SOUTHERN SUDAN: A NOBLE PRECEDENCE
On the 9th of July, 2011 a new nation will be created on the African continent. It will be called the nation of Southern Sudan. Its emergence will be an important landmark on the continent in more than one way. It will be about the first Black African nation of an African creation. It will mark the coming of age of the Blackman in his own home continent after centuries of disarray; the time when he began to think for himself and to have enough confidence in himself to choose what he wants for himself. On the 9th of July 2011 the world will salute a people who knew what they wanted, demanded for it and fought for it.
The peoples of Southern Sudan fought for more than twenty years within which more than two million of their population was killed. No, they fought for over five decades starting from 1955. They fought resolutely. They fought astutely. They fought assiduously. They fought resiliently. They fought stoutly as men and now they must have what they wanted. From the outset they saw clearly what is good for them and would not settle for anything less.
All along they knew that the greatest and most precious of all possessions by any people is their culture and way of life. They knew that to loose such invaluable inheritance is to loose life itself. Indeed, life is worth nothing when the people have been dispossessed of their ancestral culture and ways. It is in such occasions that wars become justified, (this might sound controversial to some but nothing can be truer and I am not ready to tender any apology). The two million people killed are just the price the Southern Sudanese had to pay to take back what had been taken away from them; their sovereignty.
From the beginning the Southern Sudanese saw out of the experience of centuries that the Arab world; because they had embraced an oppressive, intolerant and retrogressive way of life, that it would be insane to share the same political space with them and expect anything from them that is better than bigotry, slavery, exploitation, bad governance and backwardness. Southern Sudanese have proved that they are no fools and are capable of making their own choice rather than let some colonial outsiders sit down somewhere in Berlin in 1885 and choose for them who they should associate with.
Finally Southern Sudan has shown the rest of Black Africa the way to go. The rest of the black peoples of the continent must take back their lost sovereignty and re-divide the continent, if need be, by force of arm as in the example of South Sudan. You are free and independent only when you can choose out of your own freewill who you would associate with and not when someone else had yoked you together with whom you have nothing in common.
Right now as we write the Igbo people of Old Biafra Republic have just rented four tour buses to convey the 67 dead bodies of their brothers and sisters back to their homeland in Biafra. The people were murdered in the ongoing Islamic Jihad in Jos, PlateauState of Nigeria.
On the 30th of May 1967, the peoples of Southeast of Nigeria declared independence as the Republic of Biafra based on two reasons; they wanted to exist in a political space where they would be free to live their lives in their own way and on their own terms without molestation and they wanted to preserve their race from extermination. Earlier in 1966, Nigeria and Nigerians had embarked on a project of ethnic cleansing to rid their society of every person of Biafran extraction.
The Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Tiv, Idoma, etc peoples of Nigeria killed, never maimed, every Biafran in their midst unremittingly for a period of one year before the inevitable declaration of Biafra’s secession in 1967. After Biafra’s declaration, Nigeria intensified the killing and by 1970 when the great Biafran General Philip Effiong announced Biafra’s decision to stop the war, the field was covered with the dead bodies of 3.1 million Biafran children, women and men who were murdered because they wanted to choose what they considered good for themselves; their sovereignty.
To the peoples of Old Biafra of 1967 the choice was an eternal choice, so said a Pro-Biafra activist in a conversation with this writer last week. He maintained that with South Sudan’s independence on 9 July later this year that the last vestige of doubt in the mind of all Biafrans everywhere as to the rightness of their 1967 choice has been removed.
In all fairness, with South Sudan’s precedence staring the world in the face, it becomes logical that Biafra’s case must be revisited now. The people have already paid enough price to purchase their freedom and independence. The oppressive Islamic culture of the peoples of Nigeria is not about to reform any time soon. From all indications the jihadist killings of none Muslims in Nigeria will go on till Biafra separates from Nigeria.
Already, to the majority of the people across the world, Nigeria as it is constituted today has outlived its usefulness, just like most other countries of Black Africa Nigeria must be split up along its cultural divides. Let the cultures that find themselves compatible fuse together and form cohesive and functional societies and put a permanent stop to the current wanton waste of lives of children and the sacrifice of progress and prosperity at the alter of an artificial and obscene “unity”.
The rest of Black Africa, starting from Nigeria to Ivory Coast, to Senegal, to Cameroun, to South Africa, etc. must sit down somewhere, just as in 1885 in BerlinGermany, and redraw the political map of Africa, today. Black Africans must look the oppressive forces of this Arabian culture that subjugated the peoples of Southern Sudan for years without remorse in the face and choose to live their lives on their own terms. In all honesty, the Western colonial powers of 1885 could not have made a better choice than you can do for yourselves today, 2011.
South Sudan has shown that it can and must be done and Biafra must follow in this very noble example. Biafra has got oil too as does Southern Sudan and should use their oil to bargain for their freedom and sovereignty with whoever that would be enticed thereby. They have no reason whatsoever to remain any longer in any kind of unworkable and unprofitable association with Nigeria.
