STOP BIAFRA!: The Nigerian 56-Year Rigid, Self-Sabotaging National Interest Framework

 STOP BIAFRA!: The Nigerian 56-Year Rigid, Self-Sabotaging National Interest Framework ‎ For over five decades, Nigeria has pursued what can...

 STOP BIAFRA!: The Nigerian 56-Year Rigid, Self-Sabotaging National Interest Framework

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For over five decades, Nigeria has pursued what can only be described as a masterclass in counterproductive governance. Since the end of the Nigerian genocidal war against Biafrans in January 15th, 1970, successive Federal Government administrations have operated under a national interest framework so rigid and self-defeating, ironically keeping the Biafran sentiment it framed to resolve, alive in the Eastern region of the country.

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‎The pattern has been remarkably consistent: treat the Biafran region with systematic contempt and suspicion, implement policies that feel punitive rather than reconciliatory, and then express surprise, with heavy militarization of the region when calls for Biafra self-determination refuse to die. This approach represents not just failed national policy, but a fundamental ineptitude of how to build national cohesion in a diverse federation.

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‎One significant attribute of this self-destructive national interest framework was the immediate announcement by the Gowon led federal military government policy of No Victor, No Vanquished right at the end of the genocidal war.

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‎The "No Victor, No Vanquished" slogan that emerged after 1970 was promising in theory but hollow in practice. While the Biafran people were told to reintegrate, the infamous Twenty Pounds policy effectively dispossessed returnees of their life savings. Infrastructure destroyed during the war in the Southeast saw slower reconstruction compared to other regions. Federal appointments and military promotions revealed patterns that suggested forgiveness had limits.

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‎Since 1970, successive Nigerian leaders have defined this same national interest narrowly: maintain territorial integrity at all costs, centralize power around Abuja, and ensure the Biafran region becomes politically and economically stagnant. What they failed to grasp was that national interest in a federation requires active investment in making all component parts feel they have a genuine stake in the nation's success.

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‎This national policy to stop Biafra, culminated in the decades of deliberate infrastructural neglect in the Eastern region. The Second Niger Bridge took nearly 50 years from conception to completion. Federal roads in the region remain among the worst in the country. The absence of functional seaports despite the region's commercial orientation, the lack of international airports in key cities until recently, and the near-total exclusion from Nigeria's oil and gas infrastructure despite hosting significant reserves have all contributed to the sentiment of deliberate marginalization and renewed calls for Biafra self-determination after 56 years of  punishing a people for seeking to defend and preserve their existence in a country where they were massacred in their millions for being who they are; Igbos.

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‎When people point to these disparities, the typical response has been defensiveness rather than remediation. This transforms legitimate grievances about infrastructure into ammunition for the agitation for Self-determination rhetoric, making the Nigerian state complicit in undermining its own territorial integrity.

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‎Nothing has been more self-sabotaging than Nigeria's security response to agitation for Self-determination in the East. Heavy-handed military operations that result in civilian casualties don't suppress such ideological sentiment; they fertilize it. Each disproportionate response creates martyrs, hardens positions, and convinces another generation that One Nigeria is a futile union.

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‎The arbitrary proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and unconstitutionally sentencing of its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to Life in prison with an unwritten law, has often been accompanied by tactics that blur the line between legitimate security operations and collective punishment. When security forces struggle to distinguish between peaceful protesters and violent actors, or when entire communities face restrictions because of the actions of a few, the state inadvertently validates the Biafran's core argument: that Biafrans in Nigeria are not equal citizens.

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‎Again, Nigeria's political elite has operated under the assumption that excluding or minimizing Igbo political power reach protects national interest. The reality has been the opposite. When a major ethnic group feels systematically locked out of the highest levels of power, it doesn't accept its fate quietly; it questions the legitimacy of the entire arrangement. The rotating pattern of power-sharing arrangements that emerged in Nigeria's Fourth Republic has often seemed designed to ensure that certain possibilities remain permanently off the table. This mathematical approach to politics—where ethnic arithmetic trumps competence or vision—has entrenched the very divisions it purports to manage.

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‎The Biafran entrepreneurial spirit is legendary, contributing massively to Nigeria's economy through commerce, manufacturing, and innovation. Yet economic policies have often seemed designed to impede rather than facilitate this productivity. From the Civil War-era abandoned property issues that were never fully resolved to contemporary complaints about access to federal contracts and banking sector leadership, there's a persistent sense that economic success must be achieved despite, not because of, federal policy.

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‎This represents profound strategic myopia. A prosperous Eastern region fully integrated into the Nigerian economy would be a powerful argument for national unity. Instead, the region's prosperity has emerged as a form of resistance, something achieved in the teeth of federal indifference.

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‎Nigeria's approach to the Biafra question reveals a broader failure to understand that national interest in a diverse federation cannot be imposed; it must be cultivated. Real national interest would involve building infrastructure equitably, ensuring political inclusion authentically, addressing historical grievances honestly, and creating economic opportunities broadly.

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‎The tragic irony is that the energy, monies and human resources the Nigerian state had spent on suppressing Biafran sentiment could have been invested in making Nigeria so attractive that separation becomes unthinkable. Instead, fifty-six years of rigid, defensive, Biafraphobic policymaking has ensured that the question refuses to rest.

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‎Until Nigerian leaders recognize that their current framework isn't protecting national interest but undermining it, the cycle will continue. The path to ending any agitation isn't more force or more rigid control—it's more justice, more inclusion, and more honest reckoning with past failures. Anything less is just another chapter in a very long story of self-sabotage and as long as Nigeria continues on this self-destructive framework, Biafra self-determination will materialize.

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‎Family Writers Press International