Nigerian Army Recruitment: What Pride Is There In Wearing A Uniform Stained With The Blood Of Your Kin?

Nigerian Army Recruitment: What Pride Is There In Wearing A Uniform Stained With The Blood Of Your Kin? For years, the people of Biafra have...

Nigerian Army Recruitment: What Pride Is There In Wearing A Uniform Stained With The Blood Of Your Kin?

For years, the people of Biafra have endured unspeakable horrors at the hands of those who swore to protect them. From the dark shadows of Operation Python Dance to the silent massacres in peaceful villages, the Nigerian military have left a trail of blood across the Biafran homeland. What crime did these continuously slaughtered people of Biafra commit aside demanding freedom, asserting identity and seeking justice?

Today, soldiers don't only roam shamelessly through Biafran towns to intimidate rather than defend, they also knock on palace gates, pressuring traditional rulers to convince our youths to join their ranks. But how can a people whose brothers and sisters were slaughtered by this same army offer their children as recruits?

It is evidently clear that the Nigerian military does not fight to protect Biafrans but rather profiles them, labels them, and dispatches them to the frontlines of death in Boko Haram-infested territories. Biafrans are used as cannon fodder, discarded like expendable tools. Many never return and many do often carry physical, emotional, and spiritual scares that will never heal.

Meanwhile, in our communities, so-called security operations have also turned into organized terror groups. Women are raped, men disappeared, youths tortured for simply flying a flag or speaking out. While bandits and terrorists in the North are offered amnesty, Biafrans are offered bullets.

Why would any sane youth from the South East or South South join such a force? Why should we serve in a military that sees us as enemies rather than citizens? What pride is there in wearing a uniform stained with the blood of your kin? 

It is time we stop pretending. The Nigerian state has waged a silent war on Biafrans. The refusal to acknowledge our right to self-determination, the systematic suppression of our voices, and the blatant military occupation of our land are not signs of unity, they are signs of conquest.

The truth is bitter, but it must be told. The world must know that Nigeria is not at peace; it is a nation holding her supposed citizens hostage with the barrel of a gun. The Biafran struggle is not a crime, it is the last breath of a people refusing to be erased.

In the end, justice will not come from bullets, but from courage. The Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB), with her message and movement have already lit the fire of truth. One day, our children will read in the annals of history that the Nigerian military tried to crush a people but in doing so, only revealed its own shame.

History will not forget. It will one day record that IPOB dismantled the image of the Nigerian military; not by raising arms, but by exposing its atrocities, lies, and how they keep spilling Biafran people’s blood in the name of enforcing unity. Without firing a single shot. IPOB have forced the world to reckon with the truth; Nigeria’s military, once revered as a defender of national sovereignty has become a brutal instrument of ethnic persecution and repression in the South East and South South. 

Family Writers Press International