It is quite striking to me that whilst Nigeria has slated May 29 as democracy day some contrarian Nigerians celebrate Biafra day the very next day, that is, on May 30.
The contradictions of the country are so bewildering, and the leaders do not help matters in any way.
These so-called leaders are unrelenting dividers of the country through their nefarious acts of sabotaging the emergence of a true nation.
The country has been so polarised through the dubious elections organised in the name of democracy here.
A controversial presidential election in which the computer server was tampered with until the results were announced in the wee hours of 4am did more harm than good.
Ethnic bigotry has been given the platform to reign, and mighty reputations are being tossed into the pit latrine.
Nigeria has been brought down to its knees such that the talk of Biafra cannot be erased from the minds of the people.
The comeuppance cannot be dismissed that in this country the national democracy day is followed the very next day by Biafra day.
The failings of Nigeria are openly being juxtaposed with the promise that Biafra held up in its time.
For starters, it’s deeply wounding that while Biafra could refine petrol in wartime, Nigeria can’t after these many years of peace!
The wide world has reduced Nigeria to a butt of jokes over the gargantuan figures quoted on the removal of fuel subsidy, or lack thereof.
Nigerians are paying very dearly on account of the fact that the leaders cannot fix the refineries and must therefore import fuel with astronomical hard currency.
Blundering Nigeria is what the world knows of, and this rankles all right-thinking Nigerians, sans the leaders.
Nigeria’s many woes such as brazen kidnappings, perennial power failure, monumental corruption, benumbing fuel shenanigans and so on are unconscionable.
The most damning of Nigeria’s failures for now is the knowledge that while the defunct Biafra could refine fuel so many years ago the triumphant old country cannot refine enough fuel for its local consumption today.
It’s a shame that cries to the high heavens.
It is not as if the men and women who were able to refine fuel back then in Biafra are no longer alive in present-day Nigeria.
These fellow countrymen and women have of course not lost their abilities but the enabling environment has been denied them.
With all the blockade and lack of access to the wider world, Biafran scientists defied multiform odds to refine fuel, manufacture bombs and invent diverse wonders.
The likes of Professor Gordian Ezekwe carried over the wonders of Biafra to the PRODA project he led in Enugu at the end of the civil war, but Nigerian officialdom has ensured that the laudable vision was smashed.
In its place we now have a totally consumerist society depending on imports for all basic needs, not the least of which is the absurdity of exporting crude oil and ending up importing refined fuel at exorbitant cost.
The big guns at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) must be thinking they had done fuel-starved Nigerians a world of good by gleefully announcing that they had imported enough fuel to last for a month.
The NNPC thrives on the ruinous importation of fuel by surreptitiously promoting the cartel that had held the country to ransom all along.
There is no talk of addressing the issue fundamentally by making sure that we can refine our own fuel in this country.
The country is obviously regressing, drifting badly.
Now we even have to close our borders to stop the smuggling of fuel to neighbouring countries.
Is it nemesis or karma at work that Nigeria must perforce blockade itself the way it blockaded Biafra in the vain bid to stop the smuggling of fuel and rice?
The self-advertised winners of the civil war have had several turns leading the country into comatose.
It’s akin to literally inheriting a dead horse!
The system of government since the end of the civil war has been unabashed kleptocratic kakistocracy.
Don’t mind my big words: it’s simply “government of the worst by the means of stealing!”
The kleptomaniacs have looted the country so rapaciously that it is a wonder that Nigeria still exists.
The greed of this tiny army of looters is what leads up to the reality of non-functioning refineries and the total absence of self-made fuel in a country teeming with raw crude.
The point of course is that it is not only those Nigerians maligned as Biafrans who can refine fuel.
Nigerians from all across the diverse geo-political zones are possessing of wonderful abilities in this regard but the “them and us” divide implanted by Nigerian leaders has made sure that the energies of our fellow countrymen and women are all the time stifled with insufferable arrogance.
People now adopt the toga of internal exile to escape the calumny, the shame of being addressed as Nigerians.
In the Diaspora as well as within the country, it is not uncommon to see people stressing that they are Biafrans living in exile in Nigeria!
The country can only make true progress when everybody is accommodated within the family, and nobody is discriminated against such that those who used to refine fuel in the rebel republic can now do it for all in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
It is largely due to the manifest failures of Nigeria that Biafra lingers in many minds, and so many are thus left with the poser: what might have been if Biafra had survived?
I can hear the song rising in tempo: After Nigeria’s democracy day, play Biafra day!
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author
