OWERRI—THE protagonist of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, says that the on – going struggle for an independent Biafra is legitimate and necessary.
Uwazuruike gave the explanation at an event in Owerri, to mark the 19th anniversary of the founding of MASSOB.
“The world history is full of instances where people who were marginalised within the larger entities struggled for and won their independence”, Chief Uwazuruike said.
According to him, “Europe is dotted with countries that have recently won their independence from other entities in spite of the constitutions of the states concerned which made any attempt to break away from their wholesomeness treasonable.”
Continuing, Chief Uwazuruike explained that due to marginalization, the former Czechoslovakia disbanded and gave birth to Czech and Slovak republics, while Yugoslavia was broken into Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montengro.
Uwazuruike who equally founded the Biafra Independence Movement, BIM, stressed that the former world power, Soviet Union was broken into 15 different sovereign nations.
“They include Russia, Armania, Azerbaian, Belarus, Estoria, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan,” Uwazuruike said.
Answering a question, the BIM leader explained that Britain, which foisted the 1914 amalgamation on Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria, has its own autonomy-seeking nationalities, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“Similarly, the former federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland separated into today’s Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Malaysia and Singapore also separated,” Uwazuruike said.
Coming nearer home, the diehard freedom fighter said that “in the life of the current struggle for the New Biafra, Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia, just as East Timor, on May 21, 2002, broke away from Indonesia”.
He also recalled that while Kosovo separated from Serbia on Feburary 17, 2008, so also was South Sudan which got her independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011.
“It is therefore our conviction that Nigeria is a typical case of desperate peoples abducted into a fraudulent union, and that Ndigbo have been the most tragic victims of this forced union”, Chief Uwazuruike reasoned.
