which claimed the lives of Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Premier of Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto; the Premier of Western Region, Chief S.L.A. Akintola and the highest ranking Yoruba army officer, Brigadier Ademulegun. Months after, northern soldiers led by Gowon ably aided by Danjuma, Abacha (the real killers then) staged a counter-coup bringing down Ironsi in one of the bloodiest coups ever staged in Nigeria.

Still, Ojukwu might have died in opulent obscurity if northerners had not embarked on an orgy of violence in which an estimated 500,000 Igbos were killed or maimed. Violence of that magnitude was unprecedented in the history of Nigeria which is not strange to ethnic feuds. The 1967 pogrom sent surviving Igbos screaming back to their homelands in the Eastern Region asking for vengeance. Colonel Ojukwu was then the Governor of the Eastern Region and the gory sight of his kinsmen, brutalised and bringing tales of unimaginable atrocities in the north must have raised his temperature. But Ojukwu was not
by nature impetuous; he was and is still a cool and calculating individual.

Yet fate was about to shove him into a role for which he was not fully prepared at 33 years old. Igbos were streaming into the Eastern Region, not only from the East, but also from the West as the northern controlled military government under Gowon consolidated its hold on power and apparently allowed the pogrom in the north to continue unchecked. Nobody knows precisely when the Igbo cup of anger ran over; but soon the fleeing Igbos and their relatives at home started the demand for separation from Nigerian State in which they no longer felt secure. Suddenly the idea of Biafra was born and Ojukwu had greatness thrust upon him because indeed it was the people who asked him to lead them in the rebellion.

Once called upon though, the real rebel in him came to the fore. If the truth must be told, Ojukwu fought the most just war of any leader in history. His people were the aggrieved party; Gowon’s dishonourable repudiation of the Aburi accords forced war on a reluctant Biafra and its leader. And they fought the war like heroes every single one of them. "Courage is knowing you are beaten before you start but moving forward anyway" said John Wayne, American film actor in one of his roles as a Sherrif in the Wild West of
American frontier days.

General Ojukwu of Biafra knew that the odds were stacked against it. His army was outnumbered four to one and it was hemmed into one corner of the world surrounded by hostile neighbours. The prospects were daunting and a less courgeous leader might have excused himself and left the country. Ojukwu confronted his fate and very quickly developed a strong army from a motley crowd of vulcanisers, mechanics, carpenters, cooks, school teachers and technicians. Technological innovation was encouraged leading to local fabrication of sophisticated arms hitherto imported. Igbos had always been inventive but the civil war and Ojukwu’s leadership brought out the best in them. Wiston Churchill would have called it "their finest hour". "Anger supplied the arms" as Horace (65-8 BC) would have said.

That combination of will, ingenuity, bravery and time grit soon turned what Gowon had expected to be an easy walkover into a real contest whose outcome was in doubt for several months especially after Murtala Muhammed thoughtlessly sacrificed Nigerian soldiers to feed the fishes in his ill-fated attempt to cross the Niger into Onitsha; an error for which he should have been court-marshalled.

Adolf Hitler (1889 -1945) at least got one thing right when he said: "Anyone who demands of life a guarantee of success automatically renounces all idea of a heroic deed". Hitler lost, but just barely and he gave the world a fight history will
never forget.

Ojukwu never asked his people for guarantee of success; he probably knew better than all of them
combined that only a miracle could procure victory for Biafra. He probably also hoped that the war could be prolonged sufficiently for the international community to step in and call a truce which will leave Biafra intact leading to negotiations in line with the Aburi accords. Until Ojukwu himself opens up, we shall perhaps never know what he had in mind at the time. But the Biafran army he had did not fight like underdogs; they waged war with self-confidence which astonished military experts and seasoned war
correspondents. In the end, Biafra lost not because Nigerian soldiers and commanders were better despite the claims of Adekunle and Obasanjo. Biafra lost because there were too many Nigerians and not enough Biafrans.

As Will Rogers (1879 - 1935) had pointed out: "Right might win, but would win sooner if it had a few more machine guns and uniforms on its side". The fate of Biafra is another reminder that this indeed is an unjust world. Since the end of that Civil War and especially given Ojukwu’s departure through the celebrated last flight from Uli airstrip, some elements within and outside Igboland had attempted to paint
him as a failure; some have even been blaming him for starting the war. Both charges are as untrue as they are uncharitable to the man.

Ojukwu’s critics only confirm the observation by Leo Tolstoy (1829 - 1910) about rare specimens of
mankind like Emeka: "No great man is great to the flunky, for the flunky has menial ideas about what
constitutes greatness". Ojukwu’s type of heroism is a special quality reserved for very few people. Since his return from exile in Cote D’Ivoire where he had sought refuge towards the end of the war, Ojukwu has shifted from hero to celebrity, partly because Nigerians don’t know what to do with heroes or partly because "every hero becomes a bore at last" and partly because Ojukwu himself has not been able to find a proper role for himself. There is a great deal of danger for future generations in confusing Ojukwu the
hero with Emeka the celebrity. One amuses us, the other uplifts us. The hero is known for achievements,the celebrity for well-knowness. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrities are people who make news but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities "(Daniel Boorstin, American Prize Winning Historian, 1995).

Ojukwu the celebrity graces the front pages of our papers and magazines pushing up copy sales; the heroic Ojukwu resides permanently in the hearts of all Igbo people and for that matter all Nigerians who realised that in 1967 and even now, Igbos have got a raw deal from the Nigerian state. Every MASSOB member or sympathiser; every cry for Igbo Presidency re-echoes the experience of the civil war and the resentment against those who got away with genocide. Deep in their hearts, every Igbo person yearns for another Ojukwu to rise up and say "Never again".

For a non-Igbo, Ojukwu is one commander I would gladly have followed to war because his cause was just.

---