Biafra’s spine was broken, not at Asaba or Nsukka or when the 3rd Marines marched into Port Harcourt. No. It happened weeks before the first shots were ever fired, days before it was even declared. Yes. Biafra’s spine was broken on the 27th of May 1967 when Gowon, with simple words, split the Region in 3.
It may not have been apparent then, for the wind of 30 years of unified administration was still in the sails of the young Republic. For Biafra was born, you see, in 1939 when the Southern Protectorate was formally split to East and West. And, from that time till Gowon’s speech, had gorged itself on the one thing a political entity desirous of future independence needs most to increase its odds – that is, the experience of being administered as One.
Yes. It was this fact – those years of being governed together, of elites sharing the same alma maters, and sitting together in the Eastern House to consider together the fate of a Region – that made Biafra so easily possible. For this history, short as it was, ensured that Gowon’s proclamation did not immediately disintegrate the bond between Igbo and non-Igbo. So, Phillip Effiong led its army, nevertheless, and Okonkon Ndem voiced its propaganda. For Unity is a deliberate investment. And 30 years of being governed as One Region was the foundation on which that Biafra stood.
In truth, it was this foundation also that Jack Gowon began to rip out of the soil, with his clipped words of May 27th, and scatter to the wind. For, in the space of a speech, One became Three, and Three eventually became Eleven. So, tell me, when last did this Eleven, formerly One, sit down to do anything together? And if you consider this too ambitious, then answer a simpler one: when last did the Five, once a Region’s core, sit down together to do anything?
Yes. When was the last time we planned and built a network of roads together, or evolved a common agricultural policy together? Can we even dredge the Niger together, or build a bridge across that River together? When was the last time we constructed a Dam together, or evolved a common economic policy together? Can we even stem erosion together, or rid our forests of kidnappers together? Have we even come together, one day, to remember the horrors of a War we suffered together; or walked to lay a wreath together at a memorial anywhere in Igbo land to the innocents we lost in the Pogrom? Tell me – after decades of Imo-Abia-Enugu-Ebonyi-Anambra, and the vanity of enclaves we proudly call States of Origin, so each one may have its own University, Airport and self-inflated Governor secretly thinking himself Eze Igbo Gburugburu – on what exactly will this Biafra stand?
Too much faith, I tell you, we have put too much faith in this socio-political construct, Tribe; that it can – in itself and by itself – stand up to the pressures of being the cornerstone of a new State. But Somalia has but one and is still too factionalized to run a Country. Or is it Rwanda with two, and the setting still for Genocide? Or South Sudan with its euphoric Independence, and the years it now faces in chaos and re-building? For, even amongst blood brothers, this is true, Unity will always be what it is, the result of careful and conscientious investment over time.
So, place your borders where you will, brothers, but as long as the men within them do not have the habit of co-operation and compromise – of working together for the common good and accepting the self-deprivations this always and necessarily imposes – those borders, sentiments running beneath them notwithstanding, will fall. For this too is the Way of Men.
#allbordersareartificial #allidentityisfiction #allpeaceisplanned #nonationjusthappens.......... Dike Chukwumerije
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