Finally Ezekwesili speaks on her stands on Nigerian civil war

– The former minister, Obiageli Ezekwesili blamed the leaders who failed to rehabilitate  the region that suffered most during the civil war

– Ezekwesili said it was important for Nigeria to have entered into a conversation that would have given way to the dream nation of every Nigerian.

Former minister of education, Obiageli Ezekwesili

The former minister of education, Obiageli Ezekwesili has said that Nigeria missed the golden opportunity to get it right as a nation after the civil war in 1970.

Speaking during the launch of the book: “We are all Biafrans” by journalist and rights activist, Chido Onumah in Abuja, Ezekwesili said Nigerians as a people have overtime resorted to an equal opportunity of suffering for all ethnic groups.

“Nigerians have the consent of equal opportunity to suffer, and this equal to suffer comes from a very unfortunate attitude that each ethnic group is entitled to the suffering that comes upon it while the rest can look away,” Ezekwesili said.

The civil war started after the Biafran warlord, late Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the Republic of Bifara on May 30, 1967.

The war lasted till January 1970 when Ojukwu handed over to his second in command, Philip Effiong and went to Ivory Coast.

The former minister said after the civil war, Nigerian leaders never felt the need to reintegrate or rehabilitate the region – the southeast – who received the greatest blow from the civil war.

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“This started and got entrenched following the 1966 coup and then the ungodly civil war that followed with the declaration of Biafra and the civil war and then the fact that the country lost some 100,000 military people and over 2 million civilians in that war,” she said.

She said immediately after that war, it was expected that there would be reconciliation, rehabilitation but all that did not happen.

Ezekwesili said: “The leadership was absent in cementing the basic for rebuilding the foundation of our nation that had been traumatized by that kind of civil war.”

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“So the root cause of what we see with the marginalization of every ethnic group is that at the time that we had the opportunity to have determined how to settle conflict and to completely build a trajectory for a new sense of identity we missed it,” she said.

“We missed a great opportunity that the end of the Nigerian civil war offered us, we moved on so quickly. And as we moved on so quickly another ethnic group had its own situation.

“So what do you think the ones who had previously suffered the whole thing would say; they looked away and said, when we were suffering where were you? And then another ethnic group suffered its own and the rest looked at them and said, na only you, we too we don suffer before?

She added that right from her teen years Nigerians have always lived with the slogan “If you dabo me, I scatter you”.

She further said it was important for Nigeria to have entered into a conversation that would have given way to the dream nation of every Nigerian.

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“We never went from country to nation that is my basic explanation, there was a necessary transition that we needed to make. Before independence we managed to coalesce unity in order to face the colonial masters.

“We got them out the door, as soon as they left, we should have had a conversation on what kind of a nation we would build.

“A country is not a nation; a country is a territorial space given an integrity on the basis of its recognition by the united nation… but a nation becomes the people who share a belief of their interconnectedness, therefore and willing to defend sheared identity, shared values and shared vision.

“We never did that!” she added.

The former minister have been known to take up fights for different causes related to humanity and issues of governance.

The most wide spread is  the clamour for the rescue of over 200 schoolgirls abducted from their hostel in Government Secondary School Chibok by Boko Haram terrorists last year through the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

While the campaign has since gained international recognition, the former minister has continued on the cause with a recent call on the present Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to make significant effort towards rescuing the remaining girls.

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