27 August 2008
Lagos — ANAMBRA State, especially Onitsha, the commercial nerve centre of the state, yesterday, was enveloped in a pall of tension as the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) sit-at-home protest in the entire South-East begins tomorrow.
The tension was heightened by optimism expressed by the leadership of the pro-Biafra movement that everything had been put in place to ensure that the exercise turns out a huge success.
MASSOB had last month in consistent newspaper publications asked that no person in the South-East should engage in any economic activity throughout the South-East today. It also directed a massive shut all cell phones in the entire geopolitical zone to protest "the continued marginalization of Ndigbo by the Nigerian federation."
The Awka Regional administrator of the Movement, Comrade Edeson Samuel, told Daily Champion yesterday on telephone that every arrangement had been put in place to ensure the success of the exercise.
He said that all the market leaders, industrialists, transporters, Okada riders, bank managers and the clergy had been briefed on the need to comply with tomorrow's stay-at-home directive.
Comrade Samuel gave the assurance that these professional groups would definitely comply and this would reaffirm the fact to the federal government and the international community that 95 percent of Ndigbo are behind MASSOB.
The administrator said that the occasion would afford Ndigbo the opportunity to protest the killing of an Igbo man in the North some weeks ago as well as the persecution of Ndigbo by the successive federal governments of Nigeria.
"This will show the pessimists that we are in effective control of the Biafran land, which the Nigerian government calls the South-East," said the administrator.
The declaration of Biafra in 1967, an attempt by the former Eastern Region to form a separate republic, turned 41 this year.
Meanwhile, the pro-Biafra group has unveiled a manifest of 2,016 dead and or missing members, said to be victims of extra-judicial killings during the eight-year rule of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo. MASSOB in a cover letter to the 'official' casualty list entitled "Continued Massacre/Detention of MASSOB Members" also said a lot more killings had gone unreported or under-reported in those years.
"More than 1,000 MASSOB members are languishing in various prisons in Nigeria," the pressure group said in the letter which was mailed to Champion House, Lagos. According to the MASSOB statement, 263 of its members perished in a massacre of March 29, 2003, at Okigwe, Imo State; 1,044 at Onitsha, Anambra State, between 2006 and 2007; 448 at Aba, Abia State, and Owerri, Imo State, and 198 at Enugu, Enugu State, and Abakaliki, Ebonyi State.
Also on the casualty list are other deaths recorded in the same period as follows: Ohafia Area 1, 13; Arochukwu Area 2, six; Nkporo Area 3, 10; Bende Area 4, five; Abiriba Area 8, 22; Okamu Area 7, two; and Abam Area 6, five - all in the Abia north region.
Tracing the history of such killings, the letter signed by MASSOB's Deputy Director of Information, Mr. Chris Mocha, recalled that state-sponsored mass killing of Ndigbo - the majority ethnic group in the defunct Biafra - began in 1953 in Kano, northern Nigeria, during the nationalist agitation for independence.
"The massacre continued in January and July 1966 in most parts of the North and indeed western Nigeria," the letter further recalled, and added that the 1966 massacre led to the declaration of Biafra and the 30-month civil war that ended in 1970.
Mr. Mocha contended that even after the cessation of hostilities, "There has been no end to the genocide against the Igbo ethnic group." These killings, he said, were done in the guise of religious crisis, especially in northern Nigeria.
He said MASSOB was floated in 1999 "as (safety of) lives and property of Ndigbo could not be guaranteed in Nigeria." The objective, he continued, was to pursue through non-violence the cause of self-determination for the people of eastern Nigeria. Notwithstanding MASSOB's "non-violent approach," lamented the spokesman, "the Nigerian state continued its genocide against our people." He claimed the 2,016 on the list perished between May 22, 2000, and April 22, 2008.
While affirming the inalienable right of MASSOB "to agitate for our freedom through non-violent means," Mr. Mocha called on the international community and all men and women of goodwill to dissuade the Nigerian authorities from further genocide and "release our members detained in Nigeria."
Recently while celebrating the declaration of Biafra which clocked 41 last May 30, MASSOB issued a statement calling on the United Nations to drag erstwhile President Obasanjo to the International Criminal Court for genocide involving more than 3,000 MASSOB members said to have perished in the hands of his government forces.
A MASSOB statement marking the anniversary said that the ex-president deserved the fate of Charles Taylor of Liberia who is facing criminal charges at The Hague. MASSOB also called on President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua to release over 1,000 of its arrested members in the course of its scheduled protest march earlier this year.
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IT IS 41 YRS NOW SINCE THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR.THE COUNTRY SHOULD HAVE ADDRESSED THE BIAFRA ISSUE BY LISTENING TO THEIR PROTESTS,AND FINDING A WAY TO REDRESS ISSUES.ONE CLEAR CASE OF INJUSTICE IS THE FACT THAT SE IS THE ONLY ZONE OF THE SIX ZONES IN NIGERIA THAT HAS ONLY FIVE STATES WHILE OTHERS HAVE SIX EACH.MAY BE THIS IS A PENALTY FOR THE CIVIL WAR.IF INDEED,WE CANNOT ADDRESS THEIR COMPLAINTS,IT IS ADVISABLE TO CONDUCT A PLEBISCITE TO OFFER THEM THEIR RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION.KILLINGS,AND JAILING ARE NOT SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM.