For June 12, 2009

Fellow Biafrans:

We continue to offer the basis for the durable solution for the Niger Delta crisis wherein Nigeria continues to murder our defenseless people, pillage and sack their towns and villages with impunity, using heavily armed military assisted by warships, gunboats, military helicopters and foreign military consultant-personnel. The same solution applies to the general resolution of the failed State called Nigeria and the crushing burden such failure imposes on the peoples living in that geospace, especially Biafran, as well as on Africa as a whole.

The solution: Self Determination. Apply the principles of Self Determination in the entire region; practice Self Determination in the region. Self Determination restores the power, empowerment and right of control and management by the nations of each its own destiny, resources, society, and ship of State—each its own dignity and humanity. The UN adopted the Self Determination Resolution A/61/295 precisely to effect a permanent, just, fair and process-driven resolution to such dire circumstances as that in which the peoples and nations incessantly dying in Nigeria find themselves in today.

For those of you recommending any other "solutions" either out of expediency, fear, intimidation, sycophancy, or outright ignorance, we point out to you that such have never worked, are not working now, and have no chance of working in the future. For those looking for a temporary fix so that their interests and stakes may rebound from perceived jeopardy, we can only question your humanity, as you well know that the cycle of genocide, annihilation and destruction exercises by Nigeria against hapless human beings will continue, as it has in the past fifty years or so; hence, there will never be stability in the region—not until a permanent solution is implemented. For, even if not frequently enough, and even when completely ignored by an uncaring world, the oppressed and victimized will always manage to make just a little of their discomfort felt by all. No interest can be safe, no stake secure, as long as Nigeria remains as it is now, a brutal failed genocidal State—as it has been, and as it is headed in, if a future exists in fact for it.

When we are ready to honestly appraise the situation so to arrive at the correct solution stated above, we will recall that in 1999, following the massacre of thousands of our people in Odi and the razing of their town by, again, ruthless Nigerian Military, on the orders of General Obasanjo, then President of Nigeria, Obasanjo himself, on a tour of the area later, rather than express remorse for his crime, reminded the shocked and aggrieved people and the rest of Nigeria in repeated public statements that the Biafra-Nigeria war was fought because of "control of petroleum resources." He repeated this veiled threat in Yenagoa and Owerri—an indirect warning that Nigeria’s aggression / war continues as long as the State of Nigeria perceives any challenge to its total control of the resources of the people of Biafra. No one knows Nigeria’s side of the story and her reason for waging war against Biafra better than Obasanjo. When he made the statement quoted earlier, he was the civilian Head of State of Nigeria, Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, as well as the Minister of Petroleum Resources of Nigeria. During the war itself, Obasanjo was the commander of Nigeria’s ground forces in Biafra; later, he became the Military Ruler of Nigeria, well before becoming the selected civilian ruler of Nigeria. Therefore, when he says that for Nigeria, that was a war for the control of Oil, he knows perfectly well what he is talking about. Now you can see that the Biafra war, which from the Biafran side was truly a war of self defense, was not really to "keep Nigeria one" as General Gowon claimed in those days and afterwards; it was only for to grab and keep control of the rich Petroleum resources of Biafra. Nothing more; nothing less.

Since the Niger Delta is the repository of Biafra’s Petroleum Resources, it is only logical that Nigeria, using its brutal military, is ready to kill 20 million more Deltans if necessary—as recommended by a so-called member of Nigeria’s House of Assembly recently—in order to continue to force and assert its complete control and management of the Oil in the Niger Delta. This makes laughable any solutions based on the total submission to and placation of Nigeria by Niger Delta and Biafra, wherein the latter forever remain silent while Nigeria takes away, wholesale, the natural property and endowments of Niger Delta and Biafra. The Nigerian military is busy shedding the blood of unarmed Niger Deltans today, dispossessing and burning their villages, and disrupting their societies and social structures—just like it has always done since 1966—in order to affirm its alpha-control over our Oil, just as it has done since the Biafra War. So, let’s all get it straight. That’s why no other solution is going to work, until and unless Nigeria has no way to legally and or practically claim control, ownership and management of the Niger Delta Oil. Self Determination will guarantee that.

Yes, neither Obasanjo nor Nigeria which he represents and speaks for is mincing words about Nigeria’s only interest in our land being the forceful and total control of our Oil Resources, and the eagerness of Nigeria to kill us all, when necessary—and it has been so—for that. You now know about the Nigerian Government Decrees, "Petroleum Resources Decree, 1969"; "Land Use Decree #6, 1978"; and "National Inland Waterways Decree #13, 1997." These decrees, working together, have left you with only the air you breathe; if Nigeria could impound even this air from you with a decree, it gladly would. For that matter, Nigeria sees to it that even that air is polluted with Oil exploration sediments, heated up and unnaturally lit by careless, thoughtless and pernicious Gas-flaring operations. These decrees—practiced and upheld by Nigeria—mean: You don’t own your own land. You don’t own your own waters and water ways. You cannot own anything on or inside your own land or waters or water-ways, no. The State of Nigeria has decreed that it, alone, owns it all; if you act otherwise, the Nigeria Military will kill you. Colonialism, even at its worst ever, never got this obnoxious and odious. That’s what we are up against. You can’t think to placate or submit to Nigeria as a way to resolve this—that does not make any sense.

The UN, in adopting the Self Determination Resolution, has given us a solid program to assert ourselves as our own respective nations and reclaim that which is ours by nature and by right, that taken from us by force, without our consent, by "colonial powers," whether it be the now abandoned traditional colonialism, or neo-colonialism, the "Internal colonialism," as Nigeria has been practising against us. Let no one claim that the UN did not, or has not helped us in this struggle. Given the powerful nature of the UN and yet, its disarming constraints, there is no more effective assist than this Self Determination Resolution. It is now up to us to help ourselves, to liberate our selves. Let us all implement the tenets of Self Determination to solve the failed State of Nigeria today—in the Niger Delta, in Biafra, in the entire region. Let our people regain control of what is by right ours; let all nations control what is respectively theirs.

We are not going to allow those of us who saw the wisdom of Self Determination before the UN adopted the resolution to continue to remain in Nigeria’s prisons. We insist on the release of Uchenna Madu and our other Biafran brethren. We insist on their welfare. There will be accountability for their treatment and status—this we insist on; we will never relent until all of them are released.

Biafra alive! Because it is God Who makes it so.

That’s the News Analysis for the week. Thank you.

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