Ikemba Ojukwu: We Have Tried and Failed -The Time Has Come to Revisit the Foundations of Nigeria and Separate to Save Lives

 Ikemba Ojukwu: We Have Tried and Failed -The Time Has Come to Revisit the Foundations of Nigeria and Separate to Save Lives Even in death, ...

 Ikemba Ojukwu: We Have Tried and Failed -The Time Has Come to Revisit the Foundations of Nigeria and Separate to Save Lives

Even in death, the words of Ikemba Nnewi, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, continue to resonate powerfully across Nigeria as the country grapples with unending security crises and bloodshed. In a historic statement that has resurfaced amid the current wave of violence, the late Biafran leader and Ikemba of Nnewi declared:

“We have tried to live a Nigeria designed by Great Britain and handed to us. We have found it difficult to live in that Nigeria. We have fought a civil war, killed so many people, and still we have the same problems reoccurring. Perhaps the time has come to revisit the very foundations of Nigeria.”

Ojukwu, who passed away in 2011, made the remarks during a period of deep national reflection. Today, his warning appears more relevant than ever as Nigeria faces widespread insecurity that has turned many parts of the country into killing fields.

In the North, the killing fields have expanded beyond the control of any government. Bandits in Zamfara, Sokoto, Kaduna and Katsina have turned villages into slaughterhouses, massacring farmers, kidnapping schoolchildren for ransom, and burning entire communities to the ground. In Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, Boko Haram and ISWAP continue their campaign of beheadings, abductions and forced conversions, rendering large swathes of territory ungovernable. Herdsmen militias have brought terror to the Middle Belt, leaving thousands dead in Benue, Plateau, Taraba and Nasarawa in what many describe as a calculated ethnic and religious cleansing.

Yet the carnage is not confined to the North. Southeast, Southwest and South-South communities now live under the shadow of killings, unknown gunmen, Biafra agitation voices are growing stronger. The Nigerian state, once again, has proven incapable of protecting its citizens from one another.

Ojukwu’s message is clear and unflinching: enough is enough. The civil war of 1967-1970, which claimed over three million lives, was supposed to resolve the contradictions of this forced marriage. Instead, it only postponed them. The same ethnic suspicions, religious fault lines, resource control battles and governance failures that triggered Biafra’s declaration of independence have returned with even greater ferocity.

“Separation,” the Ikemba insists, “is no longer an act of rebellion, it is an act of self-preservation.” By allowing the major ethnic nationalities to chart their own paths under a loose confederation or outright independence, Nigeria can finally stop the endless cycle of bloodletting. Each region would govern itself according to its own values, resources and security priorities, ending the deadly competition for a dysfunctional centre that has consumed the lives of countless Nigerians.

Ikemba Ojukwu’s voice carries the weight of history. He fought for Biafra not out of hatred for any tribe, but out of love for his people and the conviction that no nation should be compelled to live in perpetual fear and subjugation. Today, as graves multiply across the North and fear grips every corner of the country, his warning rings truer than ever:

The Nigeria project, as currently constituted, is killing its own citizens.

The time has come, Ojukwu says, to choose life over a union that has become a graveyard. To revisit the foundations. To separate and in doing so, save the lives of millions yet unborn.

Family Writers Press International.