Why we’re in the struggle –Odinma, MASSOB regional director

In 1967, the entity known as Eastern Nigeria began a secession movement to have its own state of Biafra through her leader, then Lt. Col. and later General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (the people’s General). The war that followed endured for three years and the rest, as people say, is now history.
However, 29 years after the three-year hostilities ended, to be precise in 1999, a young Igbo lawyer, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike began another agitation for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra with the formation of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), although on a different plane of non-violence. Since then, the Movement has taken the Nigerian state by the storm with security agencies almost always clamping down on MASSOB members.
Despite this clampdown, members of the group across the globe and particularly in the State-east have stoically sustained the struggle which appears to have no end in sight.
Speaking in Aba, the commercial hub of Abia State, on why the struggle has continued into its 15th year, Chief Larry Odinma, MASSOB Regional Director for Aba said that most of them who were involved in the struggle are graduates, people who should have something doing; but because the Igbo are marginalized, many of the youths do not have something doing and the Federal Government has not done anything to incorporate youths from that part of the country in whatever they are doing. They have no choice other than to seek for freedom so that they can have a nation or a place where they can be employed and development will come to their place.
He cited the deplorable state of roads and lack of industries and other amenities in the South-east as reasons for the agitation. “There are no industries, no good roads, no electricity and no water in the South-east. I have been to parts of the North, they have constant water and electricity supply. In most cases, they do not even pay electricity bills. But in the East, it is not the same. I have travelled from Abuja to Keffi when Uwazuruike was detained there, the road is very good. But look at the Enugu/Port Harcourt Expressway, look at Onitsha/Enugu Expressway and so many others. They are all death traps and they say we are in Nigeria and we are one Nigeria. These are some of the reasons we are involved in the emancipation struggle so that our people will be free from this enslavement. The government of Nigeria is not ready to incorporate the Easterners.”
Odinma who is a close confidant of Uwazuruike admitted that the struggle has been very tough for the past 16 years because it is a non-violent one. “We have been approaching all problems emanating from the struggle the non-violent way, and this is why it has not been easy.”
He said, “It has not been easy for us, Nigerian security operatives have not been happy with us. We are on the receiving side of arrests, detentions and killings; we are the people bearing the brunt, but we will still continue with the struggle because that is what our leader, Ralph Uwazuruike signed.”
The MASSOB regional administrator said no amount of security clampdown will make them to stop the agitation, stressing that though security agents are doing their work of protecting Nigeria as one indivisible entity, it is also the duty of MASSOB to tell them that their people need freedom, and that freedom is what they looking for.
“As far as we are concerned, police clampdown will not change anything, it will not make us change our non-violent posture. Let me tell you something, even the police themselves know that we are doing the right thing. At times when they arrest some of us, they will tell us they know we are non-violent, they sympathize with us, they really know that we are not spoiling for war, but for freedom. If the movement is violent, some of us wouldn’t have joined, because some of us are bishops, pastors and other clergymen, and they don’t want to be involved in something like killing human beings, most especially our leader. He hates such things. Some of the police officers they send to arrest us are our friends.
He said MASSOB will continue the struggle the non-violent way, because that is what is in the Nigerian constitution and African charter as well. He laughed at people who think they are getting it wrong with their non-violent posture, insisting that the approach is very powerful and far better than carrying arms. To him, it is only cowards that believe that if people like Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela could achieve freedom through non-violence, that Uwazuruike will also not achieve same. Moreover, the MASSOB chieftain said what people went through during the three-year civil war made Uwazuruike to change tactics believing that with this approach a Biafran state would be achieved without the shedding of blood.