Professor Okey Anueyiagu has long commanded my admiration for his intellectual clarity – a clarity that cuts through Nigeria’s fog of historical amnesia like a laser. When he shared his recent essay “Killing Biafra, Again,” I approached it with the expectant curiosity of one anticipating illumination. He did not disappoint. What seized me, however, was not merely the facts he presented – many of which live as open wounds in the consciousness of every thinking Nigerian – but the transcendent power of how he voiced them. There is an artistry to his anguish, a precision to his lament that transforms documented injustice into a visceral cry from the scar tissue of Nigerian history. Reading and re-reading his words, I felt a flush of intellectual electricity – a compulsion to sit with his testimony and offer this meditative commentary. May it reach eyes unclouded by preconceived notions, for Anueyiagu’s work transcends tribe: it is a mirror held to the soul of a nation perpetually at war with itself.
This review illuminates the essay’s profound resonance as both historical reckoning and urgent prophecy.
Okey Anueyiagu’s searing essay “Killing Biafra, Again” transcends mere political commentary – it appears as a visceral cry from the scar tissue of Nigerian history, where the wounds of the Biafran War (1967–1970) remain unhealed beneath the facade of national unity. Drawing from his harrowing experience as a child soldier chronicled in Biafra: The Horrors of War and his scholarly acumen as a Professor of Political Economy, Anueyiagu constructs a devastating indictment of Nigeria’s systemic persecution of the Igbo people, revealing how the “killing” of Biafra extends far beyond battlefield surrender into an ongoing project of erasure, marginalisation, and psychological warfare.
I. The Metaphysics of Erasure: From Cartography to Consciousness
Anueyiagu opens with a masterstroke, juxtaposing Trump’s symbolic renaming of the Gulf of Mexico with Nigeria’s post-1970 erasure of the “Bight of Biafra” to the “Bight of Bonny.” This act, he argues, epitomises the victors’ playbook: cartographic amnesia as a tool of conquest. The renaming was not administrative pragmatism but a deliberate excision of Biafra from geographical and historical memory – a literal unmapping of identity. This foreshadows his core thesis: Nigeria’s “killing” of Biafra is a perpetual act, sustained not by bullets but by policies designed to annihilate Igbo presence from Nigeria’s political, economic, and cultural body. The Bight’s renaming becomes a metaphor for Nigeria’s foundational sin: the refusal to acknowledge trauma, opting instead for enforced silence. As Chinua Achebe observed, Nigeria remains haunted by its refusal to confront this past.
II. The Hollow Mantra: “No Victor, No Vanquished” as State Gaslighting
Central to Anueyiagu’s critique is the exposure of General Gowon’s “no victor, no vanquished” slogan as a “deceitful bag of lies.” He dismantles this myth with forensic precision, cataloging the institutionalised punishment of Igbo people post-war:
• Economic Annihilation: The infamous “ex-gratia” policy limiting Biafrans to £20 per bank account – regardless of pre-war savings – engineered collective pauperisation. This state-sanctioned theft transformed a commercially dynamic demographic into overnight paupers.
• Political Disenfranchisement: The exclusion of Igbo from “key positions in government” despite constitutional “Federal Character” provisions, entrenching a de facto caste system. Anueyiagu notes that no Igbo has held Nigeria’s presidency since 1970, cementing their status as perpetual outsiders.
• Infrastructural Abandonment: The deliberate underdevelopment of the Southeast – collapsed roads, absent rail links, excluded irrigation projects – making it a carcass picked clean by victors.
These are not bureaucratic oversights but structural violence, meticulously designed to ensure Biafra’s defeat extends into perpetuity. As Anueyiagu writes, the war ended only to become “war by another name.”
III. The Anatomy of a Persecution Complex: Tribalism as Statecraft
Anueyiagu’s most incendiary claim – that hatred of the Igbo is Nigeria’s “unifying strength” – challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths. He documents how successive regimes (notably Buhari’s and Tinubu’s) weaponised tribalism:
“President Buhari… promised [Igbo] hell, and ensur[ed] they did not benefit from his government’s appointments… Tinubu’s ‘Renewed Hope’ housing policy is nearly absent in the Southeast.”
This institutional bias manifests grotesquely in the 2023 – 2025 JAMB scandal, where Igbo examination candidates were “orchestrated[ly] failed” – an academic pogrom denying youth advancement. Anueyiagu locates this bigotry in Nigeria’s colonial inheritance: the British amalgamation of 1914 yoked together disparate nations under a kleptocratic state where “tribalism, nepotism, [and] cronyism” became tools of control. The Igbo, whose meritocratic drive threatened this feudal order, became targets. Their resilience – rebuilding commerce from ashes – incites not admiration but renewed suppression, lest they “mentally decolonize” Nigeria.
IV. Witness as Resistance: The Child Soldier’s Gaze
Anueyiagu’s authority stems from his duality: scholar and survivor. Recalling his return to Awka – “completely looted, burnt down with all living things destroyed” – he forces readers to confront war’s intimate barbarism. Mud houses deliberately torched symbolise not military necessity but psychic extermination. His memoir, Biafra: The Horrors of War, functions as an archival counterweight to state-sanctioned forgetting, much like the “battered brown leather satchel” of Biafran artifacts hidden in a family cupboard, guarding truth in a climate of fear. This personal testimony elevates the essay from polemic to sacred witness, echoing Igbo philosopher Jonathan Chimakonam: “To be is to be perceived in trauma.”
V. Beyond Victimhood: Igbo Dignity as Unkillable Ideology
Crucially, Anueyiagu rejects reduction to victimology. He celebrates Igbo “resilience and ingenuity” as existential resistance:
“The Igbo… bounced back into contention after the war that nearly exterminated the entire tribe… refused to be defeated by the tragedy called Nigeria.”
Their survival embodies what James Scott calls “infrapolitics” – the art of defiance beneath submission. Like the dog in Anueyiagu’s parable (content without the floormat promised by its master), the Igbo’s adaptation to injustice exposes the bankruptcy of the oppressor. Their refusal to sublimate despite being “locked out of the affairs of government” becomes a silent indictment of Nigeria’s wasted potential. Here, Anueyiagu channels the spirit of Biafra’s wartime scientists (like Felix Nwankwo Oragwu), whose innovations proved Igbo ingenuity could “compete with South Korea” if unleashed.
VI. Tinubu’s Crossroads: The South East Development Commission as Litmus Test
Anueyiagu cautiously acknowledges Tinubu’s establishment of the South East Development Commission as a potential “new beginning.” Yet his optimism is laced with skepticism. For this commission to succeed, it must:
• Materially Atone: Address “erosion, rebuild… roads,” integrate the region into national rail networks, and reverse infrastructural apartheid.
• Symbolically Reconcile: Resurrect the Biafran legacy not as secessionist threat but as a national resource – honouring its technological ingenuity and cultural vitality.
• Constitutionally Restructure: Dismantle the unitary state masquerading as a federation, ensuring “equitable distribution of power, resources and accountability.”
Anything less risks being another “bla, bla, bla” in Gowon’s hollow tradition. True healing demands what Wole Soyinka declared: “To keep Nigeria one, justice must be done”.
Conclusion: The Fierce Urgency of Now – From Memory to Movement
“Killing Biafra, Again” is a Jeremiah cry for Nigeria’s redemption, yet its true resonance lies beyond diagnosis. For me, Anueyiagu’s greatest provocation is his unwritten mandate: the idea of Biafra must be refocused not as a map but as a spirit – that defiant life-force which ignited when extermination loomed.
But beyond historical lamentation, Biafra’s true essence must be rekindled – not as passive remembrance, but as a clarion call to confront modern-day annihilation. The spirit that birthed Biafra was never retreat; it was raw defiance against erasure. That same spirit must now transcend grievance and channel itself into unyielding resistance against the specters haunting us anew: indiscriminate killings, Fulani terrorists, state-tolerated kidnappers, and a governance machinery weaponizing disdain against Ndigbo.
This is not nostalgia – it is awakening. We must rise beyond cataloging injustices and resurrect Biafra’s animating force: not as separatist geography, but as the living, breathing insistence on dignity, sovereignty, and collective self-preservation. Anueyiagu hands us a spiritual blueprint: the ingenuity that rebuilt bombed cities must now forge moral armor against structural violence. Agwu Okpanku’s titular defiance thus becomes more than ancestral echo – it is a baton passed, demanding we weaponize memory into mobilization.
Nigeria stands at the precipice. Anueyiagu’s invocation of divine forgiveness is an ultimatum – and our response must be revolution of consciousness. If Nigeria clings to its “evilness,” Biafra will resurrect not as secession, but as an unconquerable ethos – the conscience that exposes the state’s moral bankruptcy and demands transformation. Lest history repeat not as tragedy, but as reckoning.
This essay is no mere scar on Nigeria’s conscience – it is a torch. In giving voice to the vanquished, Anueyiagu ignites our imperative: reclaim the spirit that turns victims into architects of justice. Only when Nigeria embraces this fire – forged in Igbo resilience yet universal in its hunger for equity – will it cease sleepwalking toward catastrophe. The hour is late. Summon the spirit. Rise, or be complicit in your own erasure.
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