For over a week now, there have been series of announcement that every Indigenous Person of Biafra, should restrict his or her movement. It is another means of showing respect to the millions of our brothers and sisters who lost their lives in the course of war. Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, has kept repeating it and giving reasons why such an exercise must be carried out.
A good number of us, who are new generational inhabitants of Biafra land, may have been informed about the war and how it claimed millions of innocent civilians, whose only crime was to ask, why the so much marginalisation on the Igbos and the exploitation of their resources without proper returns. Barely was there any answer to this question, thus, the anti-Igbo pogroms in Northern Nigeria, military coup, a counter-coup and persecution of Igbos living in the North, became the response they could give.
As much as these Northern political elites planned to decolonize a promising people like Igbos, by strategically controlling the lucrative oil production in the Niger Delta, provided the platform for the war. It was a tough one and owing that the military was incharge, the death list multiplies to thousands at the fall of each day. Setting more plans on how to execute the growing children, their nursing mothers who are surviving through the subsistence practice of agriculture, the military began to raze the farms that were giving these poor Igbo civilians primary nutritional value. Do I have to also recount how the blockage of food importation, nearly claimed six million people? There are many questions to ask but the fact is that the little answers we get today, is not sufficient enough to attest what transpired during the war.
Today is sit-at-home. Today should be a date of remembrance. A day you retell the story of war, genocide, starvation, usurpation and crude governance of General Yakubu Gowon. Today is singularly made for you to sit down and tell your children how you fought the war. Today is for you a moment of silence, of telling yourself the truth about the need for the Democratic system of government in Nigeria. Today should help you to recollect on the stings of war, the stunning bombings, the economic slump and the terrible smell of the dead bodies littered at every corner of the road. Today should make you sad, to define your stand and take you to apply caution why you champion for the course of our freedom.
If today, you are unable to have someone tell you the story of the Biafran war, then, take your time to read books that were written by those who played distinctive role during that period. Read; In Biafra Africa Died: The Diplomatic Plot by Emefiena Ezeani, There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe, Because I am Involved by Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and maybe a peek at Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. There are many more works and I hope you find any today to see the plot, the actions and the betrayal. It is not easy to read any book about the Biafran war, without having with you a piece of handkerchief to pick your tears.
May the rising sun, continue to shine until it wouldn’t fade again.
