Biafra @ 50: Ignorance a disease not bliss

Ignorance is not bliss, and I think we should sue the FG for scrapping history from the schools' curriculum.

Today is Biafra Remembrance Day and I choose to observe it because whether you all like to hear it or not, I am Igbo and Biafra is part of my history.

Some of the people displaying wilful ignorance on these issues, will mark Black History Month, right here from the comfort of their homes in Nigeria.

Ignorance = disease.

Not bliss.

I am Igbo.

At the heart of EVERY Igbo man, is that burning passion to be free of a Union that marginalises. One that is oppressive. One that views you as a seventh class slave, yet insists that you must be a part of the union whether you like it or not.

We may disagree with the means and purposes of the present struggle as constituted, I disagree with it a million percent. I disagree with the main dramatis personae, I disagree with their gravamen.

I disagree with the diasporeans who safe from their cocoons in foreign lands, are pushing the youth out to certain deaths at the hands of the murderous Nigerian army.

But I also disagree with this deceitful union called "One Nigeria".

I believe that we need to sit down, and renegotiate our current continuance in this entity.

I believe that it would be the greatest disservice Ndi Igbo would do to themselves, to boycott any elections in Igbo land or anywhere else in the country as a matter of fact.

What I believe, agree and disagree with are plenty but today...

May 30th.

Is Biafra Remembrance Day.

A day we set aside to remember the genocide of millions of Southerners and the relegation of that era with a backward flip of the hand: "No victor, no vanquished".

If it is too hard for you to understand that you cannot be Igbo without having suffered a direct loss either from the pogrom preceding the declaration or the ensuing genocide afterwards, then it would not be too much to expect of you to jump and pass such posts.

Especially since today, fifty years after, a Yoruba man can slap a Hausa boy in Bata market in Kano, and the Igbos who were never part of the main issue in the first place, would be hunted down and slaughtered in their dozens

Today, we remember.

May the sacrifices of the lost ones NEVER be in vain.

Amen!

Chika Kalu is a public affairs commentator

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