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| The right of Biafra to independence: Experts floor Muhammed Adamu's flawed writeup "Biafra’s secessionist right revisited" |
In a recent article in Vanguard, a Hausa-Fulani bigot, Muhammed Adamu stated that Biafran's right to self-determination in Nigeria is inferior to the right of Hausa-Fulani, which he assumed to be in the majority to refuse. He opined that for Biafrans to leave Nigeria, they must be ready to fight for it.
The article has received knocks from various quarters, some of which have been republished below:
chrisoji2013
Dear Muhammed Adamu, You made a wonderful submission on the Biafran struggle by trying to use the doctrine of 'right is might' and adopting Abraham Lincoln and the American civil war as a panacea to justify that the minority who desire earnestly to leave a union, even if such union persistently proves treacherous to their ideals of existence, have to confront the indignation and firepower of the majority to achieve their objective of a peaceful exit from an undesirable alliance. You made so much emphasis on majority rights versus minority rights, yet you did not find it necessary to point out that rights come with responsibilities. Do you know that what you perceived, quite derisively in my view, to be the right of the majority to exist as one nation also comes with the responsibility to ensure that the rights of the minority to peacefully exist and pursue livelihood within the same nation are not trampled upon? Have you lived up to that responsibility? As the son of the North that you are, perhaps of Hausa-Fulani extraction, do you know that there is no other part of Nigeria where more innocent blood has been spilled than in the North? Did you not see or at least read what happened during the pogrom of 1966? Even pregnant women had their wombs slit open and the unborn babies forcibly pulled out and slaughtered. Tell me, what is the relationship between those pregnant women and their unborn children on one hand and the January 15, 1966 coup d'etat on the other hand? What's the connection between them except that they just met their horrifying fate in the hands of blood thirsty vagabonds? The worrying part is that the North did not just stop at 1966, they have also continued unabated and unchecked since then in a very dizzying and unimaginable spate of unprovoked mass murders of innocent Nigerians. These instances are uncountable. The Northern soil is reeking with the blood of innocent Nigerians that have died in the peaceful pursuit of their livelihood. Yet there you are postulating theories about keeping the same people that you so willingly and unprovokingly murder as part of the union. Even if your theory of resorting to violence as a last measure for seccesion is to be upheld, you may find it distasteful to discover that the same factors that led to the defeat of the Biafrans during the civil war no longer exist today. In other words, the war would be fought this time on a vastly different note. One such factor (and a serious one indeed) is that even the Niger Delta who fought on the Nigerian side during the war (e.g. Isaac Adaka Boro and a host of other Nigerian officers of Niger Delta extraction) and in whose territory the vast quantity of Nigeria's crude is domiciled are now equally fed up after years and years of misrule by the North whom they supported during the war. They have finally realised that after all, they have the same objectives of political and economic emancipation as the Biafrans. A lot other factors that led to the defeat of Biafra have also waned with the passage of time: for example, we fought the Biafran war with youthful but unnecessarily exuberant leadership who failed to first of all secure the vital diplomatic victory before the shooting proper. France were so willing to help the Biafrans with their military and technological might but the inexperienced Biafran leadership wasted such a golden opportunity. Dear Muhammed Adamu, be notified that if we fought this war again, not only are we going to pursue a very vigorous diplomatic onslaught, but we will also win resoundingly in the battlefield. Nigerian army have persistently found it difficult to defeat ordinary Niger Delta Militants who have held successive Nigerian governments by the jugular with no reprieve. There you are talking about a people with solid determination to go free.
TruthnJustice
This argument seems to pre-meditatively avoid a mention of the current charter and Articles of the United Nations as it concerns the right of a people to self-determination. America is not the world’s standard and we are not governed by America’s laws or history. The United Nations represents the aggregate view of the MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD! So, it is just too childish to spend so much time and space arguing a matter with Abraham Lincoln’s America as the STANDARD upon which the modern world should be governed.
Let me say here that, when it comes to self-determination the question of majority and minority is NEVER on the table. It is NOT a question of what the majority feels about what the minority want. IT IS A QUESTION OF THE RIGHT OF A PEOPLE WHETHER MINORITY OR MAJORITY. “Self-determination has two aspects, internal and external. Internal self-determination is the right of the people of a state to govern themselves without outside interference. External self-determination is the right of peoples to determine their own political status and to be free of alien domination, including formation of their own independent state. However, independence is not the only possible outcome of an exercise of self-determination.” “Self-determination denotes the legal right of people to decide their own destiny in the international order. Self-determination is a core principle of international law, arising from customary international law, but also recognized as a general principle of law, and enshrined in a number of international treaties. For instance, self-determination is protected in the United Nations Charter and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as a right of “all peoples.” (Read, Independence of Kosovo (from Serbia), advisory proceedings before the ICJ and Independence of Abhkazia (from Georgia).) “All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Essentially, the right to self-determination is the right of a people to determine its own destiny. In particular, the principle allows a people to choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and social development. Exercise of this right can result in a variety of different outcomes ranging from political independence through to full integration within a state. The importance lies in the right of choice, so that the outcome of a people's choice should not affect the existence of the right to make a choice... the right to self-determination is recognized in international law as a right of process (not of outcome) belonging to peoples and not to states or governments.” So, you can see that it is "a right of process (not of outcome) belonging to peoples and not to states or governments.” In international law, the right of self-determination became recognized in the 1960s. Now, when was Abraham Lincoln’s America? Whenever a people or someone is intent on injustice he/she solely relies on ‘wreckage’ and will usually not direct people to read the reformed and current. So, please let us remember USSR, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Southern Sudan etc. It is the right of Hausa Fulani, Kanuris, Yorubas, Ijaw, Igbos, Idomas, Tivs and so on to decide to seek a process that will culminate into what they aspire to see in governance, economy, politics and social life. All Peoples that make up the entity called Nigeria have the right to self-determination just as we have Southern Sudan seek and fight for that right till it was given. The responsibility of a government from which a People seek self-governance is to take the rigors of dialogue to win their trust and confidence back and not to resort to force and might against their will. ENOUGH of this unnecessary intellectual deception!
Emeka Ndukwe
You can always see the stupidity of these baboons. Whenever they talk, they sound so idiotic that one would wish to see them face to face and slash their necks off. The matters involved in considering the position of the Nigerian government on Biafra has nothing to do with morality or majority/ minority but with civilized behaviors, use of common sense, self-esteem, and the subject of desperation for survival on the part of the other two federating units that formed Nigeria -namely the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba.
Let's take them one by one.
1 Nigeria is not a single and homogenous unit from eternity. So, the first thing to teach these fools is that Nigeria did not drop from heaven neither was it formed from eternity - read Itse Sagays " NIGERIA: Federalism, the Constitution and Resource Control ". In particular, he notes that "In other words, it was not a question of a country that was originally unitary, being broken into federating units, but of formerly totally independent Kingdoms, Empires, Nations and Autonomous Communities being forcefully brought together, and ending up in a Federal Union".
Idiots like Adamu will do anything to delete the fact that Nigeria is a product of an agreement and not a drop from eternity. They wish this truth could be permanently deleted from the thinking faculties of all. It is the last thing they want to hear in this world due to their desperation to continue to be part of the oil wealth.
Secondly, along this line , Nigeria does not have an agreement. All you see is "we the entire people of Nigeria ", ; and the people are not mentioned, the terms are not stated, and the time/life of the agreement is not mentioned. Hence in effect there is no agreement and no country.
The country called Nigeria does not exist. Shamelessness desperation and lack of self-esteem on the part of the Hausa-Fulani group. It is shameful to see how desperately these Hausas and Yorubas are hanging onto the wealth of the third federating state.
What does it take to simply let someone with whom you entered an agreement to opt out of it? Why will someone refuse to accept a separation from another?
The answer is simple: they have something to gain so much so that they desperately and shamelessly hang on even with the skin of their teeth. These people are so absolutely shameless. They even say that they won’t let go for the sake of the fact that they fought a war to get Biafra into Nigeria - i.e. they conquered and occupied Biafra, a primeval behavior and phenomenon which is also normal with their history. In their own words they won’t let go of what they conquered and fought so hard to get. Uncivilized Behavior - Common with the Hausa-Fulani and their neighbors.
This animal goes by the usual manner in which they like to see Nigeria - i.e. they are in control and others have to beg them. That is why he uses the term "Morality" and talks about majority. Hence I will ask, "Majority of what. Do you get into an agreement with someone on equal terms and then talk about population and majority? I don't really blame him but the senseless people from Biafra who entered into the formation of this zoo with them. It is certain that only a fool will enter into a partnership in which the terms are to his disadvantage. Only fools talk about population when considering that completely different / independent nations came together to form a unit. Use of Commonsense.
Let us consider this. A lot of people believe that Nigeria was formed in 1914. Now let us consider that the agreement to be part of it was carried out through a consensus by people in the three federating units. It is also clear that those whose opinions counted then were 18 and above. Today we know that those who were legible then will be 120 years old. First we should ask how many of those people that are alive today. Then we also have to consider what percentage, those that are alive contribute to the population of the east. Secondly, if we consider that the East had self-government in 1957 and could have chosen not to be part of the Nigerian project, it is also clear that those who were legible to contribute to that decision were 18 and above them. All such people should be 77 above by now. How many of those people are alive today and what percentage do they contribute to the population of Biafra.
The answer is simple - insignificant. So it boils down to common sense for a civilized people to permit those alive today to have the rights as humans to decide what they want for themselves. It is about civilization, not morality. It is about our right, and not about us begging someone to show good moral. he should behave like the educated David Cameron the people in Canada who allowed Quebec to vote, and those of other places in Europe. We are seeing in Nigeria why Africans are black. It is a race of desperate uncivilized people.
MAZI PETER EJIRIKA
The Author of the Article on the Rights of Biafra to Secede wrongly assumed that power lies with the government rather than the people according to this reasoning the government retains the right to dictate the people's type of political association. In order to buttress this reasoning, the author used Abraham Lincoln's circumstantial views on the rights of the minority. It is obvious that the American Experience is quite different from that of Nigeria in that at the time of Lincoln's views on the rights of the minority, the Appendages of Slavery were very visible in all aspects of the American Life and Lincoln was a Slave Owner. In Abraham Lincoln's Era, America was a country of English Men and Women formed by a voluntary association unlike Nigeria, a country of disparate people with fundamental differences of background created by the British solely to serve their economic interest. Though the British made a similar mistake in the case of Colonial India and it was corrected with the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh through the process of Self-Determination. Suffice it to state that the author forgot to discuss the rights of marginalized people to define themselves and their political associations as exemplified in the Self-Determination Experiences of Kosovo, Namibia, and Southern Sudan to mention a few.
barclayteke
If by the nature of Mohammed's argument, we happen to totally accept his entire premise that the minority, in order to exercise their alienable rights for self determination, must do so at the behest of the majority. That argument would have held sway if the process of determining the numerical strength of the said majority is concomitantly verified through a universally accepted methodology to determine the veracity of the numbers being bandied as indisputably ascertained, then his argument would have sufficed.
We the people of Nigeria strongly believe that the north does not have the numerical strength as they often claimed if not for the entrenched machination of the federal government and the undue advantage the British gave them. People all over the world have the rights to seek freedom from a perceived oppressed governments, and to choose who they should align themselves with. Any subtle threat carried out under the guise of intellectual argument is nothing but an act of debauchery. MASSOB, IPOB and other similar groups have the legitimate rights to seek their freedom and define it to capture their desire.
ANTHONYIFEANYIEFOBI
This writer called MOHAMMED is just a war monger and an instigator. He is quoting International outdated Practices and Jurisprudence that happened in 1861. What an out of millennium era Lawyer is this MOHAMMED Adamu? He is using the universal illegitimate principle which has be declared international unacceptable notion for its war hunger driven.
BoyssanEmeme
The author might need to take a look at the Magna Carta.
Sunny Hart
It is time the north stops hypocrisy in issues affecting other regions of Nigeria .Adamu, you are quick to site A Lincoln because you think the opinion stated justifies your covetousness. why haven't you done same in land use and ownership system? or in the revenue sharing formula? The level of barbarism displayed by your brothers against so-called fellow Nigerians was never witnessed in the US even during the discrimination against blacks.
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