Olusegun Obasanjo
Al Jazeera broadcast the first part of a two-part programme “#Biafra50YearsOn: Is Nigeria’s secessionist movement re-emerging?” last night.
One of the guests, Uche Mefor, the Deputy Director of Radio Biafra, an internet-based radio station that is seeking the secession of southeast Nigeria from the rest of the country, said that fellow guest and former president Olusegun Obasanjo should not be walking the streets as a free man and should be in jail because he is a war criminal.
Mefor was referring to Obasanjo’s role as a colonel during the Nigerian civil war from 1967 to 1970.
The programme started with two former combatants on opposing sides of the war, with Obasanjo on the Nigerian side, and Igwe Chris Ejiofor, then the Aide-de-Camp to Biafran leader Emeka Ojukwu. Obasanjo was full of regret about the “futility of the war” and because what was achieved at the end could have been reached without a bullet being fired.
Ejiofor, now the traditional ruler of Oyofo Oghe in Enugu State, tried to contextualise the war in terms of the start. While most of the narrative states that it kicked off following what was termed an “Igbo coup” in January 1966, Ejiofor explained that non-Igbo officers were involved and their plan was to “change the political structure” and free Obafemi Awolowo from jail. Ejiofor, the author of “Biafra’s struggle for survival” agreed with Obasanjo that the war shouldn’t have happened, citing Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence from Britain without the British going to war.
Obasanjo countered that the execution of the coup was “one-sided” in terms of the senior politicians and officers killed.
At the end of the first part of the programme with the two former soldiers, the other guests went to town on Obasanjo. One, Oguchi Nkwocha, a Biafran activist, called the former president a “liar”.
Another guest and former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, claimed that the current agitation for Biafran secession was due to “leadership failure”. He seemed to have exempted himself from this failure despite governing his state for eight years without any discernible achievements.
Another guest, journalist Rudolf Okonkwo, argued (quite rightly) that Nigeria is a “failed state” that works for the likes of Obasanjo and Obi. He likened the leader of the Biafran separatist group – Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, to Malcolm X before the civil rights activist went to Mecca
