COSON chairman, Tony Okoroji writes on his experience with Biafra in the 60s.
No one can be more Biafran than this writer. I have seen Biafra. I have lived Biafra and been bathed in Biafra. Let me tell you something: It is not funny.
I was about nine years old in May 1967 when Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu pronounced what is today known as the South East and a good chunk of the South-South of Nigeria as an independent Republic of Biafra. Those were heady days. While Nigerians considered Ojukwu just a Lieutenant Colonel in the Nigerian army, to us, he was the General of the People’s Army, a deity of some kind who did no wrong. Ojukwu was all knowing.
After all, he had been to Oxford, one of the best universities in the world. His father was the great Louis Phillip Odumegwu Ojukwu, the richest Igbo man in the world with massive property across Nigeria. Added to that, he was one of the most senior Igbo military officers. Who argues with a man with such education, money and military might?
Despite all the grammar spoken in different cities across Africa to stop a dangerously fast moving train, less than two months later, the civil war began and the big guns began to boom everywhere and the riffles began to rattle. I was struggling with Primary school then but it all ended very fast. There was no longer any school to go to. Indeed, the primary school in my village was converted to the headquarters of RAP (Research & Production) which manufactured the locally made bomb known as Ogbunigwe (Killer of multitudes) and the Biafran ‘Sure Battery’.
My brothers and sisters in Nollywood have shot some movies trying to recreate the dire situation in Biafra. I can tell you that none of them has in …Read More
Source:: The NET
