By Obi Nwakanma
In an angry retort to a question
thrown at him in his recent Media chat not too long ago, President Muhammadu
Buhari asked, What do they (Igbo) want?
Who is marginalizing them?
 |
| *Ojukwu |
In Biafra, under three years, they were making
their own rockets and calculating its distances; distilling their own oil and
making aviation fuel, creating in their Chemical and Biological laboratories,
new cures for diseases like Cholera, shaping their own spare parts, and turning
the entire East into a vast workshop, as Ojukwu put it.
At the end of the war, the Ukpabi Asika regime
brought together these Biafran scientists and set up PRODA. The initiative led,
in the first five years between 1970-1975 under the late Prof. Gordian Ezekwe
and Mang Ndukwe, to designs of industrial machinery models and prototypes for
the East Central State Industrial Masterplan, which remain undeveloped even
today. The Murtala/Obasanjo regime took over PRODA in 1975 by decree, starved
it of funds, and basically destroyed its aims.
