TRANSCRIPT OF SEGMENT OF VOICE OF BIAFRA INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST

April 20, 2002

AN APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF BIAFRA

A CALL TO ARMS OF CONSCIENCE

A CALL TO COURAGE AND DETERMINATION

Fellow women of Biafra, we salute you.

Great women of Owerri, Calabar, Ikot Ekpene, Uyo, Opobo, Ahoada, Ikwerre, Degema, Port Harcourt, Andoni, Ndokwa, Agbor, Ogwashi Ukwu, Iselle-Ukwu, Obiaruku, Asaba, Onitsha, Orlu, Umuahia, Okigwe, Abakaliki, Enugu, Nsukka, Uzo Uwani, Oji River, Awka, Nnewi, Ihiala, Ogoja, Obudu, etc, we salute you. Market women in Onitsha, Aba, Owerri, Nnewi, Asaba, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Enugu, we salute you.

Christian Mothers, Life Members, Leaders, Patrons, the heart and soul of our Churches we salute you all. Women leaders in out villages, towns, cities, and autonomous communities, we salute you all.

I am speaking to you today as a fellow woman and mother. We know too well the pain and suffering we endure carrying a pregnancy for nine months. We clearly remember the agony of childbirth, the panic when the child almost died of high fever, malaria, diarrhea, the sleepless nights and the denial of personal pleasures by you and your husband in order to bring up your children. You did all that because you believed that “nwa bu aku.” Our children are a form of insurance for old age. This is incontestable truth in our society.

My fellow women and mothers, something very terrible has been happening in our communities, out towns and cities recently. We have cried our eyes red over the satanic crime of Hausa/Fulani/Yoruba people who have been killing our children in thousands in several parts of Northern, Western Nigeria and Lagos. Obasanjo’s government has done nothing to protect our most dearly valued children. Rather he has joined the murderers in slaughtering our children like chicken.

My fellow women and mothers, something even more terrible and horrific is happening to us in our own homeland. Our own governors, senators and politicians are slaughtering our own children. In Aba governor Orji Kalu has organized a band of murderers (“adigboloja” Bakassi) and unleashed them on the town. They have been killing members of MASSOB and Aba shoemakers on the orders of Governor Orji Kalu. In Enugu Governor Chimaroke Nnamani allegedly sent armed hoodlums and murders to murder innocent people who were worshipping at the adoration ground in GTC in Enugu. They also had instructions allegedly from him to murder Rev. Fr. Mbaka, the outspoken Catholic priest who has been speaking out against the corruption in the Governors Government.

To add insult to injury, he sent a Moslem police officer to arrest the Catholic Vicar-General, Rev. Prof Obiora Ike in Enugu and put him in jail with common criminals. What an insult, what an abomination. Will any Christian police officer from Igboland do that to a Moslem cleric in Sokoto or Kano and be alive to tell the story?

In Awka, Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju sent hoodlums to throw tear gas at Christian mothers who had gone peacefully to beg him to pay teachers their monthly salaries so our children can go back to school. My fellow women and mothers this governor had the audacity to put pepper in the eyes and other body parts of us mothers and women. Goat has eaten palm fronds off our heads.

In Ebonyi, senator Anyim has allegedly caused the death of so many innocent young men. The same thing is happening in most other communities in our homeland from Calabar to Agbor to Ehamufu to Obudu. Nobody is saying a word.

When our children are killed in their thousands in Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto, Lagos, Jos etc nobody says a word. Ekwueme will seal his lips with plaster and become Obasanjo’s errand boy running all over Nigeria like chicken whose head was cut off. Iwuanyanwu and Nzeribe will go to Obasanjo’s farm to beg him to be maximum ruler over Ndiigbo. Your so called senators and so called big men will become deaf and dumb. But touch one Hausa man in Lagos and all the Northern leaders will be screaming at Obasanjo – Shagari, Buhari, Rimi all will be threatening fire and brimstone, fighting to protect their people. Touch one Yoruba man and Adesanya and other Yoruba leaders will fight like lions to protect their people.

Fellow women and mothers, it is time for us to take our destiny in our hands. You can’t let these rogue politicians continue to kill your children, your future. Our mothers and grandmothers did it before. In 1929, when the British colonial government using warrant chiefs tried to tax our grandmothers, Nwanyeruwa started the Aba women revolution. She and other women mobilized women all over Eastern Nigeria and they deposed, sacked and imprisoned warrant chief Okugo. Then they sacked other warrant chiefs and district offices in Owerri, Aba, Bende, Ikot Ekpene, Calabar, Opobo, Ahoada, and Port Harcourt.

If our grandmothers could stop the British, we can certainly stop our own wayward sons and daughters who have chosen to eat and sleep with Satan. We must organize and mobilize ourselves now. We must organize in our churches, markets, villages, towns and clubs. These people are killing our future. They are killing our insurance against old age.

We must stop them now or have ourselves to blame later. Very soon they will come to you for votes. We must make sure that not one of them will ever be elected into any office ever again. We must tell them in the language they will never forget that they are a disgrace to Ndiigbo, their communities, their ancestors, their children and generations yet to be born. They must be denounced by everyone including their own wives and mothers for they have committed abomination.

They have achieved nothing since their election. Look at our children. They have no jobs in spite of their high level education. They turn our young men into robbers and 419 and then kill them. They turn our girls into prostitutes and defile them. These people are a serious threat to our way of life, culture and
religion.

We must stop them now!