IN his dramatic lifetime, the great Ikemba Nnewi, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, never bothered himself about the issues of immortality. He lived for the world that he saw. But as he was lowered to mother earth in his Nnewi country home, it is only the flesh and the bones that would gone back to sand. The man and his ideas live on.
Dust would not go to dust. Ojukwu will remain immortal, not in the sense of reincarnation or life after life, but by the very essence of his ideas, especially the very last of his postulations – the Biafra of the mind. Shortly before he died, Ojukwu made a very fundamental transition in his belief in Biafra.
He moved from Biafra as a geographical and territorial construct to the Biafra of the mind. The concept of Biafra of the mind will continue to live as a legacy and as a burden for mankind till the end of time.
Biafra as was declared by Ojukwu in 1967 was a state with a territory running through the East of the Niger in what was known as the Eastern Region of Nigeria. The existence of this Republic ended in 1970 when the beleaguered state surrendered after a three-year bloody war. But, after the inevitable hour, when the grave was covered, Ojukwu left behind for the world, not the Biafra of bricks and mortar and ogbunigwe but the Biafra of the mind.
Indeed, Ojukwu's declaration of the new Biafra is a deep philosophical and ideological proposal for a new world order. It is a reflection that only could have come from a world patriot. Ojukwu's Biafra of the mind is an ideal of justice, a metaphor for man's irrepressible persuasion to stand up against inhumanity and injustice by man to man. It transcends geographical boundaries and ethnic identities. It is no more the struggle of the Igbo for self-determination in the face of genocide. It is no more about the 30 months bloody civil war that left in its trail the devastation and despoliation of the Igbo heartland. It is a clarion call for the evolution of "a nation".
By the Biafra of the mind, Ojukwu left behind not only for Nigeria but also for the world a great burden. The challenge is for Nigeria, nay the world, to replace the Biafra of bricks and mortar with the ideal of justice, with the emerging state called "the nation". A nation lives in the mind.
It cannot be legislated into existence but built through a conscious effort. It is not also defined by a geographical space. It is the new emerging community of commonality. Ojukwu's Biafra of the mind is about the new nation where a group of different people feel a strong sense of common heritage and pursue a common destiny while upholding the principle of egalitarianism and justice for all. It is a world where we shall all be united by our common humanity.
Nigeria has a great challenge to break all the walls and barriers of the old Biafra and replace it with the new Biafra of the mind. So long as the corpse of an Igbo trader is brought back from Maiduguri or from any other Northern city to an Igbo village for burial, the old Biafra will continue to exist.
When the Adazi Nnuku community in Aniocha Local Government Area of Anambra State buried 12 of theirs massacred by suspected Boko Haram assailants in Mubi, Adamawa State, a month ago the old Biafra came into full force. So long as a Yoruba landlord in Lagos declares that he cannot accommodate an Igbo, the old Biafra continues to live.
So long as anyone is discriminated against on the basis of his ethnic identity in the workplace or in any other group in Nigeria or elsewhere, the old Biafra continues to live.
Ojukwu's Biafra of the mind is also not only about the ideal of justice but also about the inherent nature of man to rise up, at the nick of time and at a very precarious moment, against the forces of oppression and injustice. In the Ahiara Declaration, the principle of the Biafran revolution, Ojukwu goes back in time to recall the historic journey of man for self-determination.
" It was good for the Greeks in 1822, for the Belgians in 1830, and for the Central and Eastern Europeans and the Irish at the end of the First World War," he declared. The message here is that a system of injustice remains self-destructive and humanity will always desire and fight for a change.
The issues that gave rise to the Niger Delta uprising which culminated into a full-scale arm-struggle are reminiscent of the Biafra of brick and mortar. The June 12 debacle that gave rise to the disturbances of the Oodua People's Congress, OPC, in the West a decade ago fall within the genealogy of the old Biafra.
The suppressed anger and frustration of the people over the long-drawn autocracy in the Arab world that needed the courage of the Algerian fruit seller, Mohammed Bouazizi, to explode bore the same traces of the old Biafra.
In Nigeria, the conspiracy of the political class that has resulted in the failure of leadership and the suffering of the masses is a contamination of the Biafra of brick and mortar. In a nutshell, any act of injustice or inhumanity represents the cankerworm, which is encapsulated in the entire construct of Biafra, while the Biafra of the mind is the essential ideal to which humanity must commit itself.
The Biafra of the mind must be the new aspiration.
Mr. GODWIN ADINDU is SSA, Media and Communication, to the Abia State Governor.
Vanguard Nigeria