breakaway Republic of Biafra, giving a press conference in Enugu,
Nigeria during the Biafran war Its
name is synonomous with the declaration of independence and updates on
the brutal conflict that followed, but nearly 50 years after Nigeria's
civil war, Radio Biafra is again making headlines.
The
modern-day version -- broadcasting online apparently from London and,
many suspect, retransmitted inside Nigeria -- was taken off air last
week after regulators called it illegal.
President
Muhammadu Buhari was also forced to issue a statement, denying the
station's claims he had criticised Igbos, one of the country's three
largest ethnic groups, in a recent BBC interview.
"The
illegal broadcasts from the seditious pirate radio station... shattered
the peace... with unsavoury hate messages," the National Broadcasting
Commission said last Friday.
The
messages were "designed to create disunity among Nigerians and mislead
young people in a deliberate act of subversion. Nigerians do not need
another round of heartache and bloodshed", it added.
The
existence of the station, which was easily picked up in Nigeria's
southeast, is a reminder of the country's bubbling ethnic tensions and
the still-raw wounds of history.
Listeners
said its anti-government propaganda showed the dream of a separate
Biafran republic is still alive, 45 years after the end of the bloody
civil war.
"Although
the radio did not have good programmes lined up, its listenership was
growing by the day and the government felt threatened by its popularity,
especially among the youths," said Chijioke Amadi, 32, in the
southeastern city of Enugu.
- 'A state of our own' -
With
Nigeria's young demographic, most listeners to Radio Biafra will not
even have been born when Igbo General Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared an
independent Republic of Biafra in 1967.
But memories linger of the anti-Igbo pogrom in the mainly Muslim north that preceded secession and the war that followed.
When
the fighting ended in 1970 with more than one million Igbos dead of
disease and hunger, Nigeria's military ruler General Yakubu Gowon
declared there was "no victor or vanquished".
But the Igbos claim they have been unfairly treated -- even punished -- ever since.
"Our
grandfathers and fathers adopted the ideology of Biafra," said Uchenna
Madu, spokesman for the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign
State of Biafra (MASSOB).
"We
believe in their vision and we have continued to build on the
foundation laid by our parents. We are being denied our fundamental
rights of being Biafrans," he told AFP.
"We
love Nigeria, we want to contribute to its development but the Nigerian
state is paying us back with hatred. We want a state of our own."
One
Igbo former military officer, who participated in the so-called "Igbo
coup" in January 1966 and later fought for Biafra, said the sense of
injustice had been passed down generations.
"The
children who were born after the war ask their parents why the five
states in the region are underdeveloped," the 72-year-old said,
declining to give his name.
"Their
parents tell them of the pogrom and devastation that took place during
the war and these children, now adults, feel bitter and demand to go
their separate ways."
- 'We shall prevail' -
Most
"Biafra" agitators assert their region is overlooked in the provision
of infrastructure such as roads, water, electricity, medical care,
education, as well as senior political posts.
There was criticism recently from the southeast of Buhari's appointments to senior military roles.
Emeka
Umeagbalasi, head of the International Society for Civil Liberties and
the Rule of the Law, said Igbos had been "totally excluded with
impunity".
The
appointments were "undemocratic and unconstitutional," he added,
referring to a contentious constitutional provision for posts to be
shared among Nigeria's regions.
For
Eze Onyekpere, director of the Centre for Social Justice pressure
group, the situation demonstrated how Nigeria has failed to come to
terms with its past and diversity.
"They have been swept under the carpet. These are national questions which Radio Biafra has sought to highlight," he added.
In
such a powder keg of competing ethnic and religious identities, dissent
-- whether on radio or via Biafra Television -- can thrive.
Eleven
men from a MASSOB splinter group are currently on trial charged with
conspiracy to declare a breakaway republic when they stormed a state-run
radio station in Enugu in June last year.
For Uchenna, the incidents show "the spirit of Biafra is alive and it cannot die".
"We
shall prevail," he said. "We are no longer interested in Nigeria. No
tribe in Nigeria has the interest of the Igbos at heart, hence our
sustained campaign for our own separate republic."
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