When a man opposes an issue, a movement or anything at all, he raises all sorts of dust against it. Whether the dusts he is raising are truthful, factual or a series of fallacies does not matter to him. What matters to him is that if a bag of contagious lies can and will stop that which he is against, then so be it.
The above analogy exactly sums up the kind of dance which the opportunistic opponents of the Biafran struggle are currently dancing shamelessly in the market square of the struggle.
This article is aimed at analyzing two arguments that most of them are currently drumming into the ears of anyone who cares to listen to them. First they keep saying that Biafra cannot be restored except a war is fought for her restoration. Second, they try in vain to drive fear into the hearts of Biafrans by constantly muting the idea that Biafra will be a landlocked country when it is restored, and this will inevitably lead to an economic catastrophe. To a neophyte, their retrogressive arguments may hold water at face value, but a careful and in-depth analysis will render them useless, impotent and an exercise in a futile intellectual shenanigan.
Taking the issue of “war drums” for instance, these enemies of progress were the same people who were shouting their voice hoarse all over the place that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has no verifiable and identifiable plan for the restoration of Biafra. Now that he has made known one of his verifiable and identifiable plans, they make a lily-livered u-turn to say that he is beating the drums of war. One is at a loss as to how the boycott of all elections in Biafraland can lead to war. These emergency critics and “intellectuals” in their blindness to truth have failed to take cognizance of the fact that there is a distinguishable and concrete difference between a call for war and a call for civil disobedience.
Nnamdi Kanu’s call for the boycott of elections is a call for civil disobedience and not a call for war, though it must be stated vividly and succinctly, that as a people of brave heart, we are not and will never be afraid of war. He-Goat said that the fact that he does not know how to dance does not mean that he does not know what to do when a dance is brought to his house. Credible examples abound all over the globe of the effectiveness of civil disobedience as a veritable tool for freedom struggle. It is either our die hard critics are not aware of the lucid examples or they are aware but have choosen to live in denial of reality because of their selfish aim.
The truth which these evil minded opponents of Biafra are aware of but have choosen to deny is that boycotting the forthcoming election in Anambra State and other elections that will follow it in 2019 is not a call for war in any shape or form. They also know and are jittery that the success of this election boycott will ultimately lead to the downfall of Nigeria, their zoological garden. This is because it will serve as a final testimony that the totality of Biafrans have totally rejected Nigeria and everything she represents.
The other debate about Biafra being a landlocked country is already dead on arrival when we take into cognizance that Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Delta states are going to be part of the new Biafra nation based on the ancient and most authentic map of the world and that they were part of Biafraland in the first Biafran Republic, the nomenclatures they are bearing now notwithstanding. These states have large bodies of water that are connected to international waters. But assuming that the peoples of these states decide for one reason or the other not to be part of the new Biafra, then I make very bold to say that the new state will still survive even as a so called landlocked state. Austria, Hungary, Switzerland are some of the landlocked countries of the world and they are not doing badly. At least they are ranked far ahead of Nigeria in the global developmental and standard of living index of countries in the world. Their respective Gross Domestic Products also rank far above that of this geographical mistake called Nigeria. Apart from the foregoing, there are four other reasons that will effectively quash this cowardly landlocked debate.
The first is that these naysayers seem not to be aware that there is a United Nations Convention which guarantees landlocked countries a free right of sea passage through their neighbouring countries. So Nigeria as our neighbouring country will have no choice than to ensure that Biafra freely uses her sea routes to import and export goods. We are also free to use that of Equitorial Guinea, Benin Republic and other neighbouring countries that are not landlocked. For the avoidance of doubt and to succinctly prove our point, the United Nations Convention being discussed here is known as United Nations Convention on The Law of Sea Routes (UNCLOS). It is the international agreement that arose from the third United Nations conference on the law of the sea which held in 1972 and 1983 respectively. UNCLOS has 167 countries and the European Union as members. Nigeria ratified the convention on August 14th 1986. So she has no choice than to grant Biafra free and unhindered access through her sea route.
The second point that quashes the landlocked argument is the fact that the world is currently shifting attention to the transportation of heavy cargoes through the use of cargo planes. Biafra as a nation of pragmatic and highly creative minded and never say never people will definitely cue into this emerging trend which is faster than sea transportation, though more costlier at the moment.
The River Niger factor is the third strong counter argument against the debate of these landlocked polemists. This river which is the principal river of Western Africa starts from the Guinea Highlands and runs a crescent through Niger and Mali on the border with Benin Republic and then through Biafraland and Nigeria and then discharges through a massive delta known as Niger Delta or oil rivers into the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. The dredging of the river which successive governments of Nigeria have only paid lip service to, by the Government of Biafra will definitely connect Biafraland to the rest of the world sea wise and enhance the sea transportation abilities of the new nation.
It must also be stated that being landlocked, sea locked, land opened or sea opened is not in any conceivable manner, a precondition for secession from an existing country.
Finally these counter-discourse critics of Biafra have failed to tell us and the rest of the world why Nigeria is not a landlocked country is presently ranked amongst the poorest, most corrupt and least developed countries of the world. The worst is that she is not even showing any sign of swimming out of the dark and muddied waters of stagnation in which she is currently swimming in a gleeful irony.
All Hail Biafra
- Ndubuisi Nwokedi
Imo Media Team
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