What do you think about this neo biafran movement we are seeing today, radio Biafra and these activist we are seeing online
Nigeria was thrown together by the UK from one large bit of West Africa not claimed by France, over and through countries and polities who fought wars to stay independent. It was not created with the intention that it would one day be free of command from the UK; what we’re seeing now with everything going on (Boko Haram, Herdsmen, Niger Delta Avengers, IPOB, etc), is just the outcome of that fact. Obafemi Awolowo, and some other prominent politicians in Independence Nigeria described Nigeria like this.
Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English,’ 'Welsh,’ or 'French.’ The word 'Nigerian’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not.
Since 1914, the British government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any sign of willingness to unite.
Since then a faint idea of what it is to be ‘Nigerian’ has developed more, but people ultimately put their ethnic nationalities first, some might deny it. Another leader of Independence Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe, supported Biafra at a time until Nigeria and Britain started starving Biafrans to death. Doesn’t really make sense to starve the people you’re forcing to be your citizens, but it makes sense when you remember Nigeria’s economy, but the oil and the Niger Delta is yet another leg of the disfunction of Nigeria.
“Federal Nigerian police push back crowds of demonstrators outside the French Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, Sept. 16, 1968 - They were demonstrating against French assistance to Biafra” — [+]
Self determination of a people is valid and a right that should not be met with by violence, but this isn’t the case in Nigeria, because the state is violence, it was always a foreign imperial endeavour to extract as much from under us as possible, and when the British left they passed the baton to their stooges primarily among the elite in the northern part of the country, pitting Africans against each other was, in the first place, how Europe had been so successful in the conquest of Africa, so the discord between the actual nations was something they fuelled with the setup itself. Apart from the fact that Nigeria was (forcefully) constructed to fail, the ethnic-nations in Nigeria do not share common value systems in the first place. Travelling to another geopolitical zone (Nigeria has six) is like going to another country. Nigeria’s presidency is de facto rotated between ethnic groups, so no matter how crap a candidate is, as long as the politician is from whichever ethnic groups’ turn it is to rule (yes, rule), they will most likely be put up by the main political parties.
If a referendum was held in Nigeria and everyone was ensured that no violence would follow a vote for secession, most parts of the country would break away very quickly, especially the southeast, most Igbo people, deep down, from what I can gauge, want their own country, the silence most of us and our representatives have about IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) and the protests by the more hardcore makes that very obvious, but IPOB hasn’t always kept their message clean so ‘moderate’ people distance their selves from them. It’s not a popular thing to want sovereignty because in Nigeria it’s dangerous and you might get called a tribalist, ‘tribalist’ in Nigeria is equivalent or stronger than ‘racist’.
Ultimately there’s little to do but just to wait and see where Nigeria is going because nobody actually knows.