A New Book on the Preservation of Igbo and Nigeria’s Historical Events and Culture

–“The Republic of Biafra: Once Upon A Time In Nigeria My Story Of The Biafra-Nigerian Civil War – A Struggle For SURVIVAL (1967-1970”)

Dr. Onyema Nkwocha

Synopsis of the Book Product

Not quite four months after the Western Region’s election of October 10, 1965, did the localized mayhem in that Region find its way furiously into the center of the nation on January 15, 1966! It was like a whirl-wind of nothing but anarchy and lawlessness. The serious aftermath of the marred and rigged election was that it acted as the last straw that broke the Carmel’s back, providing immediate reason for the army to overthrow the government of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Anarchy ensued; a counter coup led to the death of Major-General Ironsi. Callous barbarous massacre of thousands of easterners in the North followed. With their lives in jeopardy, easterners fled for safety to eastern region; refugee crisis followed. To guarantee their safety, easterners seceded from Nigeria and on May 30th 1967, formed an independent and sovereign nation of the Republic of Biafra. Determined to bring Easterners back, on July 6, 1967 Nigeria invaded Biafra; waged a gruesome thirty-month-civil war against Biafra. Nigeria blockaded Biafra on land, sea and air, to prevent food from entering Biafra. A malnutrition disease, Kwashiorkor that caused the deaths of thousands of Biafrans, followed. Nigeria bombed Biafran civilians, killing thousands. On January 12, 1970 the war ended leaving more than three million people dead in a war that was totally avoidable!

A Discourse and an Extended Description of the Book

Taking the readers’ mind back to the events of 1966, as already alluded to above, precipitated were earthquake-like events that provided the immediate reason for the Army to overthrow the government of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe on January 15, 1966. From the localized events that took place in the Western Region immediately after the election of 1965 that slowly but surely gravitated toward the center, Lagos, it would seem as if the more the people expressed their yearnings and aspirations for a more practicable unified, democratic and peaceable sovereign nation free from corruption, marred and rigged elections and other vices and crimes, the more the country devolved and degenerated into self-implosive and destructive states. Metaphorically, William Butler Yeats’ poem of “Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer...’stands to depict a Nigeria at the time where the young and brash breasted military personnel were fed up with the old and corrupt politicians and wanted to take charge of things by unleashing Armageddon – what venom they did on January 15, 1966 that ultimately led to the writing of My Story of the Biafra-Nigerian Civil War – A Struggle for Survival.

As this turbulent whirl wind continued to blow treacherously on the Nigerian political landscape, the nation was no longer at ease. Things came tumbling down and started falling apart that the center, Lagos,  as we knew it could no longer hold, letting the old politicians give way, and in giving way, only to mere anarchy on the Nigerian streets with innocent blood of the Igbos and Easterners being spilled on the Northern and Western streets. As would be expected, angry mobs who executed the most heinous crimes were obviously lacking in conviction and thus reacted to the developments with the worst passionate intensity devoid of any moral and intellectual rationale. This was Butler Yeats’ imagery of the Second Coming revisited on Nigeria, when things fell apart and the center could no longer hold with nothing but mere anarchy unleashed upon the Biafran-Nigerian worlds as the innocent blood-dimmed tide of Biafrans was ruptured and let to run loose and gushing unceasingly on the streets and thoroughfares of Nigeria for 30 grueling, dark and deadly months!

Historically, on January 15, 1966, young Army officers led by Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu in a military coup D’état, overthrew Nigeria’s first democratic republic, citing a litany of anomalies and wrongdoings such as bribery and corruption, tribalism, and inefficiency among other ills, against the ruling political group.  In that coup, Nigeria’s Prime Minister, Tafam Balewa, some premiers and ministers and several top Army officers of both the northern and western descent, were murdered.  Consequently, series of earth-shattering riots ensued in Northern Nigeria, reaching to frenzy height of callous and barbarous massacre of tens of thousands of easterners, mostly the Igbos in northern Nigeria by their Northern Nigeria host friends and neighbors. By July of the same year, the bloodiest counter coup on the face of Africa that took the Easterners by surprise was carried out by the Northerners in collaboration with Western Nigeria.

During this coup, the Military Head of Nigeria, Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo man was assassinated in Ibadan along with his host, Lt. Col Adekunle Fajuyi, the Governor of the West. Thousands of Igbos – mostly top ranking military officers and civilians were killed in this coup. The killings and ethnic cleansing and pogroms of the Easterners, particularly the Igbos continued unchecked and uninterrupted in Northern Nigeria well into a year. With their lives, safety and overall security in jeopardy throughout Northern and Western Nigeria, and not being able to move freely in these regions as free citizens of Nigeria without being hacked to death, the easterners fled for their dear lives into the eastern region. The aftermath was massive refugees throughout Eastern Region. To protect their lives, properties and secure their continued freedom and ensure their security, the easterners seceded from the rest of Nigeria and on May 30th, 1967, formed an independent and sovereign nation of the Republic of Biafra, hence once upon a time in Nigeria, there was the Republic of Biafra!

Once inside Igboland, now the Republic of Biafra, without further provocations, and bent on unifying Nigeria at all costs and by any means necessary, on July 6, 1967 (barely two months after the declaration of Biafra’s independence) Nigeria invaded Biafra and from there, waged a gruesome, brutal, callous and barbaric thirty-month-civil war against Biafra. In the early outbreaks of the war, Nigeria imposed a policy of “starvation as an instrument of war” by blockading Biafra on land, sea and air with the intent of preventing food and military weapons from entering Biafra to force starvation and early surrender of Biafra. The blockade prevented food from coming into Biafra, thus leading to a massive malnutrition-oriented disease called Kwashiokor that led to the deaths of thousands of starving children, young, men, women, pregnant mothers and elderly Biafrans. Not content with the ravages of landlocked blockade on Biafra, Nigeria unleashed her fleet of war planes flown by Russian and Egyptian pilots that harassed and carried out hundreds of air raids on both Biafran civilians and military locations. The air raids resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Biafrans – men, women, children and the elderly – none was spared! All said and done, on February 12, 1970, the war came to a screeching halt, having ended with more than three million people dead in a war that was totally avoidable with the aftermath slogan of No Conqueror, No Vanquished!

As a young boy of 10 years at the start of the fracas, the above are what I can recollect that happened in the days and events leading to the birth of Biafra beginning with the January 15, 1966 events through the war and right after the Biafra-Nigerian civil war (1966-1970) on February 12, 1970 and the sorry re-integration of the Igbos into the Nigerian fold afterwards by Yakubu Gowon’s regime.

Dr. Onyema G. Nkwocha

USA, 2010

About the Author

Dr. Onyema G. Nkwocha authored Democracy in Nigeria: The Birth of A New Nation-State in the 2000 Era. His literary works, center on Nigeria and Africa’s unity, democracy, and development. Nkwocha has authored several articles along these lines published in Nigeria and United States. Nkwocha believes that with proper education, effective leadership and enlightened citizenry, it would be a matter of time before Nigeria’s history is re-written for the better. He believes Nigeria’s glorious days are ahead of us. Nkwocha is a Nigerian patriot and lives in the United States of America.

Want a copy of the book? Please contact the Publisher, AuthorHouse at: http://www.authorhouse.com/ContactUs/default.aspx or by postal mail:

1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, IN 47403. Contact us by e-mail: authorsupport@authorhouse.com Contact us by toll-free phone:

888.519.5121

By Dr. Onyema Nkwocha, USA, Sept. 13, 2011 -  

“To ensure continued progress on the home front, we urge President Jonathan to begin the challenging process of crafting a brand new people’s constitution for Nigeria. Our so called 1999 constitution (even as amended), is a rogue document that lacks credibility, because it lied from its opening paragraphs when it says;

“…… We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly and solemnly resolved, to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God, dedicated to the promotion of inter-African solidarity, world peace, international cooperation and understanding, and to provide for a Constitution for the purpose of promoting the good government and welfare of all persons in our country, on the principles of freedom, equality and justice, and for the purpose of consolidating the unity of our people; Do hereby make, enact and give to ourselves the following Constitution…..:-“

This so-called constitution was handed to us by a retreating, and disgraced military establishment; it was never by “We the People”.

Jonathan’s Transformational Agenda will just be rhetoric and another wasted opportunity, if not anchored to a constitution we can embrace as ours…”

I absolutely agree with Professor Oparaoji. I think any or all enlightened Nigerians will also agree too. As far as we know it, there has never been a time, since the forced British amalgamation of the South and North that Nigerians have been given any chance or opportunity to determine their own national destiny. That denied opportunity would have allowed Nigerians to form a country of their choice and give to themselves, a constitution of their choice that they can identify with, rally round for support and strength and that they could proudly then refer to as given to themselves by “we, the people.”

The last time I checked, and if am not mistaken, one of the characteristics of humans that differentiates us from lower beings is the ability to consciously and rationally take past and current knowledge and project that knowledge into the future. Building a successful virile, united progressive and democratic society is dependent upon several factors one of which is the peoples’ willingness and preferred choice to come together, merge their several and individual God-given rights together to form a “commonwealth.” The natural laws that each fellow Nigerian possesses goes, and transcends beyond man made laws or constitution. As such, man in his original God-endowed rights and liberties have the fundamental right to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness and self governance as he sees fit.

Therefore, for there to be a legitimate government, that government must of necessity, first, obtain its legitimacy from the consent of the people whom it must then govern. By the same token, for that legitimate government and governance thereof to take place or exist, the individual Nigerian citizen must first, voluntarily, by reflection and choice rather than force and without any coercion, and fraud, surrender some of his or her natural freedoms in the state of nature to this common wealth government. Because consent of the governed implies that all citizens must accept all decisions made by the government which is practically impossible, therefore government can then operate smoothly by garnering the consent of the general will of the majority. Thus, as this becomes a social contract, the citizens surrender part of their God-given inalienable or bequeathed rights to this commonwealth government in lieu of having the right to abolish, change and or to recall this government at any time the people feel that the government is no longer answerable to their needs and wishes and therefore no longer beneficial to them. 

So far, Nigerians have gotten a raw deal when it comes to being part of a country and answering citizens of that country.  First the Nigerian nation was forcefully colonized and in 1904, yet again, by force, amalgamated or joined into one nation without the CONSENT of the governed – the people!
With this obvious first ingredient in the making of a cohesive nation, the consent of the governed lacking, and with no unifying affinity (such as a constitution mutually agreed upon and written by the people) along with no mutual relationship existing between and among the peoples of the Igbos, Yorubas, Hausa, Fulanis, Efiks, Kanuris, Ibibios, Degemas, Igala, Calabars etc, series of forced constitutions were made for the people of the lower Niger otherwise called Nigerians by that one Briton, Flora Shaw, Lord Lugard’s wife. First it was the Richard’s Constitution of 1946, then the Macpherson’s Constitution of 1951. And when these two Constitutions failed to meet British needs, they changed them and designed the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954. In all these, no attempt was made to invite the people of Nigeria to the Constitutional convention or deliberations to give them the initial and fundamental chance to decide their own fate as a people and nation. The truth be told though, the current 1999 constitution is based on a false premise. It has not met the needs of Nigerians at large, has failed the people and nation, has not served the government right because of its many obvious structural defects of not reflecting the federal character and therefore deserves to be changed and replaced. And this is the time!

Hence it is imperative now that Jonathan reverses this course of history and formally and finally recognizes the need to give Nigerians their first chance in over 107 years to determine their national destiny, call for a National Constitution Convention to give the people an opportunity to give to themselves, a new Constitution of the people, by the people and for the people.  A constitution designed by the people’s representatives, that meets their needs and that they can readily identify with, and rally round at all times, and that creates a government answerable to them, is what the Nigerian people needs now.  Nigeria truly needs a constitution crafted by the people’s representatives based on their needs and of which they can proudly standup and say “we the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly and solemnly resolved, to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God,…; Do hereby make, enact and give to ourselves the following Constitution…..” And President Jonathan can make it happen; otherwise his overtly and publicly declared “transformational governance manifesto will remain just what it is, a mere political propaganda. And so, the question for President Jonathan is this: if not now, when can Nigerians be given the first chance in 107 years to determine their own national fate by writing a constitution of their own, by themselves and for themselves? Therefore, if not President Jonathan in his well obvious transformational onward march toward rebuilding Nigeria, who else?

Written by

Dr. Onyema Nkwocha

USA, September 5, 2011