Restore Biafra Now

Outline of History THE PORTUGUESE CONNECTION TO BIAFRA the leaves of a tree cannot survive without the roots of the tree.

Biafra News Team 0 Archives 03:22

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQRE-ZAPVB2JMxzwRfFNvXNbTXbhDglePR6p28Gd2gdsQLmCLKo09LCfbkElxQXcsedOtqjgoyUH6Npm_xiiNK_ahCRNB3cMwWknqXD9Ljfy4NZ1HuRiyTpzpz1XLIbj6Rtq2nBpLnwsg/s1600/pre-history.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQRE-ZAPVB2JMxzwRfFNvXNbTXbhDglePR6p28Gd2gdsQLmCLKo09LCfbkElxQXcsedOtqjgoyUH6Npm_xiiNK_ahCRNB3cMwWknqXD9Ljfy4NZ1HuRiyTpzpz1XLIbj6Rtq2nBpLnwsg/s1600/pre-history.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Many of us are interested in the pre-history of Biafra and its events. When we read any West African history in particular there are contradictory accounts, and its not always clear to differentiate between mythology and history. As we progress and more archaeological and historic research is acquired we will have a clearer factual account. I personally find it exciting to bring pieces of history together, I search for only the proven history that which emanates from written historical records. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">THE PORTUGUESE CONNECTION TO BIAFRA</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In 1454 Pope Nicholas V gave exclusive rights to Portugal to explore and conquest the African sea routes. Later because of a Columbus voyage that touched the Indies by a western route there was a dispute between the Spanish, the British and the French who had claimed they had used the routes before 1380 but this was not proven and Pope Alexander VI settled the dispute by a Papal Bull on 4th May 1493 giving Portugal the influence over a line drawn north and south a hundred leagues to the west of Cape Verde Islands, and the Spanish extended to the west of the line. So West Africa and what we are looking for Biafra and the Gold Coast were under Portugal influence for now until the soon decline of papal rule. The coast lines had been explored by the Europeans prior to this date as it is shown on The Medicean map of 1351 and 1356 at Florence, known as the Laurentian Portalano (sailing directory).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1472 the King of Portugal sent the ship Fernao Gomez to explore the coast lines and the Gomez reached LAGOS and this was the “first” recorded history that Europeans set foot in what was then Biafra, (yes on the old maps Lagos and Benin were part of Biafra and the capital city was in what is now Cameroon but we can argue this later, just keep an open mind as a lot has been bastardized over time). In 1481 British explorers tried to set out for Benin but the King of Portugal protested and under papal rule they were denied the voyage. In 1485 Jao Affonso d’Averio a portuguese made the journey to Benin to meet with the Oba and he was well received and not only gave them lots of pepper the Chief of Ugwato (the port of Benin) went to Portugal with the ship as an ambassador to the court of Portugal. The Portuguese loved the pepper it was good for the cold dull winter diet but the King never encouraged it as he had good relations with india trading for spice and didn’t want to cause any rivalry. The Oba/Chief had told them of the Yourba race in the interior lands and that the King of the interior lands was a white man a christian who would send slaves for them along with jewels in a cross, however the portuguese went to find this mythical King and it was never concluded so they took it to be a myth. The Portuguese ventured far up the cross rivers to lead mines in Abalkaliki. Jao Affonso d’Averio died on the Coast and he had spoken of the magnificence of the City of Benin in those days and the excellence of its art in brass and wood. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Jumping forward in time a bit, thou there is documented history on the explorers in the years in between and battles but I’m trying to keep concise and to the relevant parts..</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In the years around 1700 in Benin there was a great warrior by the name of Chima he quarreled over the then kingship and took his followers and led them eastwards to the Niger where they divided into two groups one crossed to Onitsha and the other went down to Aboh (Delta). It is then noted (**please also note) that the Obi of Onitsha recognized the Obi of Aboh as his close relation not only his brother but his senior brother. Later as years went on and on the people begrudged to admit this and the relationship faded. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In 1644 Portuguese priests from Sao Tome Island visited King Mingo of Warri (Delta) and they tried to persuade him it was not good to have so many wives and that he should give them up, so the King agreed to the proposal and told them he would give up his wives only if they gave him one good one “a white one”. The priests agreed this was the only solution they returned to Sao Tome and persuaded a Portuguese woman from Sao Tome to marry the King and they did and they had many sons which there are authentic reports later of the mulatto Kings of Warri.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Explains a little.. more history to follow as I search for and explore many records).</div></div>

Outline of History THE PORTUGUESE CONNECTION TO BIAFRA the leaves of a tree cannot survive without the roots of the tree.

Many of us are interested in the pre-history of Biafra and its events. When we read any West African history in particular there are contra...

EUROPEAN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF KILLINGS OF BIAFRANS IN 1966

Biafra News Team 0 Archives 05:09

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWDQMe-vd4m3mwe_4EBbIqMporsx3_VKv0iBEKswJ2sJ1yKaSCnJ5u-zlOcxwxIGlQFWY5JhPA5SO4jIg_vklTm4MRI6EtczqORnAS4h70OFAGGX97ioWl6-ydomhFv-9shyphenhyphengezrdF6ww/s1600/Biafra-war-killing-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="439" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWDQMe-vd4m3mwe_4EBbIqMporsx3_VKv0iBEKswJ2sJ1yKaSCnJ5u-zlOcxwxIGlQFWY5JhPA5SO4jIg_vklTm4MRI6EtczqORnAS4h70OFAGGX97ioWl6-ydomhFv-9shyphenhyphengezrdF6ww/s1600/Biafra-war-killing-01.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Mr. Colin Legum of the Observer, London, October 16, 1966:<br />“While the Hausas in each town and village in the North know what happened in their own localities, only the Ibos know the whole terrible story from the 600,000 or so refugees who have fled to the safety of the Eastern Region – hacked, slashed, mangled, stripped naked and robbed of all their possessions; the orphans, the widows, the traumatized. A woman, mute and dazed, arrived back in her village after traveling for five days with only a bowl in her lap. She held her child’s head, which was severed before her eyes.<br />Men, women and children arrived with arms and legs broken, hands hacked off, mouths split open. Pregnant women were cut open and the unborn children killed. The total casualties are unknown. The number of injured who have arrived in the East runs into thousands. After a fortnight the scene in the Eastern Region continues to be reminiscent of the ingathering of exiles into Israel after the end of the last war. The parallel is not fanciful.”<br />  Mr. Walter Partington of the Daily Express, London, October 6, 1966:<br />“But from what I have been told on my journey by chartered plane to towns to which the North civil airline would fly, and hitching a lift through this desolate land, the horror of the massacre at times seems to equal that of the Congo. I do not know if there are any Ibos left in the Northern Region…for if they are not dead they must be hiding in the bush of this land which is as big as Britain and France.<br />I saw vultures and dogs tearing at Ibo corpses, and women and children wielding matchets and clubs and guns.<br />I talked in Kaduna with the Airline Charter Pilot who flew hundreds of Ibos to safety last week. He said, ‘The death toll must be far in excess of 3,000…. One young English woman said, ‘The Hausas were carting wounded Ibos off to Hospital to kill them there.’<br />I talked to three families who fled from the bush town of Nguru, 176 miles north of here [the dispatch was datelined Lagos]. They escaped in three Landrovers from the town where about fifty Ibos were murdered by mobs drunk on beer in some European shops. Another Englishman who fled the town told of two Catholic priests running for it, the mob after them. ‘I don’t know if they escaped; I didn’t wait to see.’ … A lot of the massacred Ibos are buried in mass graves outside the Moslem walls.<br />In Jos charter pilots who have been airlifting Ibos to Eastern safety talked of at least 800 dead.<br />In Zaria, forty-five miles from Kaduna, I talked with a saffron-robed Hausa who told me: ‘We killed about 250 here. Perhaps Allah willed it.’<br />One European saw a woman and her daughter slaughtered in his front garden after he had been forced to turn them away.”<br />  The correspondent of Time magazine, October 7, 1966:<br />“The massacre began at the airport near the Fifth Battalion’s home city of Kano. A Lagos-bound jet had just arrived from London, and as the Kano passengers were escorted into the customs shed a wild-eyed soldier stormed in, brandishing a rifle and demanding ‘Ina Nyamiri’ – the Hausa for ‘Where are the damned Ibos?’ There were Ibos among the customs officers, and they dropped their chalk and fled, only to be shot down in the main terminal by other soldiers. Screaming the blood curses of a Moslem Holy War, the Hausa troops turned the airport into a shambles, bayoneting Ibo workers in the bar, gunning them down in the corridors, and hauling Ibo passengers off the plane to be lined up and shot.<br />From the airport the troops fanned out through downtown Kano, hunting down Ibos in bars, hotels, and on the streets. One contingent drove their Landrovers to the rail-road station where more than 100 Ibos were waiting for a train, and cut them down with automatic weapon fire.<br />The soldiers did not have to do all the killing. They were soon joined by thousands of Hausa civilians, who rampaged through the city armed with stones, cutlasses, matchets, and home-made weapons of metal and broken glass. Crying ‘Heathen’ and ‘Allah’ the mobs and troops invaded the Sabon Gari (strangers’ quarter) ransacking, looting and burning Ibo homes and stores and murdering their owners.<br />All night long and into the morning the massacre went on. Then, tired but fulfilled, the Hausas drifted back to their homes and barracks to get some breakfast and sleep. Municipal garbage trucks were sent out to collect the dead and dump them into mass graves outside the city. The death toll will never be known, but it was at least a thousand. <br />Somehow several thousand Ibos survived the orgy, and all had the same thought: to get out of the North.”<br />  <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></div>

EUROPEAN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF KILLINGS OF BIAFRANS IN 1966

Mr. Colin Legum of the Observer, London, October 16, 1966: “While the Hausas in each town and village in the North know what happened in th...

The BRITISH GOVERNMENT SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO BIAFRA OVER GENOCIDE

Biafra News Team 0 Articles 03:46

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOeo9AIbqL2L9WWoTP5K1WZ5uNYUZRcMZdp1dQAl4193AnDStqus5jrg1iYZTT7CCEV_vW9ko1dteRrWp-AyEaGQ0SaMHLUb_mQ77DWbYBSzgp5vTXcXRtvg8Ud4jLGylNFdhUnO7TJns/s1600/Biafran+Children.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOeo9AIbqL2L9WWoTP5K1WZ5uNYUZRcMZdp1dQAl4193AnDStqus5jrg1iYZTT7CCEV_vW9ko1dteRrWp-AyEaGQ0SaMHLUb_mQ77DWbYBSzgp5vTXcXRtvg8Ud4jLGylNFdhUnO7TJns/s1600/Biafran+Children.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The recurrent killings, bombings and destruction of human lives by the Boko Haram religious sect in the name of Allah and their demands for the Islamization of Nigeria was the greatest justification for the foresyth of the late Odumegwu Ojukwu, President, Commander-in Chief of the armed forces of the Defunct Republic of Biafra.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Odumegwu Ojukwu, a visionary leader, became the Military Administrator of Eastern Region after the military coup of 1966. It was Ojukwu as Battalion Commander in Kano who foiled the northern axis of the Kaduna Nzeogwu coup of 1966 while Ironsi foiled the Lagos end.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The events that occurred later and the one sided success of the coup created the wrong impression that it was an Eastern agenda. This helped to exhume the age old northern resentment of the industriousness of Nigerians of Eastern extraction. This resentment led to the pogrom, a genocide where Easterners were rounded up and brutally murdered in hundreds of thousands all over Northern Nigeria. This pogrom included even the military barracks. Part of the reasons for the pogrom was the view of the northerner that these easterners should be slaughtered until they leave us alone to secede from Nigeria.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The counter-coup of 1966 which led to the death of Aguiyi Ironsi then military Head of State was to give way for northern secession from Nigeria. The inheritor of the situation, Yakubu Gowon was eager for there to be a separation from these troublesome southerners and he was willing to finish what Sir Ahmadu Bello was agitating for before the independence of Nigeria in 1960.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The north due to no fault of theirs has viewed the southerners with suspicion. The feudal north wanted to preserve their monarchial, theocratic and simplistic culture. They detested all dilution associated with western education, western lifestyles and western radicalism. They wanted a controlled cultural, religious and political environment devoid of radicalism and independence mindedness associated with their southern countrymen.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The north was apprehensive of being forced into a marriage with the south of Nigeria. The British colonial government had a sway time convincing the northern oligarchy that being joined to Nigeria was to their best interest. The north was not convinced citing population, commerce, religious and cultural differences as part of their fears.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The British colonialists had to organize to divide Nigeria into three regional blocks, East, West, North knowing that a balkanized south will be easier to manipulate by divide and rule. They then gave the Ahmadu Bello government tips on how to use the balkanized south to their political advantage by fueling divisions and infightings in the south while maintaining cohesion in the north. This advantage brought about the emergence of Tafawa Balewa as the Prime minister. The north, against the dictates of their intuition, decided to follow the advice of the British Colonial masters to go on with one Nigeria.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">With the tensions in 1966, Ojukwu and Gowon met in Aburi, Ghana , where the roadmap for the loose confederacy of Nigeria was drawn. The British advisers convinced sGowon that confederation is as good as secession and as such the Aburi accord should be jettisoned. Gowon, based on British advice, reneged on the agreement and plunged the nation into a civil war.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The rejection of the Aburi accord and the subsequent declaration of war on the Biafrans led to the death of three million people on the seceding side. The federal forces wouldn’t have won that war if not for the high level military and diplomatic support from Britain. The British Government was a major supplier of military tactics, arms and support personnel throughout the duration of the war. The then British Labour Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, while regretting the actions of British Government against Biafra agonized that "It would have been quite easy for me to say: This is going to be difficult - let's cut off all connexion with the Nigerian Government,…. "If I'd done that I should have known that I was encouraging in Africa the principle of tribal secession - with all the misery that could bring to Africa in the future” That was one of Britain’s official reason for supporting the genocide.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The fall of Biafra was not a victory by the Federal forces; it was a victory by the British Forces, British Foreign policy and British Government. It is laughable to suggest that the NTC rebels in Libya are responsible for the ouster of Gaddafi. It was foreign powers that aided the NTC rebels to oust Gaddafi. The same foreign powers led by Britain handed victory to the Federal forces.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The curse that came upon Nigeria as a result of the 3 million lives wasted for trying to secede is haunting Nigeria now. Britain would have to grapple with an underdeveloped country whose citizens will be illegally migrating to its shores in search of greener pastures. Britain would have to grapple with the fact that the core north they fought so much to defend will be constantly exporting suicide bombers to British and European territories in the near future. This marriage forced upon Nigeria by the British Government, reinforced during Tafawa Balewa and Yakubu Gowon regimes have created problems of corruption, underdevelopment, murders, diseases, injustice, poverty and the newest addition suicide bombings.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The British Government should admit to mistakes of ill advising Sir Ahmadu Bello to go on with one Nigeria. They should equally admit that it is a mistake to advice Gowon to renege on the Aburi accord. The British Government should also apologize to the Republic of Biafra for aiding and abetting a civil war leading to loss of lives of over 3 million people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is gladdening that the British government stood by the Nigerian people during the military dictatorship of Babangida and Abacha. They supported National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) during the dark days of Nigeria. They still support Nigeria in areas of human rights, civil society agitations, capacity building for democracy. The British Government has been cooperating with Nigeria’s Government of Goodluck Jonathan in the fight against terrorism. All these are commendable and appreciable. The worst form of terrorism committed in Nigeria is not Boko Haram whose atrocities is yet to claim up to two thousand lives but the extermination of millions of Biafran lives under the supervision and cooperation of Britain.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The British Government should do their image a lot of good by offering unreserved apology to Biafrans for that foreign policy gaffe and take urgent steps to undo their mistakes. They should champion the cause of allowing every geopolitical zone to develop at their own pace holding on to the values they cherish most and create an exit strategy if the marriage becomes cantankerous.</div><div class="MsoNormal">By Obinna Akukwe</div></div>

The BRITISH GOVERNMENT SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO BIAFRA OVER GENOCIDE

The recurrent killings, bombings and destruction of human lives by the Boko Haram religious sect in the name of Allah and their demands for...

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Outline of History THE PORTUGUESE CONNECTION TO BIAFRA the leaves of a tree cannot survive without the roots of the tree.

EUROPEAN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF KILLINGS OF BIAFRANS IN 1966

The BRITISH GOVERNMENT SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO BIAFRA OVER GENOCIDE

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