UNN Student - Why We Must Break Away From Nigeria

Okey Onuegbo, a 33-year-old PhD student at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, Enugu State, in this interview, explained why the people of the South East geopolitical zone should break away from the country.

Do you think, the Igbo should break away from Nigeria?

It is necessary to leave Nigeria and build our own country. Every parent wishes to have children and Nigeria is old enough to have children. Call it Biafra or any republic, the Igbo is due to leave Nigeria and if we leave it will be good for both Nigeria and Biafra.

If we leave, we hope to do a lot of things that will open more opportunities for the people. Even Nigeria will have more opportunities to engage her youths when the Igbo leave. It will create more jobs for both Nigerians and Biafrans to think deeper on how they can survive.

Whether hardship or not, the Igbo need to leave Nigeria. Even if we leave without oil, we will survive. Oil is the Nigerian major problem and once we forget about oil, we will start thinking about how to make use of our brains.

Do you think the South East will survive if it breaks away from Nigeria?

Why not? We will survive. It will challenge us to think and become better. It could take us some time, but in the end, we must survive. That is just the simple truth. We have a lot of natural resources that have been neglected because of oil.

We can go back to farming; we have palm oil production and many other agricultural engagements.

If Niger, Benin and Ghana can survive, Biafra will survive in everything also.

Don’t you think that this agitation will lead to war?

Why must it lead to war? It can lead to war because of the way we think but it is not supposed to lead to war. There is a stipulated way for people to leave a country, let Nigeria apply it so that we can break up peacefully. What we are saying is that there should be a referendum to determine our fate. Igbo don’t need to fight a war to leave Nigeria.

Have you read any book on the civil war and learnt any lesson from it?

I have read about five books on the Nigerian civil war and many other war books. People may be thinking that what is happening today will lead to war, but it will not. The only thing that will make it lead to war is because of the too much interest the North has in the South.

All the oil blocks and wells in the South are owned by the northerners and that is the reason they are resisting the Igbo to go their way. If not, why are they forcing us to stay in a union we don’t want?

The lesson I learnt from the books is that we don’t need war because war is not the best way to break away.

Don’t you think the secession will affect Igbo businesses in other parts of the country?

It will not affect their business. People from other parts of the world live in other people’s countries, so why will it be a problem for them? It doesn’t matter unless Nigeria wants to use nationalisation to acquire Igbo investments.

Have you been to the North or South West and what was your experience?

I have lived in the North. And I will tell you that the northerners are very good people to live with. A Hausa man has no problem with the Igbo man but the problem is the herders.

I can describe Hausa men as peaceful people. I really enjoyed my stayed in the North; it really exposed me to many things.