By Chioma Amaryllis Ahaghotu
My dear Igbo people, after everything I have written in Part 1 and Part 2, I want to make one thing very clear.
I am not asking anybody to agree with me.
I am asking you to read, process and think logically. We havs allowed men with huge egos and mere emotions whine and deceive us for too long. And the South East and her people have been bearing the brunt ever since.
You cannot build the political future of an entire people only based on Radio broadcasts , social media forwards, speeches, family stories and things somebody told you about Biafra.
If Biafra is important enough for you to build your entire political identity around it, then it should be important enough for you to actually study it.
And by study, I do not mean reading only the version of history that confirms what you already believe.
Read accounts written from different perspectives. Read people who supported Biafra. Read people who opposed it. Read military accounts. Read political accounts. Read memoirs. Read historians. Read people who were actually there abd who MOVED around not just stuck in one location listening to the radio.
Then make up your own mind.
So here are five books I think every Igbo person who wants to have a serious conversation about Biafra should first read. The next 5 will be in another post.
1. The Biafra Story — Frederick Forsyth
Forsyth was a journalist who spent time in Biafra during the civil war. Whatever you think of his perspective, this is a book written by someone who was actually there and witnessed the war across many fronts.
Read it because you should understand how Biafra was presented to the outside world while the war was happening, how the conflict was being experienced on the ground and how the international dimension of the war developed.
Do not read it because Forsyth is automatically right.Read it because you need to understand the perspective.
2. Emeka — Frederick Forsyth
If Ojukwu is going to be treated as one of the central figures in the history of Biafra, then you should understand the man beyond the photographs, speeches and mythology.
Forsyth’s Emeka examines Gen. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, his background, his political thinking and his role in the events that eventually led to the creation of Biafra and the civil war.
You may disagree with Forsyth’s interpretation. That is fine. Ojukwu was alive when he wrote it.The point is to know the argument before you accept or reject it.
3. The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War— Alexander A. Madiebo
This one is particularly important because Madiebo was a senior Biafran military officer. If you want to understand the war from the perspective of someone who was deeply involved in the Biafran military effort, this is the kind of account you should read.
It gives you something that social media cannot give you: an understanding of the decisions, military realities, mistakes, limitations and circumstances surrounding the war.
And that matters because war is not a movie. There are consequences to every political and military decision.
4. There Was a Country — Chinua Achebe
Achebe’s memoir is important because he was not simply writing about Biafra as an abstract political idea. He was writing about the experience of the period, including the pogroms before the war, the political crisis, the war and its aftermath.
You should read Achebe because you cannot understand the emotional and historical trauma surrounding Biafra without understanding how many Igbo people experienced that period.
But again, read it as Achebe’s account and perspective. No single person’s memoir should become your entire understanding of a complicated historical period.
5. The Nigerian Civil War: Causes, Strategies, and Lessons Learnt — J. Isawa Elaigwu
You also need something that takes you beyond personal memory and emotion and examines the civil war as a political and military conflict.
This kind of reading forces you to ask harder questions about the causes of the war, the decisions that were made, the strategies employed and the lessons that should have been learned from the experience.
Because ultimately, history is supposed to teach you something.
It is not supposed to become a permanent weapon that each generation uses to reproduce the anger of the previous generation.
And this is where I want my fellow Igbo people to be very careful.
There is a difference between remembering Biafra and romanticizing Biafra.
There is a difference between honoring the people who died and pretending that every political decision made during that period was correct.
There is a difference between acknowledging the suffering of Igbo people and using that suffering to justify every political action taken in the name of Biafra today, especially when they end up harming the same Igbo people.
There is a difference between understanding why Biafra happened and believing that the exact same political conditions, geography, economics and international environment still exist today.
They do not.
The world of 1967 is not the world of 2026.
Nigeria is not the Nigeria of 1967.
The Southeast is not the Eastern Region of 1967.
The global economy is not the global economy of 1967.
International politics is not the international politics of 1967.
And our political strategy cannot be based on pretending that nothing has changed.
This is why I get frustrated when people tell me I do not understand Biafra because I question the current agitation.
Understanding Biafra is exactly why I question it.
If you actually study history, you begin to understand that political decisions have consequences. You begin to understand that good intentions do not automatically produce good outcomes. You begin to understand that movements can start with legitimate grievances and still make terrible strategic decisions than end up making situations worse.
You also learn that people can love their people deeply and still disagree about the best way to protect them.
That is what adults should be able to discuss.
So before you call me anti-Igbo, read. Before you tell me I hate Biafra, read. Before you tell me I do not understand what our people suffered, read.
Before you tell me that every person who questions the current agitation is a sabo, read.
Read the history. Read the memoirs. Read the military accounts. Read the political accounts. Read perspectives that make you uncomfortable.
Then come back and argue. You cannot be @ing me to debate with the version history you learnt on Radio Biafra.
Because I am not interested in arguing with somebody whose entire political education consists of emotional rants and sentimental appeal.
If you are old enough to decide the political future of an entire people, you are old enough to study the history you are using to make that decision.
And perhaps that is where many should start.
Not with shouting. Not with threats. Not with inherited anger.
With books.
Because if we cannot even agree to study our own history honestly, then we have no business claiming that we are ready to build a different political future.
Read first. Feel later. Then decide what you actually believe.
To whom brain is given, reasoning is expected.
By Chioma Amaryllis Ahaghotu
