Biafra: Buhari And APC Should Be Held Accountable For The Escalation Of Agitations - PDP

Press Statement 
Biafria: PDP Cautions Buhari, APC Of The Danger Ahead…Seeks Immediate Dialogue With S/East Representatives and Leaders

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says it is deeply concerned about the unfolding political events and developments in the South East and South South of Nigeria.

The PDP also stated that it is not comfortable with the methods being applied by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government in handling of restive youths in the South South and South East geo-political zones, who are agitating under the Biafra movement, and urged the President to personally intervene as the matter affects the territorial integrity of Nigeria.

The party said it is concerned that the Federal Government and its agencies have failed to approach the situation with the inclusiveness and seriousness it deserves, but have instead been resorting to the use of security forces.

PDP National Youth Leader, Hon. Abdullahi MaiBasira said in a statement on Saturday that President Buhari and his party should be held to account for the escalation of the agitation, which threatens the unity and national security interests of Nigeria as an indivisible entity.

The PDP also urged the ruling party to ensure and guarantee an inclusive administration that will promote harmony among all sections of the country.

The party further notes the seemingly lack of any clear-cut policy direction that concerns the development, mainstreaming and inclusion of young people in the country by the Federal Government, a worrisome issue that brings to question APC’s campaign promise to generate and give 3 million jobs annually to Nigerian Youths.

Obasanjo Lies Like A Badly Raised Child - Gen Alabi-Isama

I implore Obasanjo to stop lying before he dies...

By Godwin Alabi-Isama

I am gravely pained to be trading words with General Olusegun Obasanjo once again on the history of Nigeria-Biafra War. He is an elder and a former ruler who, ordinarily, should be treated with utmost respect.

*Alabi-Isama (pix: vanguard)

But how can one genuinely respect an old man who tells lies like a badly raised child? Obasanjo has obviously not recovered from the shock inflicted on him by my book, The Tragedy of Victory in which I exposed the tissues of lies in his civil war memoir, My Command. It is said that a lie may travel for a thousand miles, but it takes just one step of truth to catch up with it.

I’m alive to stand up to him on the lies he has told on the war because I was a major participant in it.  I kept records.  With facts and figures at my finger tips, I have debunked Obasanjo’s lies in part three of my book, consisting of one hundred and sixty five pages, sixty nine pictures, thirteen military strategies and tactics, maps and documents.  This was the same Obasanjo who published a fake Federal Government gazette that I was found guilty by the Army when I was never tried.  I have proved that Obasanjo was an incompetent commander. I have proved that he was a wily and cunning fellow, and an incredible opportunist who reaped where he did not sow.

I have proved that he was an ingrate and a hypocrite. More importantly, I have proved that he was a coward, who ran away from the war front to go and look for phantom ammunition.  Rather than respond to my claims the way a gallant officer should, he has now responded like a motor-park tout, impugning my person and questioning my ethnic lineage. I never said I was from Ibadan. I only schooled there.

Nigeria: 1960 -2014

By  Banji Ojewale

 It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not!                             
–Daniel Defoe (1660– 1731)

A scene at Nigeria’s Independence Day Celebrations

 On October 1, 1960 (pix: nigeria.gov.ng)

Last week, I came across an elderly man (real name withheld) who told me he fled Nigeria in 1960 following the attainment of Independence that year.  He claimed he feared we might not be able to govern ourselves in what he described as a “cobbled union”.  He saw only a future of crisis in the land of incompatibles being put together as compatibles by a departing imperial power.  He, a 23-year-old, did not want to be part of the cataclysm his oracle was presenting as the tomorrow of newly Independent country.

From the way he put it, the crystal ball literally landed him in that future.  In a word, he time-travelled into that era.  It was not a salubrious trip, he said.  He did not wish to experience the reality of the years ahead.

Achebe's 'There Was A Country' Discussed At The House Of Commons

Chinua Achebe's There Was A Country: Reflections from the Nigerian Diaspora

DATE: Monday 10 December 2012

TIME: 6.00-9.00pm

VENUE: Committee Room 8, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

(Please allow for at least 15 minutes to clear security when you arrive)

Chinua Achebe's recently published memoirs, There was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, have controversially reopened discussions on Nigeria's past – especially the events leading up to the first coup and the aftermath of the Biafran War. These events have had a profound impact on Nigeria and continue to critically impact developments across the country today.

  























Chinua Achebe

 

This event aims to bring Nigerians together to debate the key legacies from the coup and civil war in the context of Nigeria's present realities and future trajectory, and hopes to explore how the coup and war have:

• adversely affected peacebuilding and state-building across Nigeria (with reference to reconciliation, integration and equality)?
• shaped the relationship between the Nigerian State and ordinary Nigerians?
• influenced broader understanding of how to tackle the deep and growing levels of economic and social inequality polarising Nigeria?
• affected access to justice, transparency and accountability as well as tackling state impunity in Nigeria?Chair: Chi Onwurah MP, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science & Digital Infrastructure 
  
  
  Speakers:

• Donu Kogbara, Print and broadcast journalist and Board Member, Greater Port Harcourt City Development Authority
• Dipo Salimonu, Eirenicon Africa and founding partner of Ateriba Limited
• Onyekachi Wambu, Director Policy and Engagement, African Foundation for Development (AFFORD)
• Dr Muhammad Jameel Yusha'u, Senior Lecturer in Media and Politics, Northumbria University  
 There are a limited number of places so if you would like to attend, please RSVP by email to: events@fpc.org.uk

 Download the report (170 kilobyte PDF)

-----------------------------

RELATED POST 

Chinua Achebe’s 'There Was a Country - A Personal History of Biafra'- A REVIEW

Chinua Achebe’s 'There Was A Country - A Personal History Of Biafra'

– A REVIEW 
By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

At last, the world is hearing from Professor Chinua Achebe, Africa’s foremost writer, distinguished intellectual and author of the classic, Things Fall Apart, on the Nigeria-Biafra war. In a new book (There Was a Country – A Personal History of Biafra, New York: Penguin, 2012),  Achebe presents a detailed account of what is widely regarded as the ‘genocidal Biafran war’ prosecuted forty-two years ago in which about 3 million people (mostly, unarmed civilians, including women and children) were brutally killed.  

When you talk about genocide in Africa, most people would eagerly prefer we all look towards Rwanda or Darfur, or even the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and not Biafra which happened about twenty years earlier and which Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, professor of history and politics, in his review of Achebe’s memoir, describes as “Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century.”  

Indeed, Biafra is a problematic subject. It readily stirs up a lot of discomfort and debilitating guilt in not a few quarters as it throws up memories of grossly disreputable decisions and actions which had far-reaching, disastrous effects on too many innocent and harmless people, from which the originators and perpetrators would so much wish to distance themselves.  The genocidal Biafran war and the horrible pogrom that preceded it are, without doubt, recent occurrences (only some four decades ago), but the strong determination of their guilt-ridden perpetrators, foreign collaborators and local sympathizers, to hastily consign this monumental tragedy to pre-history and shout down anyone trying to remind the world of it has been quite overwhelming.   

But in his new book, There Was a Country – A Personal History of Biafra,   which TIME magazine in its August 27, 2012 edition classified as one of the twelve “most anticipated” books this fall (2012) and Newsweek (of the same date) in its “Fall Books Preview 2012” placed among the “15 Books To Read,” Achebe unwraps Biafra before the world again, letting everyone into gruesome details of wanton massacres of unarmed civilians, including women and children, and the horror of mass deaths caused by unspeakable starvation and sicknesses due mainly to the inhuman blockade zealously imposed upon Biafra by the Nigerian government, with the overwhelming support of the British government, despite  outcries from several parts of the world.  

Chinua Achebe's "There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra" [ A Review]

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Chinua Achebe is Africa’s foremost novelist and one of the African World’s most outstanding intellectuals. The 1958 publication of his classic, Things Fall Apart,underscores the African-centred thrust of Achebe’s esteemed literary journey. In There was a Country, Achebe revisits the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa. It is also Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century, in which 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered. Achebe himself narrowly escaped capture by the genocidist army in Lagos where he worked as director of the external service of Nigeria’s public broadcasting corporation.

*Prof Chinua Achebe  
 

Safely back in Biafra, Achebe was appointed roving cultural ambassador by the fledging resistance government of the new republic to travel and inform the world of this heinous crime being perpetrated in Africa, barely 20 years after the Jewish genocide. He recalls with immense satisfaction the successes of his travels in Africa, Europe and North America during the period – meeting leading writers and intellectuals, addressing church, civil and human rights assemblies, and charity and humanitarian caucuses. 

Chinua Achebe's "There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra" – A Review

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Chinua Achebe is Africa’s foremost novelist and one of the African World’s most outstanding intellectuals. The 1958 publication of his classic, Things Fall Apart,underscores the African-centred thrust of Achebe’s esteemed literary journey. In There was a Country, Achebe revisits the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa. It is also Africa’s most expansive and devastating genocide of the 20th century, in which 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered. Achebe himself narrowly escaped capture by the genocidist army in Lagos where he worked as director of the external service of Nigeria’s public broadcasting corporation.

*Prof Chinua Achebe  
 

Safely back in Biafra, Achebe was appointed roving cultural ambassador by the fledging resistance government of the new republic to travel and inform the world of this heinous crime being perpetrated in Africa, barely 20 years after the Jewish genocide. He recalls with immense satisfaction the successes of his travels in Africa, Europe and North America during the period – meeting leading writers and intellectuals, addressing church, civil and human rights assemblies, and charity and humanitarian caucuses.