(Being a Rejoinder by Tony Nnadi to the Article on the subject matter by Prof Obi Nwakanma, titled, “Biafra Of The Mind”, October 26, 2021 in Opinion Nigeria).
In the years that followed his 1982 return from exile in Ivory Coast, Dim Chukwuemeka Odimegwu-Ojukwu observed that much had changed amongst the Igbo People in Nigeria and that many seemed to have moved on from the necessary but unsuccessful attempt of Eastern Nigeria to secede from the Nigerian Union between 1967-1970.
Going by the circumstances and conditions of his return from exile, and the situation he met in Igboland upon his return, Ojukwu had plunged straight into the Political fray of Nigeria, in the genuine belief that participation in Nigeria’s Electoral Processes would help reclaim and rebuild the damaged and substantially desecrated Igbo Political and Physical Space in Nigeria instead of resuming the campaign to seek a separate Sovereign State of Biafra from the manifestly failed Nigerian Political Union as was the case in 1967.
It was in this setting that he spoke of the “Biafra of the Mind” instead of the Territorial Biafra as being campaigned for by a younger Generation of the Igbo under the banners of ”Biafra Actualization” and ”Biafra Restoration”
In these later years when Ojukwu got introduced to the Grand Intervention Scheme of LNC and its MNN Allies, (now NINAS), starting from PRONACO and MNN, Ojukwu vigorously interrogated the Designs and Strategies of the Intervention Script and being sufficiently persuaded of their Potency, he adjusted his initial “Biafra of the Mind” stance as he saw new possibilities in which the entire Nigerian Project is completely reworked within the Context of the Self-Determination Imperative for the Trapped Constituent Components of the Failed Lugardian Experiment of 1914.
Accordingly, Ojukwu took up significant roles in the Intervention Project and Processes, hence Co-Chairing the PRONACO Plenaries (2005-2006) with Enahoro and Soyinka during its Enugu Sittings.
Post-PRONACO, Ojukwu and also joining as, Co-Plaintiff (with Enohoro, Onoh, Soyinka, Bankole-Oki, Gbonigi, and others), in the 2009 leg of the Suits Challenging the Legitimacy of the 1999 Constitution on the Grounds of Forgery and Fraud (2007 & 2009).
(The task of Filing and Leading those Suits fell on me).
It is in the light of these new possibilities that Ojukwu reconsidered his previous “Biafra of the Mind” position by declaring in a later interview that since all efforts to live together in peace in the British-made Nigeria had failed, ”perhaps the time had come to revisit the very foundations of Nigeria”.
Despite all claims to the contrary (some, innocently I must state, such as my good friend Prof Obi Nwakanma) I can report, as one who related directly and extensively with Dim Chukwuemeka Odimegwu on these matters continuously from 2005 to his demise in 2011, Ojukwu, in the last few years of his earthly sojourn did in fact openly align himself with the Initiative to restore the Sovereignties Forcefully Hijacked and Confiscated by Britain into its ill-intentioned Nigerian Project.
Tony Nnadi
NINAS Secretariat
October 28, 2021.