Powerful and memorable quotes from Odimegwu Ojukwu on Biafra

Memorable quotes from Odimegwu Ojukwu

1. The history of the world is a chronicle of oppression.

2. Since oppression is maintained by force, it is only possible to remove that oppression by a counterforce.

3. The illegal regime in Lagos under Gowon has accused Biafra of playing politics with her people’s misery. Our answer is simple: “We do not play politics. We are not masochists; rather, we are a people who choose to hunger a little to remain alive instead of feeding fat to become respectable corpses.”

4. We do not ask for pity. We make no apologies for the social phenomenon known as the Biafran revolution; rather, we proclaim with pride the inevitability of our struggle, the indestructibility of our people, and the assured finality of our success.

5. Biafra is a child of circumstance…His existence and survival are always a marvel, sometimes bordering on a miracle. His life is a tribute to man, his courage is his endurance, his ingenuity is his humanity.

6. For unity to be meaningful it has to be creative, not the unity of Jonah in the whale but the unity of holy matrimony. The first can only lead to defecation, the second to procreation.

7. If a leader accepts himself as already dead to society, there will be no reason for cowardice in his leadership. One thing that frightens leaders and lead them to a number of excesses is usually fear of death. No leader should fear death. In fact, you should accept the fact that from the moment of leadership you are sacrificed to death. Each subsequent day becomes a bonus for the preparation of one’s memorial.

8. What I have become, in this struggle is the mouthpiece of my people. I go where they push and no more. The day I think otherwise, the day I act otherwise, that day my people, without compromising the struggle, will find another person to express their aspirations.

9. We are humans. We live. We fight, fight because the decision to be free is a decision taken freely and collectively, because to become involved in violent struggle for freedom is the only honor left to an oppressed people threatened with genocide, because in the final analysis the only true bulwark against death is to live. Biafra rejects death…Biafra lives.

10. “It is better that we move slightly apart and survive, it is much worse that we move closer and perish in the collision.”

- M.M.Mbanaja