This piece seeks to help most of Igbo friends and well-wishers and some Igbo who are involved in the campaign of Biafra without a clear understanding of the picture of what we are fighting for. It will help many to have a better grip of what is at stake. 

In this essay we will take time to clarify some areas that seem to confuse some people in the on-going Biafra separatist movement in Nigeria. Over the years, as will be expected; the move for the independence of Biafra has undergone some transformations. These changes seem to have created a sort of mixed messages in the minds of both observers and participants. So, at this point it is really important that we try to clarify some of the seemingly ambiguous aspects of the movement. 

There are renewed calls for an independent state of Igbo people, but what form would Biafra of 2018 look like? The author shares his thinking. 

The Igbo cannot possibly be a part of the proposed new Nigeria, no matter how attractive the idea is made to look by its advocates. On 29 May 1966, the Igbo renounced forever their Nigerian citizenship. While wishing Nigeria and Nigerians well in their quest for a workable solution to their national problem, the Igbo have unequivocally opted for a separate Igbo identity and the separation of their territory from Nigeria.

In the past one-and-half years President Buhari has rolled out, on many occasions, the full strength of his country’s security forces to violently suppress the peaceful nonviolent Biafran independence movement. Now, the Buhari regime is working with foreign governments to crush pro-Biafra activism in the Diaspora.

It is deeply disheartening that a country that fought so hard and long to win independence for its people has plunged into a civil war with no end in sight. South Sudanese are suffering again, this time in the hands of the same generals who led them to victory. Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, if they have a heart in their breast, must put aside their own pride and do whatever it takes to end this senseless war.

Some critics who have analyzed the circumstances surrounding the well-publicized capture of Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 have concluded that it was an elaborate political web of deceit weaved by the Islamic north to wrest power from a southern Christian president.

The struggle for self-determination of the Biafran people will not end until they fully break away from Nigeria, a creation of British colonialists that has never worked. Unlike during the first failed attempt to secede, for the new territory to work it should not include any non-Igbo people.

The government and policy-makers in Israel can help stop the ongoing genocide of the Igbo by boycotting all dealings with the Nigerian government. For a state like Israel to continue doing business with a genocidal state like Nigeria is not any different from sponsorship of state terrorism.

Nigeria’s new leader is the subject of much hype. He is being hoisted up to the status of a cult figure. Apparently, he is the man Africa’s giant needs to solve its extensive problems. But Muhammadu Buhari’s history and thinking suggest otherwise.

Obama is wrong to say that the country must remain united at any cost because he does not understand that underlying the fear of violence is the fact that Nigeria is a failed colonial fiction. Break up is the only way.

To achieve the seemingly elusive African renaissance, the leaders have to steer the societies and the peoples away from the current practice of reliance and expectation from the outside, to a firmly rooted belief in self and local solutions.

For the cultural initiative to accomplish its good intentions in Africa, it needs to take into cognizance in its plans the cultural and ethnic diversities as well as the size of Africa. The continent is too big and diverse to be treated as a mono-cultural entity

Nigeria is unworkable as one nation-state because of intractable internal ethnic rivalries and the deeply rooted determination of the north to Islamise everyone.

Achebe fought to dissipate and disabuse the numerous misconceptions that the rest of the world held about Africa and its peoples. He was an incredible truth teller and moral bearer of our time.

Just as secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu moved in 1967 to declare the independence of Biafra to protect his people from genocidal killings, the group is asking ICC to intervene on their behalf before they are completely exterminated.

The problem of Nigeria is one-Nigeria. The state structure is wrong. The solution is restructuring; separation of the warring peoples, cultures and religions into independent countries.

The deniers of the Nigerian genocide may deny it as much as they like, but their denial will never erase the fact that this heinous crime occurred.