From Jeff Amechi Agbodo, Onitsha
Leader of the Biafra Independence Movement (BIM), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, yesterday, declared that nobody or group of persons can stop the actualisation of Biafra as an independent nation.
He likened the ‘Biafran people’s’ stay in the Nigerian-state to accepting slavery, corruption, poverty, marginalisation, inequality and instability.
Uwazuruike who spoke through his Director of information, Mr. Chris Mocha, maintained that granting Biafra independence would portend good omen for all the ethnic nationalities in the country.
“If I will not get Biafra, I wouldn’t have come out to start talking about it in the first place; and my purpose of studying non-violence method for years in India would have been defeated,” he added.
Going down memory lane, he recalled that he had in November 1999, internationalised the struggle, and applied to the then UN Secretary General, Mr. Koffi Anan, that the people of Biafra, consisting of the five Igbo speaking states and with large populations in Rivers, Delta and Cross River states numbering about 40 million be admitted, registered or in the alternative be treated as an unregistered nation in any of the organs of the world body.
“I also wrote that the life and properties of Ndigbo be protected during and after the self-determination of Biafra and to dismantle all the toll-gates mounted on erosion devastated roads across South-East and Niger Delta areas,” he recounted.
“We are firm that Biafra can never be wished away.”
Uwazuruike who said Biafra was struggling to gain her independence from Nigeria through non-violence method, appealed to world leaders and all other peace- loving people of the free world not to look the other way while a grand conspiracy is being perpetrated against the Igbo.
He assured the international community that a sovereign Biafra will uphold all the laws and conventions of the United Nations. The BIM stressed that it was not in the interest of Nigerians and the international community to have a prolonged civil war in which over two million innocent lives had been lost, saying that such war could have been avoided by granting self-rule to all the natural units in Nigeria of which Biafra is one.