BIAFRA: 40 Separatist Groups Exist In South East – Chekwas Okorie

The national chairman of United Peoples Party (UPP), Chekwas Okorie, has said at least forty different groups are agitating for an independent state of Biafra in Nigeria’s South East region.

Okorie said the number of groups agitating for Biafra had grown since 1999 when the first secessionist Igbo group, Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), was formed.

The UPP chairman told THE WHISTLER in a phone interview that many things were responsible for this, including perceived “denial of opportunities, alienation, nepotism” against the people of the South East.

Okorie spoke against the backdrop of the Igbo people’s compliance with a sit-at-home order to mark the Biafran Remembrance Day on May 31, 2021, which he said was “one of the most successful” since the southeastern people started observing the day.

He, however, noted that this year’s high compliance rate had nothing to do with the increasing secession agitations, but rather an increased awareness on the need for the South East people to mark out a day to remember their brothers and sisters who were killed during the 1967-1970 Biafra-Nigerian Civil War.

“…there is hardly any family that would not have one person or the other as a victim of the deaths. It is something that touches on emotions and who would not want to honour his/her late loved ones? So, that’s why this particular call to stay at home is gaining more and more traction. The one of this year is about the most successful,” he said.

Okorie, who worked closely with the late Ojukwu for more than 20 years, likened Igbo’s increased acceptance of the Biafran Remembrance Day to the South West’s embrace of June 12 long before the Federal Government officially recognized the date as the country’s Democracy Day in honour of MKO Abiola.

“…they (South West) were doing it without having to take permission from the Federal Government until the government under Buhari saw the need to also give Federal Government authority to it. So, this is the thing and that’s how many of us see this aspect of trying to remember [our fallen heroes].

“And the case of MKO Abiola is one person, but here we are talking about what impacted on practically every family in Igboland and the former Biafran enclave. So, that is that one. But outside of that, many of us also see it as just commemorative and not as solidarity for secession. People like me have spoken constantly, variously, persistently and canvassed a united Nigeria. And I’ve never been in support of secession and having worked so closely with the late Odumegwu Ojukwu for more than two decades, there is nothing on earth that we never talked about.

“And one of the ones he was strongly opposed to was the idea of creating a Biafra nation. So, he knew that one can never be gotten on a round table and if you want to insist on it, that means war and a war was not what we thought his people should experience a second time and I bought into it.

Okorie stressed that before Ojukwu’s death, “he had always preached Biafra of the mind, that is the “I can do spirit” of the average Igbo man, but not secession.”

Speaking further on alleged marginalization of Igbos under the current administration of Buhari, Okorie said no past government had done what the Buhari government is currently doing for the South East in terms of infrastructural development.

He dared anyone to point to one federal project done by past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governments in the South East during the party’s sixteen years in office.

Okorie further said that there is no reasonable explanation for current alleged violent agitations being witnessed in the South East on the grounds of marginalization.

“There is no justification whatsoever for the violent nature of these agitations and that is why the promoters of the separatist movement would be quick to deny any violent attack. And there are almost forty groups that are talking about secession.

“From the original MASSOB which was the first of its kind, it has broken into a minimum of 40 [secession groups]. But the group that seems to have more followers is the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB),” he said.