Nigeria Waged The War Of 1967-1970 Against Its Eastern Region For Oil, Not For The Unity Of Nigeria” – Colonel Benjamin Adekunle (Scorpion) — A Rejoinder by Tony Nnadi of NINAS.
Tony Nnadi, NINAS
14 April 2025
As Unitary continues to wobble and bleed profusely, there is this constant blackmail in the public space about the heavy blood sacrifices made to preserve the Unity of Nigeria by the generation of Military Officers who prosecuted the War of 1967-1970 on the Federal side against the Breakaway Eastern Region of the time which had declared itself the Republic of Biafra in desperate Self-Preservation bid.
This generation of Military Officers which has been described as the “Class of 1966” had between 1966 and 1999, imposed the present Unitary Constitutional Arrangements on Nigeria in ouster and overthrow of the Federal Constitutional Foundations upon which Nigeria became one Political Union at Independence in 1960.
For those Military Officers who constantly remind us and even boast about how much they personally sacrificed in the “War of Unity to Keep Nigeria One”, here is the truth from one of the most brutal commanders in the Genocide of 1967-1970 Nigeria-Biafra War Theatre, Colonel Benjamin Adekunle (Scorpion), about the main War Objective of the Genocide that was unleashed against the East by an Alliance of the rest of Nigeria, and reinforced by the Dot-In-Circle Total Igbo Exclusion Philosophy of Unitary Nigeria.
Adekunle declared in his Memoirs that “The War was fought for Oil and not for Nigeria’s Unity”
It would be recalled that when in the course of the Nigeria-Biafra War, Foreign Media Correspondents asked Adekunle why Nigerian Troops were slaughtering and Choking the Igbo Civilian Population to Death, including targeted starvation of children, in a manner that pointed to a design towards total annihilation and extermination of the Igbo, Adekunle had answered that they, the Federal Troops would mow down everything that moves, human beings, animals and trees if need be. To this date, Nigeria saw nothing wrong in the mass extermination of the Igbo for reasons that have now proved false (ie that the January 15, 1966 Coup had been an Igbo Coup to take over control of Nigeria), the latest witness to that truth being Ibrahim Babangida at his book launch.
As blood continues to flow all over Nigeria and as hunger and pain continue to ravage the indigenous populations being hunted like wild animals by heavily armed Fulani Invaders on a Conquest mission across Nigeria, the search for solutions has necessitated the excavation of the sordid truths and facts of Nigeria’s recent past (particularly between 1966-1999), so that Redemptive Actions anchored on Truth can be deployed to arrest the ongoing carnage.
The Truth that MUST now be spoken to end the carnage across Nigeria is that the rest of Nigeria unjustly agreed with the Fulani Caliphate and their British Sponsors, to levy a Genocide against the Igbo, and as punishment for the Biafra War, to permanently isolate and exclude the Igbo from the management of the Nigerian State; imposing an Untenable and Unworkable Unitary Constitution on Nigeria in 1979 as Victory Charter from the 1967-1970 War, locking Igboland as a land-locked Dot-In-Circle that must be Strangulated Economically and Infrastructure-wise, in addition to countless other punitive policy measures targeted at the Igbo including Quota System, Multiple Glass Ceiling Barricades in the Security and Public Service of the Federation of Nigeria – all because Igbo fought back to save themselves from Extermination and Genocide.
With the 1999 Reincarnation of the 1979 Constitution, Nigeria has carried on with the Institutional Exclusion of the Igbo and other Punitive Policy Measures particularly as framed by the 36-States/774 Local Government Unitary Structure of Nigeria and the 68-Item Federal Exclusive Legislative List of the 1999 Constitution.
The Economic Development and Security of Nigeria are thus compromised, arrested, impeded, and generally Distressed by the Unitary Constitution of Nigeria which was first imposed by the Caliphate-led 1967 Wartime Alliance of the rest of Nigeria, to undo the Igbo.
Here is a NINAS video broadcast that provides insight – Nigeria’s Unitary Constitution: Product of North & South-West Alliance of 1967.
Unfortunately for the Non-Caliphate Rest of that 1967 Anti-Igbo Alliance, the Fulani that floated and recruited them into that Alliance, also targeted them for elimination and the Unitary Constitution by which the Igbo was bound hand and leg, has become their own undoing and albatross. They are now being slaughtered by the Fulani who already hijacked their Sovereignty by virtue of the Caliphate-Imposed Unitary Constitution of Nigeria, and Nigeria itself is in the throes of Demise and Collapse as a Sovereign State Entity.
It is now clear to all that the only redemption pathway left for Nigeria and Nigerians currently trapped in the putrefying carcass of the Defunct Federation of Nigeria is the immediate wholesale Decommissioning of Nigeria’s Unitary Constitutional Order and a Grand Renegotiation, Reconfiguration, and Reconstruction of the damaged Constitutional Basis of Nigeria, which imperative has acquired the street description of “RESTRUCTURING”, (which essentially means a Constitutional Reconstruction of Nigeria into a Proper Federation, a Confederation or dissolution into Independent Units of Succesor-Sovereign State Entities).
If anyone is under the illusion that the Total Igbo Exclusion Policy of Unitary Nigeria being described here is a thing of the remote past, let us be reminded that as recent as late 2024, Opeyemi Bamidele who is currently Nigeria’s Senate Majority Leader, posited, in rebuke of his bewildered colleagues, at Plenary on the floor of the Senate, that if the Restructuring that was being canvassed were to take place, then that would mean Biafra for the Igbo. The same Opeyemi Bamidele has in March 2025 shot down the Motion of Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe which sought the immortalization of Prof Humphrey Nwosu who put his life at risk to conduct the celebrated June 12, 1993 Presidential Election.
The Epitaph: “NIGERIA DIED TRYING TO KILL IGBO” will be a fitting one on the Tombstone of Unitary Nigeria which is now heading to its Interment.