PRINCIPLES OF THE BIAFRAN REVOLUTION (AHIARA DECLARATION)
We have indeed come a long way. We were
once Nigerians, today we are Biafrans. We are Biafrans because on May 30, 1967,
we finally said ‘no’ to the evils and injustices in which Nigeria was steeped.
Nigeria was made up of peoples and groups with very little in common.
As everyone knows, Biafrans were in the
forefront among those who tried to make Nigeria a nation. It is ironic that
some ill-informed and mischievous people today will accuse us of breaking now
the facts because we were there and the things that happened, happened to us.
Nigeria was indeed a very wicked and
corrupt country in spite of the glorious image given her in the European press
We know why Nigeria was given that image. It was her reward for serving the
economic and political interests of her European masters. Nigeria is a stooge
of Europe. Her independence was and is a lie.
Even her Prime Minister was a Knight of
the British Empire; but worse than her total subservience to foreign political
and economic interests, Nigeria committed many crimes against her nationals,
which in the end made complete nonsense of her claim to unity.
Nigeria persecuted and slaughtered her
minorities. Nigerian justice was a farce, her elections, her politics her
everything was corrupt. Qualification, merit and experience were dislocated in
public service. In one area of Nigeria, for instance, they preferred to turn a
nurse who had worked for five years into a doctor rather than employ a
qualified doctor from another part of Nigeria. Barely literate clerks were made
Permanent Secretaries.
A university Vice Chancellor was sacked
because he belonged to the wrong tribe. Bribery, corruption and nepotism were
so widespread that people began to wonder openly whether any country in the
world could compare with Nigeria in corruption and abuse of power.
All the modern institutions the
legislature – the civil service, the army, the police, the judiciary, the
universities, the trade unions and the organs of mass information were devalued
and made the tools of corrupt political power. There was complete neglect and
impoverishment of the people. Whatever prosperity there was, was deceptive.
There was despair in many hearts, and
the number of suicides was growing every day. The farmers were very hard- hit.
Their standards of living had fallen steeply. The soil was perishing from
over-farming and lack of scientific husbandry. The towns, like the soil, were
wastelands into which people put in too much exertion for too little reward.
There were crime waves and people lived in fear of their lives.
Business speculation, rack-renting,
worship of money and share :) practices left a few people extremely rich at the
expense of the many, and those few flaunted their wealth before the many and
talked about sharing the national cake. Foreign interests did roaring business
spreading consumer goods and wares among a people who had not developed a habit
of thrift and well fell prey to lying advertisements.
Inequality of the sexes was actively
promoted in Nigeria. Rather than aspire to equality with men, women were
encouraged to accept the status of inferiority and to become the mistresses of
successful politicians and business executive, or they were married off at the
age of fourteen as the fifteenth wives of the new rich. That was the glorious
Nigeria, the mythical Nigeria, celebrated in the European press.
Then worst of all came the genocide in
which over 50,000 of our kith and kin were slaughtered in cold blood all over
Nigeria and nobody asked questions; nobody showed regret; nobody showed
remorse. Thus, Nigeria had become a jungle with no safety, no justice and no
hope for our people. We decided then to found a new place, a human habitation
away from the Nigerian jungle. That was the origin of our revolution.
From the moment we assumed the
illustrious name of the ancient kingdom of Biafra, we were rediscovering the
original independence of a great African people. We accepted by this
revolutionary act the glory, as well as the sacrifice, of true independence and
freedom.
We knew that we had challenged the many
forces and interests, which had conspired to keep Africa and the black race in
subjection forever. We knew they were going to be ruthless and implacable in
defense of their age-old imposition on us and exploitation of our people.
But we were prepared, and remain prepared, to
pay any price for our freedom and dignity.
Our revolution is a historic
opportunity given to us to establish a just society; to revive the dignity of
our people at home and the dignity of the black man in the world. We realize
that in order to achieve those ends we must remove those weaknesses in our
institutions and organizations and those disabilities in foreign relations
which have tended to degrade this dignity. This means that we must reject
Nigerianism in all its guises.
The Biafran revolution is the people’s
revolution. ‘Who are the people?’ you ask. The farmer, the trader, the clerk,
the businessman, the housewife, the student, the civil servant, the soldier you
and I are the people. Is there anyone here who is not of the people? Is there
anyone here afraid of the people anyone suspicious of the people? Is there
anyone despising the people? Such a man has no place in our revolution. If he
is a leader, he has no right to leadership, because all power, all sovereignty,
belongs to the people.
In Biafra the people are supreme; the
people are master the leader is the servant. You see, you make a mistake when
you greet me with shouts of ‘power, power’. I am not power you are. My name is
Emeka, I am your servant, that is all.
Fellow countrymen, we pride ourselves
on our honesty. Let us admit to ourselves that when we left Nigeria, some of us
did not shake off every particle of Nigerians. We say that Nigerians are
corrupt and take bribes; but here in our country we have among us some members
of the Police and the Judiciary who are corrupt and who ‘eat’ bribes.
We accuse Nigerians of in ordinate love
of money, ostentatious living and irresponsibility: but here, even while we are
engaged in a war of national survival, even while the very life of our nation
hangs in the balance, we see some public servants who throw huge parties to
entertain their friends; who kill cows to christen their babies.
We have members of the armed forces who
carry on ‘attack’ trade instead of fighting the enemy. We have traders who
hoard essential goods and inflate prices, thereby increasing the people’s
hardship. We have ‘money-mongers’ who aspire to build on hundreds of plots on
land as yet un-reclaimed from the enemy; who plan to buy scores of lorries and
buses and to become agents for those very foreign businessmen who have brought
their country to grief. We have some civil servants who think of themselves as
masters rather than servants of the people. We see doctors who stay idle in
their villages while their countrymen and women suffer and die.
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