I am a school teacher and activist. My name is Elochukwu Nicholas Ohagi. I am a victim of being a Nigerian. At the age of 9, I was assaulted by two officers of the Nigeria Mobile Police in Urualla. I was shouted at to stop moving.
I just returned from boarding school, where I spent half the school year. Are you a Biafran?” one of them shouted at me. I quickly answered the question with another question. Is there a country within a country?
After this incident, I started asking older people around me about Biafra and what it means to be a Biafran.
They told me stories of wars and massacres. Stories that made me shudder. In 1966, after the coup d’Γ©tat by the Nigerian military, a pogrom was perpetrated against the Igbo. More than 50 000 Igbo and other people from the East were massacred, and their bodies lay scattered on the streets of northern Nigeria.
When the Igbo could no longer bear this, the survivors moved to the East and continued the crisis. Finally, in January 1966, the then Ghanaian president tried to restore peace between the two groups. But unfortunately, the then Nigerian head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, refused to implement the agreement reached in Aburi-Ghana.
The pogrom against the Biafrans led to the proclamation of the Republic of Biafra. It was a decision by Odumegwu Ojukwu to protect the people of the East killed in their thousands by the military and mobs of the North.
The world failed Biafra in that war. Since there were no social media then, Biafrans, the victims, were declared “rebels” and villains, a term used by the British Broadcasting Cooperation because of British economic interests in Nigeria. Nigeria’s oil resources are in Biafra, and Britain considers Nigeria its colony.
Britain was afraid to deal directly with the Biafrans, the real owners of the resources. Therefore, they transferred control of Nigeria to the North, led by the Fulani.
More than 3.5 million Biafrans died in this war because Nigeria and its international allies never cared about rules of engagement. Hospitals, refugee camps, churches, markets and farmland were bombed daily by the Nigerian government. As a result, our children suffered from kwashiorkor due to a lack of protein and salt, and more than 2 million children in Biafra died.
I was born many years after that brutal war, but Nigerian police officers still consider a 9-year-old a Biafran. In addition, I was treated as though I fought in that war, even though I did not know or witness that war. Many Igbo youths have seen the war, but they have suffered from the economic blockade of the East by the Nigerian government.
There is no federal government presence in the east. There are no functioning seaports, no good federal roads and no military universities. Senior government officials in Nigeria still refer to us as Biafra boys. Many years after the war, I am still asked if I am a Biafran.
As a teacher and activist living in Nigeria, I have witnessed a lot of injustice. One of the current cases is the Fulani herdsmen who go unpunished for their atrocities. At the same time, innocent Biafrans are humiliated daily and ostracised as a terrorist group by the Buhari government for calling for a referendum.
I can say I am still shocked after reading an article by Professor Ivan Sascha Sheehan, an American, published in the Washington Times, calling on the American government to label the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as a foreign terrorist organisation.
And Professor Ivan did not stop there; he went further to exonerate the Fulani herdsmen of all the atrocities they committed in Nigeria and portrayed them as victims in Nigeria.
First of all, IPOB is not just an organisation. IPOB is the PEOPLE. And what is IPOB asking? IPOB is calling for a referendum to determine their fate. The right to self-determination is a fundamental human right enshrined in the United Nations, to which Nigeria is a signatory.
However, the Nigerian military has killed IPOB members since 2015 simply because they were peacefully protesting. For example, an unarmed group protesting with only Biafra flags and Biafra insignia was gunned down by the Nigerian military.
Numerous attacks on IPOB by the Nigerian government are well documented. For example, Amnesty International reported multiple killings of peaceful IPOB demonstrators in Nigeria’s south-eastern region.
Security forces shot at a group of young men who were praying in a high school in Aba. Similar incidents occurred in Onitsha, Nkpor, Obigbo and Emene, all in the Southeast. In addition, on 14 September 2017, the Nigerian government carried out a brutal attack on the house of the IPOB leader in Afaraukwu Ibeku. In this attack, 29 people were killed, including a pet dog. All these attacks are verifiable.
Apart from the killings by Nigerian security forces, the Fulani herdsmen terrorists are another group terrorising the people of the East. They carry Ak47s, kill farmers and rape women.
They have attacked the south-eastern states of Ebonyi, Anambra and Enugu countless times without the government doing or saying anything. But to date, no Fulani herdsmen-terrorists are in jail or facing trial for killing people and wiping out villages, while IPOB members are killed and imprisoned.
IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who was abducted by the Nigerian government in Kenya and taken to Nigeria, formed the ESN to protect the people from the deadly terrorist attacks by Fulani herders.
Since the formation of the ESN, the East have been able to go to their farms without being killed. Is Professor Ivan Sasha Sheehan telling us that self-defence is now a crime? Should the indigenous people of Biafra slit the necks of the Fulani herdsmen-terrorists? What does he want from the people of Biafra?
IPOB’s demand is genuine. However, instead of asking the American government to label IPOB as a terrorist organisation, why not ask the American government to give the over 50 million Biafrans a chance to determine where they want to be through an UN-supervised referendum.
Wouldn’t that be the right way to go? Isn’t that the way to lasting peace? Isn’t that the only civilised way to save lives and property? Didn’t Britain offer the Scottish people the same Referendum when they asked to leave? Is not the Referendum the reason for Britain’s exit from the European Union?
It is indeed time for the American government to address the plight of the Biafrans and come to their aid. But unfortunately, it is almost impossible to call more than 50 million people terrorists.
Professor Ivan Sasha Sheehan calls on the United States of America to label all Biafran indigenous peoples as terrorists. He says Biafrans in America, Canada, Australia and Biafra land should be called terrorists. Tell me who is doing that.
The fact that Professor Ivan Sasha Sheehan called Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria terrorists shows how biased he is. The situation forces me to ask whether the Nigerian government paid him to write this article.
This month alone, more than 50 people have been killed by the same Fulani herdsmen-terrorists in Christian-dominated southern Kaduna without anyone being held accountable. This gruesome situation is precisely what Professor Ivan Sasha Sheehan wants for Biafrans. To be slaughtered like the people of Southern Kaduna, without any form of defence.
You may not understand what we are going through in Nigeria. The kidnappings, killings and corruption continue. They may also not know that we, as activists are a vulnerable group.
The insistence of the people of Biafra on a referendum for Biafra is the only reason this American professor wants to call IPOB a terrorist organisation.
Elochukwu Ohagi is a philosopher, teacher and activist.
Ohagi really scraped the “Professor’s” skin with this; there is a letter purported to be from the man in which “he” claims he was paid by some woman to do that hellish job; though the letter wasn’t verified yet, it is difficult to believe that his motive was scholarly humanity.
Thanks for telling that man the story from the beginning.