NO TO RADIO BIAFRA IN EXILE From Another LUNATIC called Uchenna Nwankwo. Mr. UCHENNA NWANKWO is chairman Ndigbo Council for National Coordination. NEWS report has it that a clandestine Radio Biafra Station has been established to broadcast from London. According to the Director of the Radio Station, the reason for the resuscitation of the radio station is to “set a largely misinformed public free from the twin evil of tyrannical rule of a cabal of ill-educated and institutionally corrupt men and women and the sponsored sectarian killings directed against Christian Southerners living in Northern Nigeria”. It is also purported that “the station will also serve to articulate a solution to the plight of impoverished and confused Igbo families abandoned by their leaders in Northern Nigeria to a fate worse than those endured by Black slaves in plantations in the Americas” as well as “campaign for the rights of all oppressed indigenous peoples of Southern Nigeria to determine how they live their lives. Radio Biafra London would broadcast debates on issues of national and international importance affecting the lives and rights of the indigenous peoples of Biafra and indeed indigenous people of all ethnic persuasions in Nigeria”, the report says. The Director of the said Radio Biafra also said that “looters, embezzlers, kidnappers, sponsors of terrorism, child traffickers, corrupt judges, crooked university lecturers, murderous Nigerian security forces and all thieving individuals masquerading as public officials … and workers off iniquity will be named and shamed”. We do not wish to join issues with the founders of the Biafra Radio Station as to the conditions under which Christians and peoples of Southern descent live in Nigeria today. But we take exception to the idea of establishing a clandestine Radio Biafra to campaign against such conditions. In the first place, we do not see the need to mount these campaigns from a clandestine radio station. Notwithstanding the high level of degeneracy that has overtaken the Nigerian state and society since independence, the right to free speech remains sacrosanct in the country to date. Short of espousing sentiments that border on libel, sedition, treason, felony, etc, anybody can still canvass any ideas and table criticism on virtually every aspect of Nigeria’s national life in the media, print and electronic. The issues the founders of the Radio Biafra station claim they want to campaign about are already being widely and freely discussed, analyzed and canvassed in the Nigerian media without anybody being molested over his or her utterances. So what is the need for clandestine action on the subject-matter? Secondly, we do not see the point in bringing Biafra into the matter. There are no “indigenous peoples of Biafra” as claimed by the sponsors of the so-called Radio Biafra. There is no doubt that there may be many Easterners who, buffeted by the terrible conditions under which they find themselves in Nigeria today, may still wish or hunger for a Biafra. But in reality Biafra is no more! For many of us former Biafrans, our concern now is how to reform and unify this country and make it livable and conducive to every Nigerian. We believe that we have the number, spread and resources to achieve such feat. We do not contemplate secession and have no reason to do so. The Nigerian legacy belongs to all of us: Binis, Ibibios, Idomas, Ijaws, Fulanis, Hausas, Kanuris, Urhobos, Gwaris, Igbos or Yorubas. And we are not going to abandon it to anybody. Nobody will frighten us out of the Nigeria country-state! We are the heirs and legatees of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mbonu Ojike, Eyo Ita, Michael Okpara, Akanu Ibiam, Matthew Mbu, and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and our blood has been shed for this country. We are not quitters. We are fully able to re-assert ourselves and shake off the yoke imposed on us by those who want to perpetually undermine and criminalise us over our Biafra past. And we are determined to realise the golden dream of our forebears to build in our homeland a great Black nation which will be an example, a pride, a spiritual home and an inspiration to all the peoples of Black Africa. We know that the rot, upheavals and inter-ethnic rancour that have gone on thus far in Nigeria were rather inevitable, and that these will abate with time, provided we work assiduously together to achieve such result. It was Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe who once observed that when people of different ethnic or racial origin or background congregate to build a nation, they tend initially to be parochial, but they do generally become cosmopolitan with time. We take solace in this assertion. In it we bury all our travails and disappointments in the country and continue to hope, trust and resolve to work even harder for the success of the Nigeria project in spite of unfolding distractions and disturbing negative developments in the country today, including the upsurge of terrorism and associated diabolical acts across the country, for we recognise the advantages of a large country-state to us Nigerians and to the Blackman everywhere. When we lament and express deep concerns about the dysfunctional Nigerian state and pledge to make it work, we mean to say that we have the duty and the focus to make contributions that should help restore the waning promise of Nigeria. Indeed, we wish to see the issue of Biafra or a possible recourse to any acts that may lead to the dismemberment of the Nigeria state rested and indeed buried forever. In our candid opinion, such posturing is rather evasive and serves as an unnecessary distraction from the earnest and speedy pursuit of the above objectives and the milestones we have set for ourselves for the next foreseeable future, namely: to Restructure Nigeria – socially, economically and politically; to achieve National Integration – such that indigenous and settler communities are adequately represented in respective state and local governments nationwide; and thirdly, to Reorganize Ndigbo and Rebuild their Enthusiasm in the Nigeria project. R-News
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:55:58 +0000
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