Following today’s global shocker, the Bretix vote, a new referendum campaign, Biafrexit, has been launched that could, potentially, also shock the world.
A referendum known as Bretix was held on Thursday, June 23, 2016, culminating in the decision by Britons to quit the European Union.
Perhaps, inspired by this turn of events, the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Friday, June 24, 2016 afternoon announced the official launch of a campaign slogan, Biafrexit Vote, for a referendum on independence for Biafra.
An IPOB spokesperson, Clifford Iroanya said in an e-mail to The Trent, “The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) under the leadership of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu hereby officially launch the campaign slogan titled: BIAFREXIT VOTE.”
Iroanya also shared the campaign’s logo (below) said an official statement on the new referendum campaign would soon follow.
Biafra is a short lived republic carved out of the old Eastern Nigeria region in 1967. Its declaration of independence sparked a civil war in Nigeria and was reclaimed back into Nigeria when the Biafran forces surrendered to the Nigerian government in 1969. The secession was led by the late Emeka Ojukwu, a colonel in the Nigerian Army and administrator of the Eastern Region at the time he declared independence from Nigeria.
The Struggle Leading Up To Biafrexit
IPOB is an Biafra secessionist group with chapters around the world and in Nigeria. It believes in using nonviolent methods to achieve an independent Biafra. In October 2015, the group’s leader and director of Radio Biafra, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu was arrested in Lagos, in south-western Nigeria by operatives of Nigeria’s secret police, the Department of State Security Services, also known as DSS.
The Nigerian government first accused Mr. Kanu of disturbing the peace and “unlawful society” and charged him to a magistrate court. He was granted bail by the judge. The government refused to release him. His charges were increased in a higher court, the court still granted him bail and, again, the General Muhammadu Buhari-led government refused to obey the court’s orders.
During the period of Kanu’s incarceration, his supporters have staged peace protests in cities and towns across Nigeria, mostly concentrated in the South East region where Nnamdi Kanu comes from. Based on orders from the Nigerian president, General Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian police and military used deadly force against the unarmed protesters killing hundreds of them on several occasions.
The latest of such genocidal clampdowns happened on May 30, 2016, the day that most Igbos, a major ethnic group in Nigeria, celebrates Igbo Heroes Remembrance Day. Members of IPOB who had taken refuge in a Catholic Church in Nkpor near Onitsha in Anambra were attacked by soldiers and over 50 people were killed, including bystanders and other persons who are not part of IPOB. By the time the brutal clampdown was over, 90 Igbos had been murdered in cold blood by Nigerian troops. Their corpses kidnapped and later buried in mass graves by the Nigerian Army in the Army Barracks in Onitsha.
President Muhammadu Buhari continues to threaten pro-Biafra agitators with more bloodshed saying that “those who agitate for Biafra did not see the civil war“. The Nigerian civil war in which 2 million Igbos are estimated to have died, most of them children from malnutrition due to a food blockade, took place between 1966 and 1970. Buhari is said to be one of the soldiers who partook in genocidal operations against Biafrans during the war.
Buhari has also gone on record boasting about the effort he put in to “keep Nigeria one” and how he feels irritated when the people of the Niger Delta claim that the crude oil in their region belongs to them. He also also revealed that his people, the Fulani “have no where to do, if they are driven from the South“, in a meeting with his kinsmen in his home state of Katsina. Hence, Biafra’s independence will not be allowed.
General Buhari’s sectional and parochial leadership style, several secessionist groups have emerged in the South East and mostly South South, some of them are of a militant nature. The most prominent is the Niger Delta Avengers which is calling for a free Niger Delta Republic and demanding an end to oil production in the South South region till its 11-point demand is met. The group has successfully mounted attacks on strategic oil installations in the country dropping Nigeria’s daily crude production from 2.2 million barrels a day to about 900,000.
