Memories of two personalities of Southeastern origin have etched on the psyche of Igbo nation and on the mind of an average Igbo man in Nigeria, including myself. They are Chief Dr. Nnmadi Azikiwe, the Owelle of Onitsha and the Biafran warlord, Col. Chukwuemeka Odemegwu Ojukwu, the Ikemba of Nnewi.

But both represent two opposing phases in the transitional history of Igbo nation.  Also, each one of them made influential imprints on the lives of our people, irrespective of whether it was for good or bad.  A society or community remembers its own based on the extent anyone impacted positively on the lives of the people. It is the reason, in most Africa communities; personalities are canonized, deified or elevated to remarkable historical monuments.  Legends sprout from such backgrounds.

The Ghanaians talk of the Great Kwame Nkrumah and South Africans endearingly worship Nelson Mandela. In Nigeria, South -westerners idolize Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Northern Nigerians have erected multiple monuments after the Sardauna  of Sokoto and first Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello.

But I believe what is central to the erection of fond memories around personalities whether dead or alive is to espouse and enliven the progressive visions, ideas and legacies they embodied as source of inspiration to the upcoming generation. I consider it absurd and in fact, I have not experienced any community where a son or daughter who brought destruction on his people is immortalized. There is no community of sane people that propagates such retrogressive inclinations.

But I find my people, the Igbo nation attempting to consciously make this silly historical mistake. Recently,  Nigerians converged in Abuja to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Biafra.  Personally, I feel there is nothing wrong with such a gathering, to the extent it serves to remind us of the thorny road we once traversed. 

The counsels at the forum by respected Nigerian like former President Olusegun Obasanjo on the further pursuit of the Biafran cause were witty and instructive. As a father to us all, he provided better insights into how we can actualize the Biafran dream that boots and guns could not accede to us as a people between 1967-70, during the bloody Nigerian civil war.

However, what I find disconcerting with my kinsmen is the latter-day resurrection of Biafran instincts by people I prefer to brand as over ambitious brothers and a few sisters in the fold. Perhaps, we have failed to learn from history why Ojukwu’s version of a republic of Biafra failed. And so we are prepared to repeat the same mistakes and thereafter, we begin to cry out to the world, about appalling mass genocide of our people.

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I don’t think it’s enough for anyone to garb  himself in war-like apron, grab a few desperate youths in the Southeast and arm them with sophisticated weapons and then begin the  public march  on streets and cities of the Southeast, proclaiming “life or death,” if Nigeria does not concede to our demand of a Biafran state.

If we are prepared to extract Biafran state for ourselves by  the dictates of brute force as has become the end game of  the Ralph Uwazuirike’s MASSOB or Nnmadi Kanu’s  IPOB, then we must have made serious and covert arrangement for it.  Only that can save us from the pitfalls that swallowed Ojukwu when he declared what he later discovered was a war he lacked the strength to prosecute to a victorious end.

On the reverse side, if we are adopting the stick approach, we must ensure it is grounded in the ethos of democratic civility, law and decency,  the universal conventions prescribed by world bodies like the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) African Union (AU) and the lot. But it is sadly not the case with today’s agitations for secession.

We are overtly applying both the stick and carrot approach simultaneously, a sign of our confusion.  I am not convinced that such would work, if a Biafran state at this phase of our history is anything worthwhile to pursue with such vehemence.      

We are pleaded upon to be reasonable for once. I know many would chastise me for the position I have taken.  But maybe, they are yet to come face to face with the harshness of the vagaries of life and so, we feel it is easy to fetch knives, bows and arrows and guns to proclaim Biafran state on the streets. I am sure, for many more, when they hear counseling such as,  “ no nation survives two civil wars,” like some elements in Ndi’gbo are pushing, so crudely,  it sounds to them like echoes of distant drums.

But I wish to use this platform to remind us of our failings as a people. Any society or community that aspires to progress downplays its retrogressive past.

Charles Ibekwe writes from UNN, Enugu State.