Many empires have come and gone, such as ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire. However, the most recent kingdom of our time seems to be the British Empire.
British Empire seems to have reached its peak in the 1940s and 1960s, when some of its colonies, including African countries, gained independence.
The British-led Commonwealth Organization seems to be the distant remnant of a vanished British Empire.
After independence, Britain maintained a policy of indirect rule as a subtle means to keep Nigeria on a short leash.
As a result, one of the main reasons for the ongoing domestic unrest in Nigeria appears to lie in the existing indirect rule structure. It aims to keep Nigeria in perpetual subjugation.
Britain maintains its imperial structure through the establishment of a sort of alienated identity. It achieved this by creating a system that encourages the population to adopt the English language and names and replacing important indigenous places with English names like Ugwuocha with Port Harcourt.
What the British achieved by creating an alienated identity for the Nigerian people can best be described as the complete destruction of a people’s way of life for the purpose of maintaining their imperialist dominion. Within great historical periods, the entire way of life of the Biafrans was changed, and their fate as perpetual servants of the British was cemented.
But there is also a great fear of losing this power. Therefore, Britain will do anything to keep the fate of Nigerians in its hands, and anyone who dares to destroy these structures of neocolonialism will have to pay dearly for it.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is the Biafra Nation Leader and the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB) leader. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is requesting a separate state for his Biafra people.
Biafra was first declared on May 30th, 1967, by the then Governor of the Eastern Region of Nigeria, Major General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. After the pogrom in the North that saw the killing of not less than 50,000 Easterners, coupled with the failure of Yakubu Gowon, led Nigeria Government to obey the Aburi Accord. Aburi accord was a round table dialogue organized by the then Ghana president to restore peace between Biafra and Nigeria.
The war that erupted after claimed the lives of not less than 3.5 million Biafrans, including children and women. Britain sided with Nigeria and helped Nigeria use hunger as a weapon of war to kill more than 2 million Biafra children. In addition, Britain used the BBC to push deadly propaganda against Biafra and negotiated weapons for Nigeria through their proxies. While Biafrans are denied weapons, Britain supplied the same to Nigeria.
On January 15th, 1970, Biafra Surrendered and returned to Nigeria. Since this surrender, Biafrans has been treated like slaves in their land. Biafrans continue to suffer marginalization in the hands of the successive Nigerian government. Even though the resources that sustain Nigeria are gotten from the Biafra territory, they are denied infrastructure and all forms of federal government presence. Their lands are polluted and are shot at whenever they peacefully protest.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, a British citizen and an indigenous person of Biafra, rose to rescue his people from the clutches of marginalization, injustice and Islamic terrorism orchestrated and supported by the Nigerian government.
It became an irony of the sort that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who fights for the liberation of Biafra from Nigeria, a country regarded as a British colony, is also a British citizen. He knows that to fight for his people, he needed to be a citizen of the same country that enslaved his people.
It is pertinent to note that Britain is totally against the division of Nigeria. They are against division because a divided Nigeria will open the eyes of Africa and grow Africa. Therefore, it is in the interest of Britain that Nigeria remains one and under the control of the Fulani North.
This enables Britain to keep keeping the people down as to continue exploiting them. Having studied the Igbo and Yoruba people of the South, Britain played on both people’s psych to keep working against each other. This disunity among Southerners kept the Fulani North in power and control for years.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu using regular Radio broadcasts awakened the minds and spirits of his Biafra people and that of the Yoruba and Middle Belt people. With this, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu became Britain’s greatest enemy while living in Britain as a British citizen.
Britain still views Nigeria as its colony to be controlled and exploited. This restrictive view is what Mazi Nnamdi Kanu wants to destroy with his enlightenment and awakening of the South and is why he became their number 1 enemy.
Those who still think that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s extraordinary rendition was orchestrated and planned by Nigeria and Kenya need a rethink. Britain used Kenya to do their dirty job.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, a British citizen, made it difficult for Britain to arrest him in Britain or any other European country when he has committed no offence.
When he is asking only for the same thing Scotland asked for, and it was granted them. So why should Scotland be offered a referendum without the British police and military killing them? But when Biafrans demands the same, Britain will work against it and support Nigeria to kill Biafrans.
Nigeria has killed more than 10,000 Biafra youths in the last 15 years. Their offence is peacefully protesting and demanding a referendum. A demand Nigeria government regarded as a call for war.
The extraordinary rendition of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in Kenya to Nigeria is a British dirty game. The recent meeting between the British prime minister, Nigeria president, and Kenyan president is a pointer. Kenya can’t arrest a man carrying a British passport without Britain going ahead.
It is an insult to the super nation for their citizens to be disrespected in such a manner. Ask yourself this question: From where did Kenya get the authority and power to abduct a British citizen, torture him for a whopping eight days, and then send a message to the Nigerian government to render him to Nigeria Illegally? How possible is it that such can happen without a go-ahead order from Britain?
Also, Britain’s near do nothing over these atrocities also signals that Britain orchestrated the whole act of disgraceful impunity. Britain would not say they are monitoring events as they unfold If they are not guilty. Britain would have sanctioned Nigeria as in Umaru Dikko in 1984 when the same Buhari attempted to kidnap Umaru Diko and bring him back to Nigeria to stand trial for embezzlement.
Although Dikko was not a British citizen, as in Nnamdi Kanu’s case, Britain punished Nigeria for violating its sovereignty and human rights when it severed all diplomatic relations with Nigeria.
Unfortunately, the dirty game of British imperialism didn’t start today, or with Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Britain has been in the business of subjugating the people of the South to keep exploiting them. Jaja of Opobo is a man history will never forget his plight in the hands of the British.
King Jaja of Opobo refused to allow Britain to monopolize trade in his days and his kingdom. Angered by these circumstances, British Vice Consul Henry Hamilton Johnston invited JaJa to negotiate in 1887. Still, he was arrested upon arrival aboard a British ship and convicted after a kangaroo court in Acra and exiled for many years. For the rest of his life, Ja Ja never saw his native Opobo again, for he died on his way back from exile.
Interestingly, the issue of oil resources in Biafraland, over which Britain wants unrestricted control, seems to be the recurring reason for Britain’s unjust action against the Biafrans. The 1967 Nigerian civil war, which went down in history as the Biafra War and in which some 3.5 million Biafrans died, was motivated by the British struggle for control of oil resources in Biafraland.
