BIANCA OJUKWU MUST NOT TAKE THIS POISON
The news around the world is saturated with the story of Bianca Ojukwu’s reported appointment into Nigeria’s government cabinet. Emeka Ojukwu 77, Bianca’s husband is currently ill and is recuperating in a hospital in Britain. He was flown there about a month ago when he took ill in his hometown Enugu the old capital city of the Republic of Biafra. The overseas medical treatment became necessary because there is no modern facility in any hospitals around his hometown that could carter for his condition, medical stroke.
It should be recalled that Emeka Ojukwu was Biafra’s head of state while the republic lasted in the late 1960s. Biafra had declared independence from Nigeria then because Nigerian government and its peoples had committed a very heinous crime of genocide against Biafrans. Up until then there had not been any such level of violence against human lives anywhere in Africa where a total of more than 100,000 children, women and men were murdered within a short period of one year by their fellow human beings for no other reason other than ethnic and religious differences. Ojukwu out of necessity declared Biafra’s independence to preserve the lives of Biafrans that were being threatened with total extermination by Nigeria and its peoples.
At the declaration of independence Ojukwu and his people believed in the justification of that decision and their support for Biafra was complete and without qualifications. When the war which ensued as a result ended Philip Effiong the Biafran general was still standing tall when he signed the treaty that signified the end of hostilities between the two warring countries of Biafra and Nigeria. It must be recalled that at no time during the treaty signing ceremony did General Effiong indicate that he was surrendering what his people fought for; their national sovereignty and their inalienable rights to life and property. Since the end of the war the killings of Biafrans and looting of their properties all over Nigeria have continued and even worsened from the way it had been during the 1960s, before the war.
Nigeria as a state and all its peoples have not shown any remorse for any of the atrocities they have consistently committed against Biafrans. And for good reasons, ever since, Biafran people have continually indicated that they have not given up on the reasserting of their self-determination and taking back their national sovereignty which they initiated in mid 1967.
It is based on this backdrop that it may be necessary to remind the world press that has been stressing and stretching this issue of the announced Bianca Ojukwu’s appointment into its cabinet by the Nigerian government that they may have misunderstood the whole situation. It has therefore become necessary to state here so as to disabuse the minds of all watchers that though Ojukwu may have served in a unique position during the war years, by overseeing the war efforts, but that does not make him or any member of his family to be synonymous with Biafra or what she stands for.
With this at the back of anyone’s mind, it adequately mitigates the severity of embarrassment which the news media had set out to elicit with the announced appointment of Bianca Ojukwu into Nigeria's government cabinet. Nevertheless though the news media around the world has clearly been stressing and stretching it to drive home what they assume to be the implication of what seems to be a calculated act in distaste by the Nigerian state. At this juncture it would be good if someone would let Bianca know that every Igbo and all Biafrans frown at this move by Nigeria and they see every bit of it in very bad taste. From all indications it looks like this is not an issue to be taken lightly at all or just dismissed as another public whining.
Though it is true that neither Ojukwu nor his wife is Biafra yet it may be important to note that some sections of the Biafran population still try to relate the actions and utterances of Ojukwu and members of his family to the Biafran struggle. And it is based on that that the continued report of the purported appointment may over time increasingly become an embarrassment to some of the fans of Emeka Ojukwu and his wife Bianca. Members of the world press have raised the pitch so high such that it appears to have reached a point where Bianca’s fans look at it with the view that if she took this appointment then it will prove that she is showing insensitivity to the people who gave all to preserve their humanity in Biafra. Some of them argue that asking Bianca to shun this rotten gesture from the genocidal state of Nigeria may not really be too much a sacrifice after all given that it would just be one small thing she would be doing to contribute to her people’s pride and dignity.
For any serious observer who tries to read between the lines in the news, the world is not applauding, it is mocking. The reason why the world is mocking is because the people who are looking in from the outside may not be able to tell the difference. They may not understand as we had stated earlier that Ojukwu and his family only played a role in the Biafran affair when they did and not anymore. Now they have their lives to live and only act on the behalf of themselves rather than on behalf of Biafra or Biafrans especially in this matter.
3.1 million people gave their lives to preserve Biafra ’s national sovereignty and her people’s human dignity. They did it with pride and are still paying the ultimate sacrifice to keep who they are and what they stand for. No Biafran anywhere has capitulated on this stand and they would like to let all people everywhere to know that if Bianca decided to accept this rather embarrassing offer, then she is doing it as her own person and on behalf of herself and maybe her family but not for Biafra or Biafrans.
Public service in any true society is considered as the ultimate in human prestige because one is giving of him or herself to serve the greater good. But in Nigeria the people in public service are the lowest of all classes who tell lies, cheat, scam, steal, deceive and never deliver any services to anyone or the society. So at this point, though it is agreed that Bianca would accept the appointment on the behalf of herself if she decided to, yet one cannot but wonder what she would stand to gain. In our opinion she will only end up soiling herself in the Nigerian cesspool of fecal filth and demeaning existence. Therefore in this light, it would be advisable that Bianca should resist the temptation (every form of attraction in Nigeria should never have been a temptation to anybody anyway) and maintain her human decency and never take this poison.
